Airlines generally provide you with a hotel room when they cancel your flight and you’re stuck overnight – if the cancellation is their fault, such as due to lack of crew or mechanical problems with the aircraft. Under pressure from the Department of Transportation, this has been written into Contracts of Carriage.

You may not like the room you get. They promise accommodations, but do not make promises about the quality of those accommodations. Frequently the hotels are quite bad.

@AmericanAir repeatedly delayed our flight until they finally pushed us to the next day. Then, THIS is the hotel they gave us a voucher to stay in. Do you honestly think this is okay? #americanairlines #airlines #Flights pic.twitter.com/PKws6RvwCa

— Laura Mzhickteno (@SimpliLaura) September 27, 2023

pic.twitter.com/FI6DFmdGtB

— Christopher Montgomery (@MontyTweets1212) July 6, 2023

While they’re supposed to give you the room. It doesn’t always work out that way, however.

• Sometimes the third party they’ve outsourced this to doesn’t have rooms available
  
• Sometimes the software fails in providing you a valid voucher to pay for the room
  
• Sometimes you’re told to go book the room yourself and get reimbursed, and then you have to deal with the airline bureaucracy.

One American Airlines passenger shared what happened when stuck overnight in The Bahamas.

They were scheduled to fly from North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas to Charlotte and on to Washington, D.C. The aircraft door wouldn’t close. It took four hours for a mechanic to show up at the airport. This is island time!

The problem was fixed quickly once they had a mechanic, but the crew – which had operated the inbound flight already and was turning straight around – timed out. They exceeded their maximum duty hours, and the flight was cancelled.

It was Saturday night in winter. It was spring break. That’s peak of peak of peak for Bahamas hotels. Some passengers were reportedly found accommodations but inventory ran out. So “they tell us to find our own hotels.”

• “The only hotel was $1300/night and required a taxi from the airport to the dock and then a water taxi. Repeat next day to get back to airport.”
  
• This really was all that was available – it’s where American Airlines sent their own crew, too.
  
• The passenger asked whether there was a limit to how much American would reimburse and was “told they didn’t think so.”

Their flight was rescheduled to depart at 8 a.m. the next day but “departed at 1:30 p.m.” Now they’re trying to get their $1,300…

American Airlines generally will not reimburse hotel rooms for customers. Here, though, they told the customer to book on their own rather than taking a reservation offered by their third party supplier.

The airline even warns in its contract of carriage that in a situation like this they may not reimburse at all because they did not give the passenger written authorization to pay their own room.

Delays caused by us
If the disruption is our fault or you’re diverted to another city, and we don’t board before 11:59 p.m. local time on your scheduled arrival day, we’ll arrange an overnight stay or cover the cost of an approved hotel, if available. We don’t guarantee reimbursement for hotel expenses if you book directly without written authorization from American Airlines.

Another reader shares a story this week about trying to get money back from American Airlines when forced to pay their own room.

• A group of 29 passengers flew through Miami and misconnected when their inbound flight was delayed (American’s fault)
  
• American kept them in Miami for two days and committed to hotel
  
• The hotel voucher American provided covered the first night and $12 in meals
  
• The next day everyone went back to the airport for a new voucher. They were told “the voucher was good for both nights.” So they went back to the hotel, where they were told that unless they paid for the room themselves they couldn’t stay.
  
• They paid the second night and are trying to get reimbursed.

They forwarded American’s response to me: an offer of a single $25 travel credit in lieu of reimbursing rooms for 29 people. That’s $0.86 per person.

When an airline tells you they will reimburse you for coming out of pocket for your own hotel night, get that in writing and specify the amount. Print documentation of what rooms cost (consider showing rates from multiple online booking sites). That won’t make it easy, but might help.

And of course if you booked your ticket using a card that includes trip delay coverage, you’ll usually get up to $500 in expenses on a qualifying delay.