If you look at the news today, you’ll see travel-related headlines that cover severe storms in the Midwestern United States, and a forecast of 3.5 million people expected to fly over Memorial Day weekend (that’s a 9% increase over 2019).
Personally, I’m staying home – if everybody else is traveling, that’s definitely a time I DON’T want to travel.
But for those of you who are going out of town, heads up that the U.S. Department of Transportation has recently updated its Airline Customer Service Dashboard to show when and how airlines will help passengers when faced with certain dilemmas while flying.
How the dashboard started
The Dashboard was introduced in mid-late 2022 and, at the time, went over 5 typical flying “nightmares” (most evolving around cancelled or severely delayed flights) and what each of the 10 major airlines would (or, more often, wouldn’t) do to compensate and/or accommodate passengers.
Addition: families flying together
In March, 2023, the DOT updated the Dashboard to include which airlines were, essentially, making it their business to ensure that families with young children would sit next to each other without having to pay for the “not a privilege.” Spoilers: six months after this Dashboard was released, the list of airlines who had committed to this was paltry. A year later? Read ’em and weep.
New updates
When the Dashboard was first introduced, it included 5 parameters:
- Rebook passengers on same airline at no additional cost
- Reboot passenger on another airline at no additional cost
- Meal or meal cash/voucher when cancellation results in passenger waiting for 3 hours or more for new flight
- Complimentary hotel accommodations for any passenger affected by an overnight cancellation
- Complimentary ground transportation to and fron hotel for any passenger affected by an overnight cancellation
According to the DOT, the most recent updates to the Dashboard were made on May 6th. The new stuff since the dashboard went live include:
- Cash compensation when a cancellation results in passenger waiting for 3 hours or more from the scheduled departure time
- Credit/travel voucher when cancellation results in passenger waiting for 3 hours or more from the scheduled departure time
- Frequent flyer miles when cancellation results in passenger waiting for 3 hours or more from the scheduled departure time
Spoilers: the airlines committed to these three “newer” commitments is even sadder than those who committed to the original five. Click here to see the list.
Feature Photo: Bruno Sanchez-Andrade Nuño / flickr / CC BY 2.0
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