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Cancellation crunch grounds fliers

Ed Perkins, Tribune Media Services

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, May 15, 2008

"Last November, I booked a flight for my kids and me to fly to a wedding over Memorial Day Weekend," e-mailed a reader. "But a few weeks before we were scheduled to leave, the airline canceled our nonstop flight and rebooked us on connecting flights. Instead of just two hours, the trip will now take five. If I had known about the cancellation in November, I could have booked a good itinerary on another airline. Now, however, fares are up, many holiday weekend flights are full, and I couldn't possibly afford to buy new tickets. What can I do?"

Within a few days I heard the same story from another traveler - different dates, routes and airline, but the same result. Sad to say, I expect you'll be seeing a lot more of this. Even sadder to say, there isn't much you can do about it.

What's happening is that these travelers - and many others - have fallen victim to airline "downsizing." One of the ways airlines are trying to compensate for high fuel costs is to cut out their least profitable flights. In many cases, that means canceling nonstop flights on thin routes that are only marginally profitable. Instead, they'll route you on connecting flights through one of their hubs. That means adding a minimum of two hours to your total travel time - often much more - and increasing your chances for a missed connection or misrouted baggage.



When an airline cancels a flight on which you hold a confirmed reservation, that line usually offers you a choice of an alternate itinerary at no extra fare or a full refund. Unfortunately, neither remedy satisfies the concept of "making you whole" in tort law:

-- The substitute itinerary the airline books for you generally ranges from inconvenient to unacceptable. At best, your new departure or arrival times may well require you to get up earlier than you prefer or stay up later - maybe both, if the airline switches you from a nonstop to connecting flights. At worst, the new itinerary may get you to your destination too late for the main purpose of your trip or make you leave too early.

-- A full refund - especially if it's only a few weeks before your planned trip - may be next to worthless. As in my reader's example, you may well have booked early to assure not only a good itinerary but also a good fare. When you try to rebook, however, you find much higher fares and fewer available seats. Refusing the airline's substitute itinerary, no matter how lousy, would impose an unacceptable financial penalty.

Neither the Department of Transportation requirement for overbooking compensation nor any other rule applies to this problem. To me, this sort of thing is and will remain a more significant consumer issue than the extra-long ramp delays that have, so far, been the focus of "consumer rights" proposals. Such cancellations will occur much more frequently than long ramp delays and affect far more travelers.

Given that consumers have no government protections in this case, what can you do? If you already have a ticket:

-- Unless the substitute itinerary is really bad, you might as well accept it.

-- But if the substitute itinerary doesn't work, check your airline's remaining schedules, identify an itinerary that would work for you, and ask the airline to switch you. Presumably, the airline would be willing to do this if seats are available on your preferred flights.

-- You could ask the original airline to transfer you to another line, but the chances aren't very good.

-- You could also accept a refund, buy a ticket on another line, and sue the original line for the difference in small claims court - again, far from a surefire remedy.

For future trips, consider booking on an airline that operates mainly a "point-to-point" system - where the line is unlikely to fob you off on a connecting flight. The main point-to-point lines are JetBlue and Southwest.

But figure that since downsizing is here to stay, flight cancellations are here to stay. Adjust your planning accordingly.

