Booking an expensive flight might indicate to the airline you had a serious obligation you couldn’t miss, he said. Buttigieg said in his letter that “Southwest has stated that it will honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for alternate transportation, such as other airline tickets, Amtrak, or rental cars.” Though Southwest said in its email that it would honor “reasonable requests” for “alternate transportation,” Southwest typically does not rebook passengers on competitors’ flights, unlike legacy carriers like Delta Air Lines and American Airlines, among others.īut Mr. Will passengers who booked flights on other airlines be reimbursed for those flights? In the past, the airline has promised to provide meals when passengers have to wait for three hours or more for a new flight, and hotel accommodations and ground transportation to and from hotels for any passenger who faces an overnight delay.
Buttigieg said the Department of Transportation would “take action to hold Southwest accountable” if the airline did not fulfill its commitments to passengers stranded by circumstances under its control. But Southwest is facing pressure to be generous in its compensation. No clear definition was given for what a “reasonable” request would be. “We will honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation,” the email said. 2, 2023, “may submit receipts for consideration” via email or on the company website. In an email to The Times, Southwest said that passengers who faced a cancellation or significant delay between Dec.
What about expenses incurred while waiting for a flight to finally take off? Southwest is advising passengers who have not already been refunded to submit a request through the company website. So if your flight was canceled or significantly delayed and you chose not to fly on Southwest, you’re owed a refund of your ticket. What is Southwest legally required to provide to passengers?Īccording to the Department of Transportation dashboard, “If an airline cancels a passenger’s flight or makes a significant change in the flight, regardless of the reason, airlines are required to provide a prompt refund to a ticketed passenger, including those with nonrefundable tickets, should the passenger choose not to accept the alternative offered, such as rebooking on another flight.” “They are looking at five to six hundred million dollars in potential obligations.” Here’s where the money may go. “I think there are probably two million customers impacted at this point,” said Mr. Ultimately, the airline’s legal obligations may depend on what happens when something outside of the company’s control, like the snowstorm that wreaked havoc across the country, causes a problem within the airline’s control, like Southwest’s technological and scheduling failures.Įither way, it may end up costing the company many millions of dollars. Controllable issues are things like maintenance and crew positioning, “things the carrier is uniquely in control of,” said Bob Mann, an airline industry consultant. 24 are due to circumstances within the airline’s control” - in other words, not the weather - and that he expected the company to reimburse passengers for things like meals, hotel rooms and alternate forms of transportation that would not normally be covered when delays and cancellations are related to the weather. In a pointed letter to the airline’s chief executive, Bob Jordan, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg made his opinion clear: “The cancellations and significant delays at least since Dec. Window._PLUGIN_STATE_ = JSON.For the many passengers whose holiday travel was disrupted by the meltdown at Southwest Airlines, one question now looms large: How - and how much - will they get reimbursed for their troubles?
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