Can airlines bump customers to earlier flights against their will? Do customers have any recourse?
I recently had an unpleasant experience where Air Canada bumped a 2.5 hour international connection down to a 30 minute international connection that became a 5 minute one after flight delays. This was the direct result of the airline putting me and a travel companion on an earlier flight that turned a reasonable connection into an impossible one. The original flight we booked still flew (and we could have made it) but they refused to check us in as the check in window had closed. The end result in our case will be (if everything else goes smoothly) a net 14 hour trip delay.
Right now, all we've gotten from the airline customer service was a voucher to share a room (as two unmarried adults) in a dingy 2-star hotel 2 miles from Toronto Pearson.
Is there really nothing more a consumer can expect from an airline legally? Are there international terms of carriage or consumer protections that we could invest the next 12 hours of wretched travel time into hounding the airline over? Can an airline arbitrarily change any customer's itinerary to any other intinerary without limitation so long as it arrives at the same destination?
Best Answer
I presume you are flying economy and purchased the tickets with dollars and not miles. Business or award tickets have very different rules and business award tickets have downright crazy rules whereas you can force Air Canada to make seats available as an award if there's no other way even if that flight otherwise is not bookable as an award. I did this just a few weeks ago when they moved my Vancouver-Chicago flight up a few hours so I had five minutes left to catch my Chicago - Stockholm flight. You need to call Aeroplan for this and be polite but unrelenting.
Back to revenue economy tickets: if you were notified of an itinerary change before the start of travel, you had the right to refuse the change and get a full refund. If you started flying and subsequent legs needed a change you do not have a real choice but to suck it up. Compensation kicks in once you are more than 24 hours late compared to the itinerary you started with -- and again, that's not the itinerary you booked, you can book flights many months ahead which simply change when they fly but the itin you accepted implicitly by showing up for your first flight.
Based on your comment, your time to act was five days ago and now there's extremely little to none you can do. You can file a complaint but I am not sure you have a lot of leverage here.
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Can you get bumped to an earlier flight?
The key is to be able to show the gate agent that it is in the airline's best interest to accommodate you on an earlier flight. If you get to the airport in time to grab an earlier departure, check the arrival status of the inbound aircraft that will become the outbound flight you've booked.Why are airlines allowed to bump passengers?
The business practice of bumping is not illegal. Airlines oversell their scheduled flights to a certain extent in order to compensate for \u201cno-shows.\u201d Most of the time, airlines correctly predict the \u201cno shows\u201d and everything goes smoothly. But sometimes, passengers are bumped as a result of oversales practices.How much do airlines have to pay for bumping passengers?
New airline compensation can go to $10,000 in order to get a voluntary bumping status from passengers. Almost immediately, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines announced new passenger compensation. Each airline pledged up to $10,000 to get passengers to leave the flight voluntarily.Is it legal for airlines to change your flight?
When you book a flight, you agree on its schedule. However, all airlines reserve themselves the right to change the time (and sometimes even the date) of the flight, as per their terms and conditions. Specifically, airlines do not guarantee flight times and stress that those are not part of the contract of carriage.Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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