When Air Travel Goes Wrong, Here Is How to Get Compensated

For the past four months, Mahesh Soori has been engaged in a slow and torturous battle with United Airlines for what he says is a well-deserved refund.

The refund stems from travel his parents endured last summer. The nightmare began halfway through a long journey from Omaha, Neb., to Colombo, Sri Lanka. During a stopover in Los Angeles — as they prepared to catch a flight to Singapore — a United Airlines agent informed them their tickets were invalid because their ticket information wasn't in the system, says Soori. Already halfway through their journey, the Sooris, who are both in their 70s, had no choice but to pay $2,860 for new tickets.

Soori soon took up the cause of getting that money back for his parents. (Because of their age, he feels he's better suited for the task.) He explained the situation in a letter to United and the airline responded that while the original reservations appeared to be in order, a computer glitch lead to the mishap. As "a gesture of goodwill," the company enclosed two $300 travel vouchers.

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Soori's frustration has grown to such an extent that he now has a blog that details every phone call and letter he's sent. He may be on the verge of success: On Wednesday, the airline offered to reimburse him for the unused portion of the original tickets if he mailed them back. Still, that may not make the tab whole — the airline has not yet offered to refund the money that the Sooris paid for the new ticket, which cost considerably more. (United Airlines says that after looking into the situation, the tickets were expired and therefore invalid. The ticketing agents in Omaha and Denver failed to notice that.)

The Sooris' case may be an extreme case of travel hell, but the numbers show that travel hassles are on the rise, thanks in part to more people flying and more checked bags because of new regulations from the Transportation Security Administration. In October 2006, airlines registered 7.51 lost-bag claims for each 1,000 passengers, up significantly from October 2002, when only 3.09 complaints were filed for each 1,000 passengers, according to Department of Transportation statistics. That's an average 20% increase in lost bags each year. Cancelled flights are also on the rise, up from 1% in October 2002 to 1.9% in October 2006. Same for late flights: 84.8% of flights landed on time in October 2001; in October 2006 that figure had dropped to 72.9%.

So what's a disgruntled passenger to do? Chances are, you can get some form of reimbursement for your lost time or money — but don't expect the airlines to volunteer it. You have to be proactive about researching your rights and an airline's policies, and then making sure the airline holds up its end of the deal. Even then, success is not guaranteed.

The Disgruntled Flier's Survival Kit           1. Always have a copy of the airline's Contract of Carriage with you, says SmarterTravel's Banas. Vague as they are, it helps to know your rights. 2. With delayed or canceled flights, try rebooking on the phone. 3. With lost bags, fill in all paperwork on the spot and ask the airline about its reimbursement or daily allowance policy. 4. If you're packing valuables in your luggage, consider buying additional luggage coverage from the airline. It will cost you a few extra bucks — the typical charge is $6 per $100 of value — but you'll get a special sticker on your bag and chances are, it will be handled more carefully, says BestFares.com's Parsons. At Delta, you can bump your insured value up to $3,000, for example, for a $30 fee. 5. Play your status. If you have elite or higher status on an airline's frequent-flier program, be sure to mention it to the gate agents. "You might get somewhat more ambitious customer service because that identifies you as a more profitable customer," says Tim Winship, editor of the web site FrequentFlier.com. 6. Complain. Once home, don't hesitate to write the airline about your negative experience. But be reasonable and specific with your demands, Hobica says. "If you were delayed for a couple of hours, you're not going to request 10,000 frequent-flier miles and a couple round-trip tickets." Click here for airline customer service contacts. 7. Be persistent. "Sometimes the airlines send the most ridiculous responses," Hobica says. If you're unhappy with the response, write again and escalate your case. If you don't get results from the airline, file a service complaint with the Aviation Consumer Protection Division (ACPD).

"The airlines do have the upper hand on the situation; they determine how much to reimburse you," says Anne Banas, executive editor of travel web site SmarterTravel.com. "So it's up to the traveler to know [his or her rights] before traveling."

Here's a guide:

Lost Luggage
The good news: The airlines do have policies about reimbursing customers for lost luggage. (Those are typically outlined in a document called "Contact of Carriage." The travel web site Airfarewatchdog.com provides links to each airline's contract here.) The bad news? There are so many exclusions to these rules that in the end, the airline can pretty much give you however much they want. "There are more loopholes than you can shake a stick at," says Tom Parsons, CEO of BestFares.com, a travel deals web site.

Consider this: If an airline loses your bags permanently, for example, you are entitled to up to $2,500 in compensation for domestic flights. (For international flights, you can be compensated up to $9 per pound of luggage.) But most airlines refuse to cover jewelry and valuables, electronics, fragile items, prescription medication, or any business-related items, such as merchandise.

Even for items you can be reimbursed for, such as clothes, you need to provide receipts. And then depreciation kicks in, where each airline determines how much of the clothes' original price you'll get back, says George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com.

That said, most airlines also have policies in place to reimburse passengers for necessities until they're reunited with their bags. That's typically a preset daily allowance that's negligibly small, Hobica says. Delta Air Lines, for example, offers $25 a day for up to five days of mishandled bags. It's awfully hard to put together a vacation wardrobe on that.

Other airlines, particularly European ones, can be more generous. Juergen Ritz, a Chicago-based German expatriate who travels to Germany at least once a month always flies Lufthansa because he knows they will reimburse him for 50% of the cost of clothing he buys if they lose his bags. He sends in the receipts and receives the checks within weeks, he says. That hasn't been his experience with domestic flights on U.S. airlines. "I'm surprised how much hassle it can be to deal with here," he says. "In the U.S. you don't get anything, or hardly anything. It's a totally different level of customer service."

Stranded at the Airport
So your flight was cancelled or delayed causing you to miss a connection. What can you do? First, find out what caused the problem, says Hobica. If it's a carrier-caused delay, such as a mechanical problem, you have a much better chance of getting reimbursement from the airline, such as meal or hotel vouchers, or even a full or partial refund of your ticket, he says. (Again, this is outlined in each airline's Contract of Carriage.) But with circumstances not under the airline's control — weather conditions, airport strikes, or, for that matter, any "act not reasonably foreseen" by the airline — it's up to that gate agent to fulfill your requests. In either case, the airline isn't required to compensate you in any way. (The only exception is if you're "bumped" from an oversold flight: You're entitled to up to $400.) And then it's all about being proactive. So be sure to ask for compensation.

Ritz, the German expatriate, always calls the airline's 1-800 number instead of lining up to rebook his flight with a ticketing agent. "If you have three or four agents and 500 people, the seats will be gone by the time you make the front of the line," he says. If he isn't comfortable booking by phone, he buys a day pass to the airline's airport club — typically $40 or so — where he gets to talk with an agent with no line whatsoever.