ARE THE FLIGHT DELAYS NECESSARY?
Topic: Federal Aviation Administration, Dept. of Transportation, Once in a Lifetime10. April 2008 |
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The New York Times’ Jeff Bailey reports that American Airlines has cancelled 900 more flights, leaving more than 100,000 travellers stranded in various airports around the country. This is due to a broad round of retroactive inspections by the Federal Aviation Administration following evidence that Southwest Airlines had disregarded FAA inspection orders. American cancelled more than 1,000 flights Wednesday to inspect planes’ electrical wiring.
The FAA has been in inspection mode since the House Transportation Committee started investigating the agency. But industry insiders claim the airlines are overreacting to political pressures and the possibility of bad PR, leading to more disruptions than needed. Both the regulator and the airlines are now in a bind – they either fly potentially dangerous planes or disrupt thousands of passenger’s lives. Read Bailey here.
understandinggov.org
Just plain don’t know who to complain to but now I have been advised that Delta will charge an addittional $25 for a “second checked bag” Doesn’t seem like much except that I had already purchase 8 round trip tickets from Fla to Alaska for a cruise and land tour.Each person has been advised to bring “2 bags” one for the cruise portion and one for the land portion. There and back that equals $400. Isn’t there some sort of regulation that they should have told us about that! Actually they said they just decided to impiment the exra fee. I argued and said “fine advise everyone from that point on that purchases a ticket, but don’t charge those already holding the tickets” Delta’s reply was “Sorry too bad” Anyone have any suggestions for recourse! rjones
comment at 20. April 2008
Dear Randal,
If you get all the people in your party and other people flying Delta to this cruise, maybe you can get a concession from Delta, though it’s going to be tough. But you are right on — this kind of change should be grandfathered so it only hits people who buy tickets from a certain date forward (the date they announce the change). Otherwise it amounts to a “bait and switch” situation — you agreed on one price for one set of services and one baggage allowance, and now they’re changing the rules. So the Department of Transportation has to hear about this. The complaint info site is at
http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/
See also this important USA Today article that talks about the problem:
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/mcgee/2005-03-08-mcgee_x.htm
I hope this is helpful. Please let Understanding Government know what happens.
Best of luck,
Ned Hodgman
Executive Director
Understanding Government
comment at 20. April 2008