The DOT Dashboard..."Is a Big Deal"
Excerpts from The New York Times Article
On Thursday, the Department of Transportation unveiled its most concrete endeavor yet to fix air travel: an online dashboard featuring 10 U.S. airlines with green check marks next to the services they offer when flights are delayed or canceled for reasons within their control. The website, which is reminiscent of the sort of brand comparison charts offered up by Consumer Reports magazine, reveals, for example, that JetBlue and Hawaiian Airlines will, in some circumstances, rebook passengers on another airline when a flight is canceled, but that Southwest and Alaska will not.
Paul Hudson, President of Flyersrights.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to consumer rights, said that over the past several decades, airlines typically only did this for “A-list travelers” flying on one of the legacy carriers. In 2016, Mr. Hudson’s group unsuccessfully petitioned the Department of Transportation to formalize the “reciprocity rule,” which has been voluntary since 1978.
“This is a big deal,” he said of the fact that major carriers are now committing to book passengers on other airlines, along with guaranteeing hotel and meal vouchers, other areas where they often let passengers down. Given that airlines will only rebook on a different airline if they can’t provide a reasonable alternative on their own — and sometimes their definition of reasonable, Mr. Hudson said, is far from reasonable — he did wonder how often it would happen.
