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[Volcano] Should the Airlines Pay Compensation?
Hamurabi
MiamiRegistered User regular
MiamiRegistered User regular
As some of you may have heard, there's a volcano with a funny name blowing ash all over Europe. The airline industry is supposed to be losing $200 million ever day flights are restricted, though about half of scheduled European flights seem to have the all-clear at this point.
The question that's come up now, though, is whether the airlines whose flights were canceled are under legal obligation to compensate their passengers. This is the relevant EU regulation:
Basically: do you think the airlines should compensate their customers for hardships stemming from this travel disruption?
Personally, I come down on the side of the airline industry (which is news even to me) just based on the utterly unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of the event. If an airline can't get you from Point A to B because of crowded runways, or overbooking, or whatever it may be... I feel the consumer is more than entitled to their due compensation; when the cause of inconvenience is a volcano, frankly I think there must be some kind of consideration for extenuating circumstances. I mean really, where is there a failing on the airlines' part?
The question that's come up now, though, is whether the airlines whose flights were canceled are under legal obligation to compensate their passengers. This is the relevant EU regulation:
Wikipedia wrote:Regulation 261/2004 of the European Parliament and of the European Council of 11 February 2004 established common rules on compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of
* denied boarding,
* cancellation
* long delay of flights
It repealed Regulation (EEC) No 295/91, and went into effect on 18 February 2005. It sets out the entitlements of air passengers when a flight that they intend to travel on is delayed or cancelled, or when they are denied boarding to such a flight due to overbooking, or when the airline is unable to accommodate them in the class they had booked.
Basically: do you think the airlines should compensate their customers for hardships stemming from this travel disruption?
Personally, I come down on the side of the airline industry (which is news even to me) just based on the utterly unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of the event. If an airline can't get you from Point A to B because of crowded runways, or overbooking, or whatever it may be... I feel the consumer is more than entitled to their due compensation; when the cause of inconvenience is a volcano, frankly I think there must be some kind of consideration for extenuating circumstances. I mean really, where is there a failing on the airlines' part?
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The way that reg is written though, it doesn't seem to specifically exclude acts of nature.
This one might have to play out in court, I dunno.
Sucks for the passengers, though.
That service was not rendered. Therefore the passengers are due a refund.
They should certainly get refunded their ticket price back. Anything more, they should take it up with the volcano. Or with the regulatory bodies that are grounding the flights (and sign a liability waiver should their jet get clogged with ash and take a header into a mountain).
You're forgetting that Europe is godless.
Besides, "act of god" is the biggest bullshit excuse I've ever heard, and I'm pretty sure that it's no longer accepted in even American law.
They should be refunded their ticket prices in full with any taxes and fees... or, at the very least, credited towards another flight of their choice in the future.
The airlines are not responsible for compensation above and beyond ticket prices.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Also I hope the volcano stops soon. Because otherwise I'll probably be one of the people not getting my thousand dollars back.
Well, refunds are typically reserved for situations where the passenger doesn't get the service due to a fuck-up of the airline. So, from both a moral and legal standpoint, that makes sense.
Refunding tickets due to a volcano explosion though? That's not the airline's fault. Unless there is a particular clause in their terms of service that covers natural disasters, they aren't obligated to pay.
Would it be nice if they did? Sure. I wouldn't count on it though.
You would be wrong in this case. The only time that airlines are required to compensate a flyer, at least in the USA, is if the flyer is bumped involuntarily. If a flight is canceled you are entitled to be rebooked on a later flight and maybe even a refund but you are not entitled to additional compensation. European rules are likely different and may give you more protection but you get very little protection in the USA.
Check out the Aviation Consumer Protection and Enforcement website for further details.
That's patently ridiculous if you think about it for more than 5 seconds.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
To the end-consumer there's no difference in not flying because of a volcano, and not flying because all the pilots are drunk.
Waiter: "Sorry, our oven caught on fire, so we can't fix you dinner. The total will be $40 please."
Plumber: "Sorry, I can't fix your toilet because a tree fell on my car. I'll be sending you a bill for $150."
Amazon: "A pack of wild ferrets devoured your textbooks. Thanks for your $300."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
To the end-consumer, no. But it matters from the perspective of whether the airlines are obligated to refund.
This is what business insurance is for. Despite what the ass-backwards laws might be, any moral schema that excuses the airlines from refunding ticket prices is completely daft.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
None of those are natural disasters, Feral.
Surely you can tell the difference between a volcano explosion and ferrets attacking your textbooks? Or do I have to spell it out for you and say that there are reasonable precautions that Amazon can take to prevent wild animals from destroying shipments, whereas there are no precautions airlines can take against volcano explosions?
Which they clearly should. Because otherwise I will have paid them just for amusement. Companies aren't charities.
That doesn't matter for any other industry. It's a complete red herring.
And, technically, the tree-plumber example is an "act of God."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I was under the impression that, in the event that your flight was canceled for any reason airlines would offer you a ticket for another flight. Generally this means same day, same destination, because your plane's engine exploded or something, but are they treating "we have no flights going anywhere for a week" differently here and just saying, "sorry, you paid already, fuck off"?
As far as I'm aware a plane ticket is less a purchased item and more a contract for service. If, through no fault of your own, you fail to receive the service then you're entitled to a refund. Unless your purchase contract stated otherwise (I've seen plane tickets where a clause in the purchase was 'this ticket is non-refundable, non-transferable, and cannot be exchanged for another ticket', but it's not all of them).
Agreed.
It's neither a failing on the part of the airline or the consumer, but as far as I'm concerned the consumer paid for something that the airline could not deliver. The reason doesn't matter. The airline should issue a refund. It would be nice if "God" refunded the money to the airline, but I think the due course here would be for the airline to contact God after refunding the money to the consumers that did not receive the service they paid for.
To me, this is the "common sense" answer. Also, an appeal to common sense is nonsense. There's no such thing.
So would wild ferrets, technically.
I thought so, but I wasn't sure.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Why?
The way purchasing works is this:
I purchase something and I receive the item or service I purchased. If I don't, then the contract is null and void and I should get a refund.
Why are you complicating this and attributing extra rights to the airline? Sucks for them that they can't fly through ash or whatever, but that's not the customer's fault.
... you should get a refund on the ticket price because no planes are flying. It's not like the airline could have sold your seat to another passenger. That hotel room you reserved in Paris, though, they get to keep the fee because they held the room for you and they might have trouble filling it.
It's not like the airline spent the money from the tickets. I mean, via the intricate nature of major corporate finance it's not this straight forward, but your (and the other passengers') ticket price is meant to cover the cost of the flight plus the airline's margin of profit. The flight didn't explode in mid-air or something, the plane is just sitting there on the ground not using jet fuel or being staffed by pilots and flight attendants (who, in the latter case, we learned in the Ask a Flight Attendant thread, are only paid if they're actually flying). Theoretically the money people paid for those flights hasn't gone anywhere. The thing they bought just didn't exist, ever, so they get the money back. Like if you'd pre-ordered Duke Nukem Forever.
I don't care about God in particular. That is an actual red herring.
As for refunds, I will expect a refund in situations where the company cannot provide a service due to reasonably common circumstances against which they should be insured. Tree falling on the plumber's truck can be covered by accident insurance I believe, and I will expect the plumber to have it if the city has really windy weather which regularly topples trees. If they don't, that's their problem because they acted against common sense by not insuring themselves against it, and I will expect a refund.
A volcano in god damn Iceland exploding is, on the other hand, is an extremely unlikely scenario. As such I don't hold it against airline companies for not being insured against it, and as such I won't hold them at fault.
Bottom line: I will expect a refund if and only if the service is not provided due to a fault of the company, such as in situations where they failed to do so because they are total idiots, or they failed to insure against reasonably common circumstances.
I understand that that's probably just me, though.
It probably is just you.
I expect a refund whenever I do not receive the service or item I purchased. That is a consumer's right.
And can you please reasonably respond to the suggestion that the airline has not absorbed ANY COST and so keeping a customer's money is a completely absurd and morally defunct concept? Essentially, they have made pure profit because of a volcano.
They might not be making any new money, but so what? That's not the consumer's fault, and it's not the consumer's obligation to keep the airlines economically afloat in times of hardship or whatever.
How can you argue that that is acceptable?
This is why they have insurance. Because they do actually owe the customers a refund for services not rendered.
Though, I wonder if they had a rainy day fund stashed away for volcano insurance.
In before the...
Family Guy reference
And for the record, no one has "profited" from this thing. The airlines don't just pay expenses when planes are in the air -- they have employees, materials, etc. to pay for 24/7 regardless of whether or not birds are in the air.
I was confident before making this thread that the airlines didn't owe anyone a refund, but I see now that yeah, they really should just give passengers their ticket price or try to arrange for new flights. Still don't feel they're on the hook for lodging or any other costs customers might've incurred because of the delays, though.
When a cargo train derailed and a package I ordered from New Egg was destroyed, UPS offered to pay for the package even though they had nothing to do with the train crash.
It's good fucking business, and common sense: someone pays for something, they get it or you don't accept their payment. Charge the equivilent of an electronic store's "restocking fee" if you must, but keeping all of it is absurd.
I doubt they're actually making a profit. If it had been a one or two day shut-down and they'd issued no refunds then yeah, it probably would be a net profit for them, but as long as the shut down is running the loss of new sales day-to-day is probably offsetting the extra profit made from un-refunded tickets on flights that didn't fly. But I also think that if their profit margin is so slim that they can't cover upkeep costs on grounded planes for a week while, at least, offering free delayed flight passes then they are, to quote the lolcats, doin it rong.
Expecting your money back for non received services isn't putting them at fault. It's getting your money back for services you never received and they never made. As was pointed out, simply because it was a particularly unlikely event doesn't somehow mean they get free money from people they never served.
As for the act of god part: Eyjafjallajokul has erupted before and was a active volcano, therefore the probability of it doing so again was possible. This makes it something that airlines could technicaly have planed for even if it was a rare event. Thats of course only what my search of wikipedia reveals.
EU airlines are required by EU rules to compensate passengers in any way short of carrying themselves to the airport. If you are stranded in your tourist location (point
Just a heads up for discussion.
P.S Btw, I have been waiting for someone to make this thread. Nothing sucks more than getting a VERY anticipated package stranded in the US due to some dumb cloud.
I still think it comes down to consumers paying airlines in advance for a service which, through no fault of the consumers', was not offered. If I bought tickets to a canceled show, or pre-ordered a product that was canceled, or pre-paid for a room in a hotel that became unavailable, I would equally expect to be reimbursed my pre-purchase price. Whether the show was canceled because of a hurricane or because the band members were arrested shouldn't matter. I bought a contract for a service and, unless that contract contains an 'acts of god' clause, if the service is not rendered I should get my money back.
If the airline can make a case that the government shutdown was unnecessary and they could have done business safely under the conditions then they would, I'd assume, have grounds to sue the government(s) for reimbursement of returned ticket sales.
(Note that I am personally unaffected by the volcano, so 'I' here is a generic 'I'. Though my wife is scheduled to fly to Italy in Saturday, so we'll see how that goes)
They making a profit off of those tickets, those people who got stiffed by them aren't responsible for ALL of the business they lose, the government(s) is(are) and they'll most likely attempt to get money from them.
When the FDA did a recall on bananas, wal-mart refunded people for bananas they bought in addition to having to throw all the current ones out - the fact that they had absolutely nothing to do with the recall isn't important