I was traveling for work this week. At the end of the week I had plans to meet my family for the weekend – my wife had a trip idea and suggested flying out with our kids and I’d meet them all there.
They were flying Alaska Airlines. As I boarded my flight from the Northeast, they were headed to the airport – and I got an email from Alaska:
We’re sorry about the change to your travel plans. We’d like to help by providing complimentary meal vouchers to everyone in your reservation.
Ok, that was weird – their flight still showed on-time. The inbound aircraft was even slated to arrive in Austin 15 minutes early. So it didn’t look like a delay that triggered this. There were (2) seats on the reservation plus a lap infant and that generated a $16 per person credit including the lap infant, so $48.
The e-mail didn’t say anything about why they were getting the vouchers other than a “change to your travel plans.” I guessed (correctly, it would turn out) that the flight wasn’t going to be catered out of Austin. But with a mid-afternoon departure, they’d already had lunch and my wife packs snacks so it wasn’t a big deal.
They were upgraded and had pre-ordered meals anyway, just in case. And Alaska’s food is actually pretty good, both in first class and their buy on board items in back. I understand that a decade ago their senior leadership team meetings were held over lunch – and they ate the onboard catering. They were taking the idea of ‘eating your own dog food’ (actually using your product) seriously.
Still, my family wasn’t going to spend $50 at the airport. The voucher had to be used by the next day. So I pulled out my phone and added $45 to my Starbucks card as the easiest way to use most of the money. After all, what most airlines do is give out prepaid cards that are restricted by merchant category and Starbucks qualifies.
• One-time use only.
• Not valid for alcoholic beverages.
• Not valid for meals onboard your flight.
I like the proactive offer of meal vouchers! United is good about this as well. I also like that this is $16, not $12 like at American Airlines. There’s not much you can buy at the airport after tax for $12. And they even counted my one year old son in offering the provision, even though his domestic travel as a lap infant is free!
A lot of these meal vouchers go to waste, though, and they do not have to because there are easy ways to spend these – by storing the value for later.
You know what’d be even better than $45 of random credit? $200-600 cash. We need an EU261, or Canada APPR, style air passenger rights legislation in the USA, so that we get compensation for significant delays and cancellations caused by the airlines. It doesn’t bankrupt those businesses, and it doesn’t raise airfares either (see Ryanair in Europe which offers $50 fares on average.) No, travel insurance isn’t enough; those policies are restrictive, often weaseling you out of your claims. Yeah, this’d probably take Congress to act, so keep this in mind once the adults are back in-charge. We deserve better.
If I was CEO of a carrier, eating the company’s in-flight meals at meetings would be mandatory.
I had this happen about 18 months ago from United, and somehow I ended up with $60 of vouchers, double what I was supposed to get. I used one at the airport Subway to actually eat (it was Denver – no PP lounges, grrr), and then loaded the rest to Starbucks. I mostly did it because of the weird wording about how it can be used – it sounded like you couldn’t use it as $15 towards a larger amount, which makes no sense but I wasn’t in the mood to fiddle around with stupid stuff. But I had just enough bandwidth to add to my Starbucks balance. While I know some other restaurant apps let you load a balance, Starbucks makes it pretty easy. I don’t have a big Starbucks habit, so this lasted me a couple of months 🙂
@Greggb57 — I like your style. Man of the people. I’d also say, executives ride back of bus, middle, limited recline, next to lavatories, basic economy, limited baggage, board last. Live the product. Breathe the service. Be the airline.
I’ve never tried to load a voucher onto an fast food app. How does that work? Is Starbucks the only one where it does?
@1990 – Completely correct. We could pretty much cut and paste EC261 as long as we added in a penalty clause where if an airline tries to stiff you and loses in court then they pay triple plus reasonable legal fees. That would make it so that airlines would only deny claims that are invalid.
@Christian — Thank you. I greatly appreciate that addendum.
Generally, such regulations create good incentives for airlines to maintain schedules, lest they face those financial penalties, and therefore, this leads to greater efficiency and reliability all-around, making happier customers as well. It’s a net win for everyone.
But, because we are so accustomed to corporate propaganda and regulatory capture, the lobbyists for those airlines would vehemently oppose this. Sad.
While I strongly applaud your ingenuity Gary, I shudder to imagine using using all that money on Charbucks!
Don’t know about AUS, but $16 not nearly enough to get a proper meal at SFO. Last time we got these (from AC, I think paper so couldn’t load them anywhere), we ended up buying a couple of snacks. Really, that’s all they covered.
@ Gary — Works on Chick-fil-A and Panera apps, too. I’m sure there are many others.
Flying AA out of PHL, after a five hour delay, (crew timeout and no replacement crews available) resulting in a canceled flight, sleeping on the PHL airport floor because AA didn’t want to issue hotel vouchers at 1:30 A.M., resulting in two days of flight delays at PHL American Airlines would only issue a $12 meal voucher if you requested it. I loaded this AA meal voucher to my Panera app.
Thank you for this.
I got one from Delta on Monday: $12 when my flight was delayed by three hours even though I found a seat on the next flight out, an hour later.
@Katie, you can use it for a transaction for a higher amount, the cashier will have to first run it with the voucher for the exact amount and then collect the rest from you on a different payment method. Most POS systems should be able to handle it.
I ended up getting two slices of pizza when I landed in Atlanta even though I didn’t quite want to eat at the restaurant but didn’t want it to expire.
If I get them and don’t need to use them because of there’s an American AC if I see a family I just hand them to the family, otherwise, I buy bottled water with them. That being said AA is very stingy with food vouchers.
@Ken A — While an extra $200-600 in your pocket might not have resolved that incident, would it have been better than nothing? Asking for friends of air passenger rights legislation…
If you want the EU261 rules, get ready for fares to double.
@Billy Shears fares didn’t double in EU did they?
A few years ago, I took the voucher to my local pub (which is coded restaurant for CC purposes). The bartender entered the details from the voucher. DL paid for my beers that night.
@Billy:
“If you want the EU261 rules, get ready for fares to double.”
I’m calling b.s. on that. I live in EU and have used EU 261 a couple of times. And I know they haven’t gone up. In fact, the airlines are trying to get renumeration reduced.
And if you want to get $12 voucher when the U.S. airlines screw you, why don’t you care?
I’ll leave you with food for thought, courtesy of a former member of UK Parliament. In Europe the members of governments are afraid of the people. In the U.S. the people are afraid of the government.
You can do this with excess foreign currency in SOME countries. Seems like I did it in Hong Kong. Just hand over your foreign currency & load it to an existing Starbucks card, or a new one. You get the bank interchange rate I believe.
Thank you, @Isaac M and @Alan Z for setting @Billy Shears, or should I say, Slick Willy, straight. If Ryanair can still run a profit on those dirt cheap fares in Europe, clearly EU261 doesn’t hurt consumers, rather, it helps passengers.
I don’t drink coffee and have never been inside a Starbucks. But, from what I’ve heard, the $45 is a small cup of that vial liquid.
1990 writes: “@Ken A — While an extra $200-600 in your pocket might not have resolved that incident, would it have been better than nothing?” Yes. Absolutely.
You economically illiterate leftists think that there will be no repercussions from an additional regulatory burden on airlines like EU261 are just delusional. Of course fares wouldn’t double, but there would be some increase, as well as plenty of unintended consequences. Certainly the lowest fares, including basic economy, would see the biggest increases, the risk isn’t worth the meager incremental income. Way to help out the most vulnerable. Other changes might include adding more padding to schedules, which seems innocuous, but that means assets aren’t utilized as efficiently, thus raising costs. Airlines are already a very low margin industry, so a cost increase will mean either higher prices, routes being cut, reduced expenses elsewhere, etc. EU 261 doesn’t have such a massive impact on prices partly because governments allow airlines to make it such a PITA to file a claim that most don’t bother, especially non EU citizens. Any regulation here would not be so easy to ignore due to our litigious ways.
How about go after tech companies and their fat margins instead? Oh I know why, because they are simpatico to your cause.
EU261 is just a cap on damages. Repeal the immunity airlines have from consumer protection laws so we can sue them.
Did anyone ever find a soapbox for 1990?
@Ken A gets it. Once again.
@Gene — Air passenger rights legislation is the ‘hill I’ll die on.’
@jack the ladd — Good point. EU261 is a carrot. Full liability is the stick! For instance, Montreal Convention Article 19 damages far exceeds EU261 compensation, but only applies for international flights. Anyone ever take a case to court over that?
@Mantis — Nice try, but many EU airlines are both profitable and offer dirt cheap fares, even with EU261.
Also, to my personal contrarian, I’ve noticed that your go-to retort on here is to just call anything you disagree with ‘leftist’ in hopes that others who are similarly indoctrinated will pile-on to whatever you’re saying. Dire Straits said it best: That ain’t workin’….
Mantis is correct. You can’t add an additional cost to airlines and expect nothing to change in fares. Waive you hands all you want. Simple economics.