We’ve all been there. At the airport, sometimes the wrong airport, waiting for a plane that’s been delayed.
I was once on a plane from Brisbane to Sydney that diverted back to Brisbane after almost an hour in the air (that is, almost in Sydney) because it didn’t have enough fuel to stay in formation for the period required by air traffic control.
As I result, I nearly missed a connection to the United States.
This was a long time ago, and there was no word of compensation for the inconvenience. I guess there would have been had I actually missed the flight.
On another occasion when I was living in Scotland, I woke up at 3.30am to catch a flight to Malaga that was scheduled to leave at 6.30am. It finally took off at 7.30pm. The airline, a charter carrier, gave us all a five-pound voucher to buy lunch.
I also had a flight from Brisbane to Fiji that was delayed by an entire day (not a great inconvenience because I was living in Brisbane at the time), then had to fly to Nadi via the Solomon Islands to pick up some stranded passengers.
More recently, I was at Abu Dhabi airport when I received a phone call from an Etihad ground-staff member. She found me in the check-in area and asked whether I would be willing to change flights.
I had a business-class ticket to Brisbane. Instead of flying via Singapore to Brisbane, she asked, would I mind flying first to Sydney and then to Brisbane. The departure time was 10 minutes later than my original flight and the total travel time was about the same.
I said it was fine. I wasn’t even thinking about compensation, but when I got to Sydney, an Etihad staff member was waiting for me with a US$300 travel voucher. And I received 20,000 Etihad Guest points for the inconvenience. I was also upgraded to first class on my return flight to Abu Dhabi.
So it was with some interest that I read this story about passengers on a “nightmare flight”. The Delta plane tried and failed several times to land at New York’s JFK airport and at least one of the passengers ended up deplaning in Manchester, New Hampshire and catching a train to New York.
Very little was offered in way of compensation, although the passengers suffered a significant time delay. But all this was the fault of the weather and safety concerns rather than any error or wrongdoing by the airline.
The take-home advice is:
+ Know what kind of compensation your airline is likely to provide in the event of a delay.
+ Make sure your insurance will cover you if the airline doesn’t.
+ If you’re running to a schedule, add in a little wriggle room for unforeseen delays.
+ Be thankful that pilots and airlines are not insistent on trying to land in blizzards or hurricanes.
