What Are Your Rights When You’re Involuntarily Bumped?

You get to the airport early, your luggage is checked, you have your boarding pass in hand—and you find out that your flight is overbooked. While airlines can usually find passengers willing to take a different flight in exchange for compensation, it’s the unfortunate truth that the act of involuntarily bumping passengers is pretty commonplace. Most

Travelers to DOT: No Inflight Calls, Please!

To all appearances, the hot-button issue of inflight phone calls has been settled. If you’ve flown on a U.S. carrier lately, you’ve almost certainly heard no one yakking on a cellphone or other mobile device while airborne, and you might well assume that there’s an outright ban on inflight calling. Indeed, the Association of Flight

United ‘Re-Accommodates’ a Passenger and the Internet Explodes

The media—social media, asocial media, major media, marginal media, all media—has been positively aflame for the past 24 hours with reporting and editorializing on United Airlines’ latest mishandling of a passenger confrontation. The facts of the case are not in dispute. United’s Sunday-night flight UA3411 between Chicago and Louisville was full—100 percent full—and all passengers

Judge: Airline Price-Fixing Lawsuit Can Proceed

If you’re among the many air travelers who believe that the airlines have conspired to keep airfares high by restraining capacity growth, you’re about to have that suspicion reality-checked in a court of law. Late last week, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., overruled objections by the airlines and gave the go-ahead to a class-action

American Airlines Fined $1.6 Million for Tarmac Delays

USA Today reports that American has been fined $1.6 million for tarmac delays that occurred during 2013-2015. Specifically, “the incidents included 20 flights at Charlotte on Feb. 16, 2013; six flights at Dallas/Fort Worth on Feb. 27, 2015; and one flight at Shreveport, La., on Oct. 22, 2015.” In all cases, planes were stuck on the tarmac

These Potential FAA Changes Could Help (and Hurt) Travelers

The newest FAA reauthorization bills in the House and the Senate include several proposals that could improve air travel for consumers, as well as two terrible ideas and one that could be a blockbuster for travelers fed up with unreasonable airline fees. House and Senate Agreement Committees from both houses of Congress generally agree on

Congress Warns Airlines: Do Better, or Else

In his opening remarks before yesterday’s House Transportation Committee “Oversight of U.S. Airline Customer Service” hearing, committee chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) referred to two recent incidents: United’s forcible removal of a passenger on flight UA3411 , and an American Airlines flight attendant’s tussle with a passenger over her child’s stroller. While those high-profile events may

Frontier Responds to Weather “Meltdown” in Denver: Err, Sorry!

Winter weather caused widespread delays across the western half of the country this past weekend, but Denver, it seems, got the worst of it (and not just from the Patriots). According to USA Today , more than 5,000 flights have been canceled and nearly 20,000 delayed since Thursday. But the scene at Denver, particularly for Frontier Airlines