Airline Customer Service Dashboard

[AmtrakBlue]

The U.S. Department of Transportation has created a dashboard to ensure the traveling public has easy access to information about services that U.S. airlines provide to mitigate passenger inconveniences when the cause of a cancellation or delay was due to circumstances within the airline’s control.

Airline Customer Service Dashboard | US Department of Transportation

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Unsurprisingly Allegiant, Frontier, and Spirit get low marks with Allegiant being worst-in-class. From what I've been told the moment anything goes wrong Allegiant drop any pretext of responsibility and if challenged they dare their customers to report them because its cheaper to pay static fines.

 

[jebr]

With Frontier/Spirit/Allegiant, I guess the cheap fares come with a lot of caveats. Particularly annoying is the lack of commitment to rebook on another airline if a flight is cancelled or significantly delayed; given their already-sparse route networks rebooking on the airline could mean multiple additional days away from home, with hotel at the passenger's expense for Allegiant and Frontier.

With all airlines, though, the only thing covered within this dashboard is "controllable" delays, and that's not terribly well-defined. If you have a crew on a 3-day trip, and on day 1 they get affected by ATC or weather issues that result in them not being able to crew your flight on day 3, is that considered outside of the airline's control? If so, none of these protections apply.

Frankly, the US needs to pass something comparable to EU261 or Canada's Air Passenger Protection Regulations. These are significantly more comprehensive than what any airline provides by-right today, including some protections when a delay or cancellation is outside of the airline's control, and the protections apply to all airlines within the respective jurisdictions (though Canada's do have lesser protections for small airlines.) These should ideally also apply to intercity rail and bus transportation, though opening that can of worms (particularly on the bus side) would be tricky.

The dashboard is nice, but it's laughable to me how this is anything other than proof of how weak our regulatory system is in America.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Frankly, the US needs to pass something comparable to EU261.

I support stronger protections for passengers but I think the way the EU punishes airlines when a delay is out of their control is absurd. If the airport screwed up make the airport authority pay the fine and if it's a weather delay how is the airline supposed to prevent that? If anything these fines make flying less safe by giving airlines a financial incentive to rush. Hold the airlines accountable for things they can actually control and not every random thing that might delay a flight.

The dashboard is nice, but it's laughable to me how this is anything other than proof of how weak our regulatory system is in America.

Our regulatory framework needs plenty of updating but out of hundreds of flights I've only been stranded once domestically, same as in Europe and Asia. US passenger facilities tend to be ugly, boring, and uncomfortable, but our operational infrastructure is robust. On forums with international visitors my complaints tend to be pretty minor compared to what people deal with in other countries.

 

[jebr]

I support stronger protections for passengers but I think the way the EU punishes airlines when a delay is out of their control is absurd. If the airport screwed up make the airport authority pay the fine and if it's a weather delay how is the airline supposed to prevent that? If anything these fines make flying less safe by giving airlines a financial incentive to rush. Hold the airlines accountable for things they can actually control and not every random thing that might delay a flight.

Canada's regulations may balance this out a bit better. Direct compensation for the delay only applies if it's an issue within the airlines control, not directly related to safety issues. For a safety-related issue, the airline still has to provide completion of the ticketed transportation and duty of care (including hotel, ground transport, and rebooking on a competitor if they cannot get a passenger home in a certain period of time) and for issues outside of the airline's control they have the requirement to complete the trip (including ticketing on a competitor after a certain period of time.) I'd like to see duty of care apply to issues outside of the airline's control personally (imo it's no different than Amtrak providing a room in Chicago during a missed connection due to freight train interference) but otherwise I think (from a casual reading of the regulations) it's a decent system that fairly balances customer needs and airline's costs.