As airlines cancel more flights, Blumenthal demands full cash refunds
As delays and pandemicrelated holiday week flight cancellations pile up across the country, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal is turning up the heat on the airline industry to give full refunds for flights that don’t take off.
The Connecticut Democrat said he is demanding that airlines “do the right thing” and expedite the return of money consumers spent on flights that were ultimately canceled, especially those that were nixed because of lack of crews. He said Monday that his office has already raised this issue in a letter sent to the airlines about 10 days ago, before thousands more flights were canceled nationwide over the long holiday weekend.
“We are going to be on their backs, making sure that consumers are provided what they deserve,” said Blumenthal, who was known for dogged consumer advocacy in his 20 years as state attorney general.
Officials of the airlines had not responded to his letter, he said. “It’s not beneficence. They owe it to consumers when they cancel flights.”
The track record of the airline industry in pandemic-related refunds has not been a good one, he said.
“Their past record provides scant assurance they’re going to do the right thing on their own,” Blumenthal said. “They failed to do it in the wake of the last lockdown when there were also numerous cancellations. They still owe money.”
Officials with the International Air Transport Association, a trade group representing commercial airlines, did not respond to a request by Hearst Connecticut Media to comment on Blumenthal’s remarks.
FlightAware, an aviation data site, reported that 2,649 flights were canceled Monday and Tuesday within the United States or departing from or arriving to U.S. cities. Just over 2 million people flew Monday, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
The travel industry came into December buoyed by passenger counts during the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Air travel for that period was at 90 percent of 2019 levels and industry officials hoped for more of the same during the Christmas holiday weekend.
But instead 12 percent of JetBlue flights on Sunday were canceled, along with 6 percent of Delta Air Lines flights and 5 percent of United Airlines flights, according to FlightAware.
Among domestic airlines on Tuesday, United had the largest number of flights canceled with 136, FlightAware reported. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had the largest number of flight cancellations at the orgination point of any place in the world with 119.
Ryan Tenney, a spokesman for the Connecticut Airport Authority, which operates Bradley International Airport, said 15 flights were canceled between last Wednesday and Monday of this week. That amounted to 2.5 percent of average total daily flights, except on Christmas, when it jumped to 5.5 percent.
Those figures appear to be lower than the national rate of cancellations in the same period. Tenney said the CAA had no way of telling how many of those cancellations were COVIDrelated.
“The percentage on Christmas was higher because we had a reduced flight schedule that day,” Tenney said.
Under normal circumstances, about 1 percent of an airline’s total flights get canceled for a variety of reasons that aren’t related to COVID, said Michael Boyd, president of a Colorado-based airline industry consulting firm, Boyd Group International.
“It’s very uneven from airport to airport and airline to airline,” he said. “The day before Christmas, United Airlines had about 2.6 percent of its flights cancelled, mostly because of COVID.”
Boyd said he agrees with Blumenthal when it comes to having the airlines expedite passenger refunds for flights that are canceled as a result of COVID.
“Let’s stop playing this game where the airlines offer vouchers or trips at some other time,” Boyd said. “If their crew cannot fly, the airline needs to offer a refund right away.”
In addition to using the bully pulpit to trying to get airlines to refund ticket prices for flight that are canceled beause of COVID, Blumenthal is one of five U.S. Senators from New England to introduce legislation that would require major airlines and thirdparty ticket sellers to offer full cash refunds for all canceled tickets during the coronavirus pandemic, regardless of whether the airline canceled an entire flight or the passenger canceled their individual ticket.
Blumenthal also took part in a December 15 Senate hearing on the “Oversight of the U.S. Airline Industry,” in which lawmakers questioned airline chief executive officers and other industry leaders from American, Delta, Southwest and United, about COVID protocols, airline performance and refunds.
Airline passengers are entitled to a ticket price refund under certain circumstances, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Those circumstances include:
A flight that an airline cancels, regardless of the reason, and the passenger chooses not to travel.
When an airline makes a significant schedule change or significantly delays a flight and the passenger chooses not to travel although DOT rules don’t specify just what makes a schedule change or travel delay significant.
Airlines were already facing a challenging situation prior to the latest COVID spike, Boyd said. During the early stages of the pandemic last year, the air carriers had to either furlough or layoff workers in order to remain afloat financially, according to Boyd.
“They are trying to get people back to work, but airlines don’t have the backup team they used to,” he said. “And they can’t staff on an everyday basis for enormous call volumes they are seeing right now.”
Blumenthal said the airlines “have to be responsible in encouraging people who have been infected to stay home and quarantine .... But whether they planned correctly, whether they are to blame for these cancellations, is a question for another day.”