Travel developments have always been tough to predict accurately and now is no exception. Just as we thought summer would be a return to something like normal, Putin launches his reign of terror in Ukraine and oil prices spike. Still, we can see a few trends that will affect travel this summer.
New Scam
Paul Hudson of FlyersRights experienced a new airline abuse. When his flight was canceled late one Saturday evening, the airline rebooked him on what it said was the next available flight, some 40 hours later on Monday evening. In checking, he found two Sunday flights with available seats, but one agent refused to waitlist him on either flight, and another offered to put him on a Sunday flight only if he bought a new ticket at the much higher last-minute fare. Hudson’s conclusion on that airline’s policy: If its next available seat is on a flight likely to fill up at high last-minute fares, it will limit its offer to a seat on the next later flight that looks like it won’t be full.
Almost all airlines’ contracts of carriage promise that if they cancel your flight, they give you a seat on their next available flight, not the next flight they would prefer to put you on. Failure to honor that commitment is a clear violation of an airline’s contract. Hudson reports this as a personal experience, but urges the Department of Transportation to look into possible violations of airline contracts. I agree.
