American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines , JetBlue and Southwest posted revised customer service policies last week.
The changes primarily affected the points at which passengers are entitled to receive food and hotel vouchers if the flight is canceled or delayed.
United now offers food vouchers for flights delayed by more than three hours, while the previous threshold was four hours. This information is published on the Internet.
The airline also outlined its policy of providing hotel vouchers for unforeseen overnight stays due to a flight cancellation. If partner hotels are not available, the airline guarantees a refund of up to $200 per night upon presentation of a ticket by the passenger to Customer Service.
Delta Air Lines reported that it is ready to provide “full and timely refunds to passengers in appropriate situations.” . Since the beginning of 2020, Delta has returned more than $6 billion to customers, of which 20 percent is due in 2022. In addition, the carrier has hired 20,000 new employees since the beginning of 2021.
American Airlineswill provide passengers with hotel accommodation in the event of a flight cancellation, unless the latter was due to “external” reasons; factors such as bad weather. The airline also promises to cover the cost of transfers to and from the hotel.
Southwest will issue vouchers to passengers if the cancellation was the fault of the airline, but will not do this automatically, but after each traveler's request .
The US Department of Transportation has promised to implement “online monitoring” that will allow passengers to monitor their rights as consumers and compare them with information on each airline.
U.S. carriers have canceled more than 45,000 flights from the beginning of June. Thirty-eight state attorneys general have already sent a letter to Congress asking for more power to take legal action against airlines that they say have “systematically failed to meet their customer obligations.”