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Rule 240: Read It, Know It, Use It
Airline Complaints On The Rise
While airlines were posting records for full planes, flight frequency, and most of all profits last year, 1998 was no banner year for the folks who are filling the seats and paying for the tickets.
Consumer discontent with the airlines is on the rise: according to the US Department of Transportation, consumers registered 722 complaints about airline service with the DOT in November, 1998. This is only a 10 percent decrease from the 805 complaints received in October, but 43 percent more than the 503 tallied in November 1997.
To be fair, it's not just airlines. General consumer complaints are up 36 percent this year, according to a worthy rant by Heather Chaplin in Salon. Chaplin estimates she saved $880 dollars in six months by checking bills and disputing them (i.e., complaining) at length.
That "at length" part is the "devil in the details"; satisfaction rarely comes easy in these situations. But it's one thing to spend an hour on the phone talking to customer service folks, it's another thing entirely to endure eight hours on the tarmac.
Northwest's New Year's Debacle
Witness the ordeal of a couple who were trapped with a plane full of passengers for eight hours on a tarmac, probably less than a mile from where they had parked their car in the Detroit airport. They're suing Northwest for "false imprisonment and breach of contract" after the recent New Year's weekend winter storms in the Midwest. Their lawyer compared the ordeal to being taken hostage.
Who's Responsible?
It all comes down to Rule 240, which airline rules guru Terry Trippler calls the most misunderstood rule in all airline-dom. For your edification, here's some info from The Travel Critic.
There are typically two recognized situations covered by Rule 240: a "Schedule Irregularity," and a "Force Majeure Event," some sort of French legalese for an "Act of God."
If the airline causes the problem (a "Schedule Irregularity"), such as with a mechanical problem, overbooking, or a botched reservation, they have to make good on it, within limits. However, the airlines have less liability for a "Force Majeure Event," including weather, civil commotion, wars, hostilities, strikes, labor-related disputes, government regulation, shortage of labor or fuel, or other unforeseen occurences.
Essentially, if there's a Force Majeure Event, the airline's only obligation is to refund your ticket. Airlines will typically do their best to get you to your destination, but they're not necessarily obligated to do so.
Your Options
When the airlines decide to treat us poorly, passengers can feel completely powerless. "I AM customer service," scowled an agent in Minneapolis when asked to speak to a customer service agent. It doesn't have to be so.
If the airline is at fault, you should expect them to try pretty hard to get you where your going; Trippler outlines specific acceptable solutions in the link above. If none of their solutions is acceptable to you, you're entitled to a full refund, even on non-refundable tickets.
In the event of a "Force Majeure Event," your best option is sometimes to check availability on other airlines, find out if they'll accept a ticket from your airline, get your airline to endorse the tickets, and fly on the other airline. This worked well for me in Minneapolis, and Northwest was cooperative once we figured out a solution. Try to use the 800 number in these cases.
Sadly, It Pays to Complain (Some of the Time, and Politely)
A few months ago, a traveler needed to fly on an open-ended ticket due to a family emergency. They were given flexible options for the return flight, but when they were ready to return home, an agent told them that there were no flights that day, or the next day, or the next -- they could get home four days later.
The traveler asked for a supervisor, and within ten minutes, they had a flight out the next day (albeit with a four-hour layover, entirely acceptable given the circumstances). A miracle!
These "miracles" happen all the time -- for better or worse, it pays to complain.
On the other hand, if there's a blizzard, the least productive action can be to stand at a ticket counter and howl about missing a meeting or connection. There's nothing anyone can do about it -- better to relax a bit.
And complaining can backfire -- in my own travels, a vengeful agent responded to my promise to file a complaint by filing her own report, which appeared on our reservation every time it was called up, following us through the rest of our itinerary.
We Feel Their Pain
By rule 240, Northwest owes the folks trapped on the tarmac nothing; the delays were attributable to a formidable winter storm, as well as a labor shortage. (A court may find differently -- I don't know, I'm not a lawyer.) I was in the same mess that the Koczara's were in, one state over in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In my case, it turned out that the storm was the least of my troubles.
Do The Airlines Feel Our Pain?
This month it was Northwest; next time it could be another airline. The Weather Channel seems to run regular features on stranded passengers during every storm.
There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people in line in Minneapolis, some of whom had spent three days schlepping from their hotel to the airport to counter to gate to phone to standby line to counter again, all day long until every option was exhausted, only to start over again the next morning. Calls to the Northwest 800 number prompted the following advice: go to the ticket counter. There was no way out.
It's no big leap to figure out why perfectly respectable travelers are prone to temper tantrums of late. Take it a notch further and you've got "air rage." Most of us would never be pushed to assault over a mere botched airline itinerary, but sometimes it feels like airlines are testing our breaking point.
The airlines' most common solution? Vouchers for travel on future flights. It's like offering a free future meal to someone who contracted food poisoning at a restaurant, or a free future stay to someone who found their hotel room was cockroach-infested.
Safety First, Always
There were NO airline fatalities in 1998, an almost astounding statistic. No one would advocate unloading passengers onto a runway during a snowstorm. But when you hold folks captive for eight hours mere steps from their cars, it's not a far cry from taking hostages. We need the airlines to do a much better job in these situations, not with getting airplanes off the ground, but with handling the fallout when they can't fly.
What You Can Do About It
Our Passenger Rights feature outlines your rights and procedures for filing complaints, but here are some tips for getting satisfaction while you're still at the airport.
- Ask for a name. When the service you receive can be traced back to a specific agent, you're much more likely to get good service. Ask for a name at the beginning of the conversation; if not then, get it when things get ugly. (This is miracle time, by the way.) Many companies don't permit agents to give out their last names; ask for an agent ID number.
- Watch your P's and Q's. Once you drop a four-letter word, you're in in troubled waters. Even mild, "cute" versions of the seven words you can't say on television won't cut it. Stick to "darn," "heck," or quaint locutions like "blasted."
- Stay calm. No matter what happens, if you go on the aggressive and lose your temper, your complaint can be compromised.
- But be persistent. If you won't take no for an answer, don't. You don't have to scream and yell; there are other ways to make your resolve understood. Be assertive, not abusive.
- Whenever possible, use the phone, or ask to see a supervisor. Haranguing the gate agent 15 minutes before a flight leaves, with 20 people behind you in line, doesn't work.
- Say thank you, hang up, and try again. You'll find that not all reservations agents are created equal. Often, if one agent can't help you, another often can.
- Know your rights. Bring a copy of Rule 240 with you. These are available on Onetravel.com's Rules of the Air, specific to each airline.
- Know your options. When you know a little bit about flight schedules, including other airlines flying the route, you're more likely to get where you're going faster.
- Ask about your options. Sometimes, when an agent says there is no availability, they mean that there are no seats left in your class of service. If coach is full, business and first class may have seats available. Ask for them. Similarly, ask if another airline is flying the route that can get you to your destination sooner.
- Don't worry about your bags. If the airline botches your reservation, they'll most likely get your bags to you eventually. Often, your bags will beat you to your destination. That said, it always pays to pack a change of clothes in your carry-on.
- File a complaint. Your best recourse may be to write the airline after the fact. The Department of Transportation's Aviation Consumer Protection Division fields complaints. For more info, see our feature on Complaints.
