What hasn’t already been said about the airline meltdown this week, which many have said reminded them of the Southwest meltdown last December? And somehow, we are suspicious that we haven’t seen the last of airline meltdowns this year. That given a myriad of circumstances that have Hawaii travelers’ nerves on edge, including ours.
$300 (30,000 bonus points) for those caught in the fracas.
We heard from many of you who either were unable to get to Hawaii this week or who were unable to get home. We saw many flights to and from Hawaii on United Airlines were canceled this week. The route we’re about to travel between Denver and Lihue was canceled on multiple days, which definitely caught our attention personally.
And, of course, it made the global news and social media too. But today, United raised the bar on credit for disturbances with their latest offer. If you were impacted this week, you might have already received an email from United with an apology and 30,000 MileagePlus bonus miles per passenger. That means a family of four would receive 120,000 miles. The problem is that if you’ve spent two or more days trying to reach your destination, the extra costs would be many times more.
Here’s where our thoughts again go to dreaded trip insurance.
We hate buying trip insurance, and you may too. But, we love when we need it, and we have it. The costs of trip insurance have gone up substantially, and we now are averaging 15% of the covered amount or more. On the other hand, with exposure like this week with United or previously with Southwest, it isn’t any wonder why it is getting more costly.
Southwest previously gave 25,000 miles to those impacted by their meltdown.
So this offer from United may set the bar higher for what we can expect from airlines when we are seriously inconvenienced. But is that enough? We’d say that it is definitely not.
A model of how it works on flights to and from the UK and Europe is fascinating.
We were on a flight bound from Gatwick to JFK a few years ago. Due to unknown reasons, the flight was delayed some four hours. What happened next was a big surprise. We received a credit card refund from the airline for $600/passenger—that is courtesy of a UK rule that provides up to $600 for delays over three hours, depending on the distance.
The EU adopted a similar ruling on flights both from the US to Europe and in the other directions that provide up to 600 euros for long-distance flights delayed three hours or more.
