Tag Archives for contract of carriage.
American Airlines quietly rewrote its Contract of Carriage in two places that matter: wheelchair damage claims now have a 24-hour clock on domestic trips, and downgrades to coach now come with a fixed 40% refund on the affected segment. That turns a mishandled mobility device into a paperwork race, and can make overselling premium cabins more profitable.
United Airlines quietly changed its rules to prohibit passengers from buying multiple tickets to lower costs, banned inflight video calls, and explicitly added rules against viewing “offensive” content—changes that affect nearly every traveler but haven’t been publicly announced.
United Airlines has added language to its Contract of Carriage to say that they will not honor mistake fares, but that if you book one and incur non-refundable costs as a result they will reimburse those costs.
The airline also now says that booking flights likely to be delayed, and then complaining about the delays for compensation, is grounds to be banned from the MileagePlus frequent flyer program.
At the start of the month American Airlines updated its rules to make clear that they would not reimburse hotel stays you book yourself when your flights are severely delayed or cancelled (you have to wait for them to give you a hotel room if you want them to cover it) and to say they don’t have any obligation to get you to your destination – they can just refund your ticket if they prefer.
Now they’re updating their rules again to further limit your right to a refund in the event of delays of over 4 hours.
American Airlines has updated its Contract of Carriage, the adhesion contract you agree to when buying a ticket, to detail new reasons you might be banned from flying the airline based on your behavior.
One of these new reasons is downright metaphysical.
There’s debate over whether changes to the American Airlines Contract of Carriage (the adhesion contract you’re agreeing to when you buy a ticket) matter or not. The airline says they’re not obligated to put you on another airline when they cancel your flight, and won’t reimburse your hotel if you submit a receipt unless they’re legally required to do so.
It’s this system of providing hotel stays I want to touch on for a moment. The airline has been saying that the only way they will cover your hotel is if they provide you with a voucher.
American’s argument boils down to DOT rules were never updated for the information age so they’re permitted to keep their rules off the website where customers would normally expect to find them. As American puts it, “[t]he tariff public inspection requirements were first adopted by the Civil
Aeronautics Board (“CAB”) in 1965, well before the development of the World Wide Web.”
In other words, American says they haven’t broken any rules because the rules themselves are broken.
A formal Department of Transportation complaint has been filed (.pdf) against American Airlines over the removal of their general tariff from their website in June.
American used to have its full ‘terms and conditions’ available online. They’ve removed the legalese entirely from their website and now offer a plain language FAQ-style conditions of carriage page. However there’s still a general tariff, and customers effectively agree to it when they buy a ticket. They just can’t see it or read it.
They can deny you boarding if they merely suspect you have coronavirus, or if they want you to obtain a test showing you do not have the virus and you decline. What will lead them to suspect someone may have the ‘rona? It could be temperature checks. It could be data shared via an app or the government in the future. It could be information about known exposures, including on a prior flight.
Consider this part of the new normal that we’re figuring out – we do not know what is going to happen in practice but United is updating its rules to allow them to take action based on what sort of testing or screening occurs.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
