Standing in front of a mostly blank background containing simply the text “holding airlines accountable,” President Biden announced intentions to force airlines to pay cash to passengers whose flights have been cancelled for “controllable” reasons.

Having personally endured dozens of NYC/FL meltdowns and seen thousands flights cancelled due to the DOT’s chronic ineptitude and mismanagement of the ATC system, I noted there are no plans to require the government to provide cash to the many passengers whose flights are cancelled due to air traffic control failures.

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/08/1174727479/flight-delay-cancellation-payments-to-passengers-transportation-department

 

What exactly is a controllable reason?

 

This is something I can absolutely get behind under certain circumstance listed below. Seeing some of the meltdowns at my airline even though weather related and dumping pax on the street to fend for themselves is atrocious. Some airlines do a decent job of accommodating while others take advantage of the lax rules to avoid costs. Too much have certain airlines had a poor operation as a cost saving measure and at the expense of pax. If airlines want to save money by not investing in and having a good operation it should cost them.

1 controllable delays or cancellations are specifically defined and specifically does not include weather or maintenance related, acts of nature and safety reasons

2 it becomes a crime to falsely label a controllable delay as uncontrollable to avoid compensation.

3 the compensations are just and and nonpunitive

 

no problem with any of that. But you’d be a fool not to expect the cost of that to be reflected in ticket prices. There is no free lunch and someone’s gotta pay. Not just for the hotel room and meals (which the airlines can probably get for a discount) but for the increased aircraft, maintenance personnel, and crews that will be sitting reserve as well.

 

Things cancelling for whatever reason bothers me way less than forcibly removing passengers (or denying boarding of passengers) due to oversale/weight restriction/seat inop/etc with a voucher, with an expiration date no less.

Auction up the space if it’s oversold to whoever will take the least, and pay cash.


Actual cancellations? Seems too hard to track what is controllable vs uncontrollable. I’ve certainly seen an airline manipulate the details of the “why” to make it a weather delay/cancellation versus a maintenance delay/cancellation… if that’s how we’re defining controllable vs uncontrollable.

 

Another "feel-good", not very-well-thought-out order from this administration. I fully expect the airlines to price this in to their ticket prices. When people start complaining about high ticket prices, point right at this administration, shrug, and say "sorry, cost of doing business. There's Greyhound across town..."

 

Biden literally wants to throw money at anything and everything that might help him get votes.

 

“I love the smell of spending other peoples’ money in the morning….. It smells like victory. Some day this spending is gonna end.”

 

This is literally the way DAL has been operating for last few years, they "bid" off extra pax in the form of an AMEX gift card good as cash for wherever amex is accepted. This winter alone I saw a family of 6 get "bought" off an oversold ATL-EGE flight with a guarantee for the next day to the tune of over $24K ($4K per ticket). That was for what they said was about $3K in tickets originally.

Lastly, SWA cancelled flights for three days this winter and said it was due to snow in Denver (WX). So "controllable" cancellations are going to be a little harder to pin down.

 

Good. Maybe now my airline will stop selling tickets for flights that we clearly don’t have the staffing for.