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U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds

#231

Post by encryptluks2 »

Thorrez wrote: post #228
Frost1x wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spam callers come to mind. Some of it may be due to some technical nature that made it difficult/impossible to enforce but we've had donotcall.gov and all sorts of legislation for fines and penalitoes and I still get slews of spam solicitations to this day. I think the general consensus for your average citizen and consumer these days is that they are voiceless and powerless in most these situations while lots of pos…

I wonder if the spam calling companies keep appearing and disappearing so quickly that it's hard for the government to find them. That's not the case for airlines.

It isn't that it is hard to find them but politicians are afraid of setting limits on cold calling because politicians themselves frequently use questionable call lists to robocall people. Also, they are too weak to sanction countries where spam calls are mostly originating. I believe the should start treating robocallers like terrorists, maybe drone a couple call centers and watch as they stop almost overnight.

Re: U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds

#232

Post by hjgjhyuhy »

Grimburger wrote: post #227
bluGill wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make one yourself: How many hijackings of US airlines where there in the 20 years before, and after. The number was higher before, but it was very small. Locking the airplane cockpit door, along with awareness that hijackers will kill you (as opposed to fly you to a different country and you are free in a couple days if you stay quiet) are also factors. I don't know how to separate them from anything the TSA…

> Locking the airplane cockpit door A change which contributed to the complete loss of an aircraft and all aboard when the pilot left to go to the toilet and the copilot locked the door to crash it into a mountainside. The law of unintended consequences in full effect. Had such a change not been enacted that flight likely would have survived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

No post body was provided.

Re: U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds

#233

Post by throwaway2037 »

monksy wrote: post #191
throwaway2037 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that less than N95 masks do not reduce COVID-19 transmission?

Yes. Surgicals are not meant for protection against airborne contaminants.

I am surprised to see this type of reply in 2022. When I Google "do masks reduce COVID-19 transmission?", I get huge number of hits for peer reviewed published scientific papers. And most of the papers are focused on less-than-N95 masks. For the ones that I reviewed, the answer is overwhelming "yes", and a statistically significant reduction.

Re: U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds

#234

Post by jtbayly »

bluGill wrote: post #205
jtbayly wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> protectionist and defensive systems and is highly averse to any risk what-so-ever ... like masks. But seriously, a lot of the same people that objected to the TSA madness also objected to the mask mandates.

> But seriously, a lot of the same people that objected to the TSA madness also objected to the mask mandates. But this time a lot of people who didn't object to the TSA objected to masks.

Taking off your shoes once (maybe twice) a year vs putting on a mask multiple times every day.

I’m not surprised more people actually objected to the latter.

Re: U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds

#235

Post by MichaelCollins »

whatwherewhy wrote: post #223
MichaelCollins wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the officers groped me just for fun this summer? And my GF's bra had to be undone just for fun too? Probably yes. But for their fun, not yours.

They didn't look like they were having fun, tbh. If I had to grope 300+ people, some of them really not appealing, I wouldn't have fun too.

Then why do you think they do it? It's obviously not for security.

Re: U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds

#236

Post by banannaise »

ghaff wrote: post #177
stavros wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds insane until you realize that this is essentially how hotels work. Or everything else . Trains, taxis, restaurants, everything. How many institutions do you know where you can't buy a ticket at the door, and instead have to prepay?

Hotels do tend to have a cancelation policy though (which is increasingly a day or two in advance rather than 6pm day of even for for not-charged-in-advance flexible reservations). You pay in advance for tons of other services (concerts, plays, etc.) and they're often non-refundable. Trains and transit also pay in advance in my experience. The main difference with planes is that, while you can pay for a ticket at the…

> Hotels do tend to have a cancelation policy though (which is increasingly a day or two in advance

Right, that's what the deposit is for, and that's how airlines would presumably do that.

Re: U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds

#237

Post by banannaise »

ghaff wrote: post #153
banannaise wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We will actively make your life worse unless you pay us a premium in exchange for not doing that" is a terrible way to run any part of a society. If that's just how businesses are expected to behave, then we need to find ways to change that as a society.

There are classes of service and product just about everywhere. Basically everyone flying coach on a commercial aircraft has a deliberately worse experience than if they paid for business class. The alternative is to have a single level of coach service only (which is fairly common on regional jets) or a single level of business class only service (which is rare--BA LCY to JFK as far as I know although I'm not sure t…

In cases like business class, the airline provides specific products and labor for those who paid more, in order to make their experience better. In the "deliberately split up parties" case, the airline provides labor for those who paid less, so as to intentionally make their experience worse. That makes this an entirely different scenario.

Re: U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds

#238

Post by whatwherewhy »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #235
whatwherewhy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't look like they were having fun, tbh. If I had to grope 300+ people, some of them really not appealing, I wouldn't have fun too.

Then why do you think they do it? It's obviously not for security.

Because they were ordered to do it.

Re: U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds

#239

Post by WirelessGigabit »

sccxy wrote: post #152
ranUltra wrote: post #98

Another case where EU has this settled. If an airline cancels a flight, they are obligated to refund the money in the same payment method, or book another flight, depending what the passenger chooses. They have to provide accommodation in a hotel if needed & you can request compensation up to 600 euros if the cancellation/delay was done in short notice.

It only works in theory and with good airlines. 4 months and still waiting for my Lufthansa refund (4000 eur) and no sign of compensation... They ignore till you take it to the court.

Next time pay with credit card and do a chargeback. That'll get the ball rolling.

Re: U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds

#240

Post by mcronce »

newbYhrly wrote: post #195
mcronce wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather just provide UBI. Pay them to do nothing instead of paying them to make everybody else's lives worse.

Who is them? A UBI is going to normalize condition and make “them” see there’s even more to participate in. Sounds like you still prefer maintenance of a steerage class, assuming you’ll be a bit higher on the totem pole. But I mean, real talk is you’re still just one of billions. How you feel the world as-is is a meaningless measure for how you would fit into a UBI world. And I have no particular obligation to your s…

"Them" is TSA employees, as the other user explained. The rest of this is a lot of pretty aggressive assumptions about me that are entirely unfounded.
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