Tuesday, June 28, 2011

dot require airlines pay bumped passengers more

DOT wants to make airlines pay passengers more when they're bumped off their flight, allow passengers to cancel reservations within 24 hours of booking with no penalty and require better disclosure of fees and surcharges.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced new airline passenger protections that will require airlines to provide consumers involuntarily bumped from flights with greater compensation

Today’s rule doubles the amount of money passengers are eligible to be compensated for in the event they are involuntarily bumped from an oversold flight. Currently, bumped passengers are entitled to cash compensation equal to the value of their tickets, up to $400, if the airline is able to get them to their destination within a short period of time (i.e., within 1 to 2 hours of their originally scheduled arrival time for domestic flights and 1 to 4 hours of their originally scheduled arrival time for international flights). Bumped passengers are currently entitled to double the price of their tickets, up to $800, if they are delayed for a lengthy period of time (i.e., over two hours after their originally scheduled arrival time for domestic flights and over 4 hours after their originally scheduled arrival time for international flights). Under the new rule, bumped passengers subject to short delays will receive compensation equal to double the price of their tickets up to $650, while those subject to longer delays would receive payments of four times the value of their tickets, up to $1,300. Inflation adjustments will be made to those compensation limits every two years.

No comments:

Post a Comment