Reader Laura was nearly stranded in Manchester when Continental canceled her flight two days before a major college test. She politely asked to be rebooked; she begged for another flight; when that failed, she invoked Rule 240. Laura’s experience presents the perfect opportunity to clarify once and for all what Rule 240 is and isn’t. First, her story.
Hi all,
As a devoted reader of your site, I have read the multiple articles on the famous “Rule 240″ which can sometimes assist the desperate traveler. Thus, when I saw that my return flight was canceled, I remained calm knowing I was armed with this knowledge. I had arrived a full two hours before my flight, and was extremely patient in the fifty minute wait to get to the counter. A different flight had also been canceled, and I watched with amusement as one man actually put his friend on speakerphone to confirm that weather was *not* an issue in Newark. I must say that the agent’s face was a lovely shade of eggplant during this stunt. When I finally reached the front of the line, I was positive that courteousness and sympathy would cajole this harried staff into pushing me onto another flight.
At this point, it is important to give a bit of background. I am a full-time college student, so naturally money is always an issue. I had decided to fly home for spring break, and had booked it out in advance on Continental using my father’s miles. I had the perfect setup: an early flight on Saturday + an evening flight on Sunday = maximum time with family and pets. I had an exam on Tuesday, and the review was Monday morning. Missing class was NOT an option. I was flying out of South Bend, Indiana into Manchester, New Hampshire- two very small airports which are both two-three hours away from the major hubs of O’Hare and Logan.
Now- back to the story. I asked if he could check whether or not there was an available route that would get me back to school (I stressed that the number of connections were not a problem) and he responded that the absolute soonest he could manage this was TUESDAY. I explained the issue with my exam, and was met with a blank stare. I decided it was time to drop the 240 line. He rolled his eyes and responded, “Well you can ask them,” motioning to the other counters. I glanced at the Delta and United lines, which were approaching Disneyworld length, and politely requested that he check what would be available to me before I left the counter. He told me he could not do that. I asked if he could check Logan, figuring they would have many more flights. After no more than two seconds of glancing at his screen, he said that they had nothing. I then asked if he could specifically check Logan to O’Hare. This time he didn’t even pretend to look- he just flat out said no. I was trying to remain calm, but I was almost in tears at this point. I was literally running up against a brick wall.
I hauled my bags down to the Delta counter. Once I reached the front, I quickly explained my dilemma to the woman. She gnawed on a red talon as she informed me that the Delta flight to Chicago was pulling back and there was no way I could get there in time. I almost lost it at this point- if Mr. Continental had gone the extra inch, I could have been on that flight. She was slightly more helpful in terms of willingness to actually use her computer, but produced no results. I got the basically same story at United.
Thankfully, my father saved the day. He went online and found a Southwest flight to Chicago leaving in about fourty minutes with a few open seats. Given the circumstances, we had no choice but to pay the exorbitant price for the last minute ticket. So much for saving money. I made it back to Chicago, but missed the bus back to campus by fifteen minutes. I had to wait another two hours to catch the next one (another $40, by the way), finally returning at 2 am. My car was still at South Bend airport, and I couldn’t find a ride to collect it until Wednesday ($30 extra). The final kicker? A heavy baggage charge from DELTA randomly appeared on my credit card from the flight home (I hate dealing with Capital One).
Bottom line: I would not be writing this e-mail if the agent had offerend one iota of assistance or even sympathy. I know they are often the messenger who gets killed, and I always keep this in mind when I am dealing with them. Screaming at them is no more effective then screaming at your local gas station owner about prices. However, I expect this decency to be returned, and I truly feel that it wasn’t. I urge EVERYONE to vote for the airlines (most especially CONTINENTAL) in The Consumerist’s worst company contest… they are working harder than Hillary to win this thing.
Rule 240 does not exist. It was once a pillar of traveler’s rights back in the good old days when regulators wore suits and ties to work and struck fear into the hearts of businessmen. The rule, which required airlines to rebook waylaid travelers on the next available flight regardless of airline, officially disappeared with the Civil Aeronautics Board in the 70s. However, even though it is no longer enforceable in the “I’ll get my lawyer!” sense, it is worth asking ticketing agents to 240 you. Sometimes they are nice and help out. It didn’t work for Laura, but it was well worth a try.
Still, we can’t help but notice that the real disservice here is from Laura’s college. Who schedules a midterm two days after spring break? That’s just cruel.
(Photo: lunchtimemama)
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This time of the year (ie. winter), if you HAVE to be somewhere by Monday morning… you DON’T rely on one of the last flights out (especially involving smaller airports) on Sunday night.
You may have run into a brick wall, but you’re the one who started building that wall.
Dear Carey,
WTF? Please don’t say things like “rule 240 doesn’t exist”… The fact is, some airlines have a Rule 240 in their Contract of Carriage, and some call it something else. Airlines like Continental have a “Rule 24″, and it is contained in the Contract of Carriage PDF file available from [www.continental.com] While there is little to no recourse outlined in that document, it does exist. Maybe it would have been better to state that “‘Rule 240′ clauses don’t usually mean what we all hope they mean.”?
When we were coming back from Ireland on Continental, we were told at Shannon airport that our destination (MSP) was closed due to weather, and that we would have to rebook when we got to Newark, as our flight from Newark to MSP was cancelled.
When we got to Newark, I found a nice out-of-the-way ticket counter, and got to the front in about three minutes. I told the agent I’d like to get to MSP tonight, I didn’t care about how many connections it took, and if the only way was to bump me up to business class, well, I’d sacrifice and accept that.
The agent laughed. She battled the computer for a while, and finally said she could get me one business seat, but not two; but if I didn’t mind connecting through Cleveland, she could get me to MSP. I told her she was a genius, offered to father her children, and we wound up landing at MSP only 45 minutes later than our original arrangement.
Continental agents can be fine people.
I still can’t figure out where this student lives and where she goes to college! Yeah, I know it’s not the point of the post, but clarity is important, people.
My last best guess is that she lives within striking distance of Manchester NH and goes to Notre Dame. But at first I thought she probably went to school at St. Anselm’s and lived in the Midwest. ?????
@Kaix: I hope to visit Australia soon. Can you tell me about in-flight? Was it comfy? How was the service?
the irony of people saying that those who have award tickets shouldn’t expect much is that those award tickets are gained from being a repeat, loyal customer to that airline. airlines should treat those with award tickets just as they would anyone paying a full fare, if not better.
Exactly – to say that people with award tickets should “expect less” or “get what they pay for” ignores the fact that you earned those tickets. Airlines do not give award tickets because they’re sweethearts. The airlines figure that the profit they will make from your continued business is more than the lost fare from the award ticket. Airlines that treat award-ticket flyers poorly are practicing bad business.
Elizabeth -I’ll bet a lot she attends St. Mary’s – an all-girl school literally across the street from ND.
I have flown a ton of times in/out of South Bend. The agents are typically moronic and/or robotic. Once in awhile, someone from the hub happens to be spending the day in SBN and shows the local yokel agents how to do special stuff.
So, yes, get on the horn. Pronto. The CSR can work up a new itinery in the time you are waiting in line. When you get to the counter, tell the ever-helpful agent to call up the new itinery, print it out, and endorse it.
Rule 240 was a federal regulation. In return for certain regulatory perks, the legacy airlines (NOT Southwest) agreed to abide by this. For whatever reason, if a pax couldn’t get to his destination on the first airline, that airline was obligated to try hard to find the pax space on competitors. If this could not be done and the pax didn’t get to their destination that day, the fare was refunded. Free trip. Late, but free.
Today, many tix (carriage contracts) give you similar rights. Many do not.
A few clarifications:
1. I go to ND (NOT St. Mary’s) and live in the greater Boston area
2. This was simply an e-mail shot off to express frustration. My deepest apologies for not editing it as if it were a graded assignment.
3. Many exams are scheduled by the department, and the teachers have no control over the date.
4. I knew I was cutting it close, but I didn’t think my only other option would be a Tuesday return. At the worst I figured that I would be attending Monday’s class with little sleep.
@DeltaPurser: Yeah, I’m arguing with this too — I recently took a United flight that ended up leaving late, which would have made me miss my connecting flight. I walked up to the counter and the agent told me this, researched flights on other airlines right there on her computer, found one with open seats, and handed me a voucher which I simply used as though it was my own ticket. If one airline can do it, the rest can; and moreover, it’s their responsibility to.
Nice apologetic treatise, in other words, but it doesn’t “fly”.
This situation sucks, but I do have to say that Continental is not generally evil. I pretty much only fly Continental, and I won’t say my experiences have been painless (I don’t think I have had one non-delayed flight in six years), but the customer service people have generally been lovely, as long as they are approached with respect and politeness. They are yelled at all day by otherwise sane people who sound like raving lunatics. I would be grumpy too! The OP did everything right, in my opinion, and it’s shame she wasn’t helped (I don’t know whether she could have been or not, but I wish the agent had gone the extra mile), except for booking her flight home so close to when she needed to be there. In the age of constant delays and cancellations, I try to always book 24 hours or more before I need to be somewhere, because who knows when you’ll be sitting in the airport for six, twelve or twenty hours waiting?
Oh, and, yeah it sucks sometimes to have a test right after break. But it may also have been a gift from the professor, giving students valuable of extra study hours (this is coming from a college student) and removing his/her exam from the general rush surrounding midterm season.
@Mary Marsala with Fries:
It may be a United thing then! I had a flight cancellation in Orlando on United a few years ago, and the United employees went so far as to WALK my luggage to the plane (of a different airline), and an employee volunteered to help me rush through security (got to the front of the line, but the carry-on was still checked and all). That was by far the best experience I had ever had on United! It totally outweighed the time where they didn’t have a crew to fly the plane…
@laura525: I definitely understand trying to stretch the vacation to the absolute maximum, but in the OP you wrote, “I had an exam on Tuesday, and the review was Monday morning. Missing class was NOT an option.”
If you absolutely couldn’t miss a Monday AM class, you shouldn’t have made your travel arrangements so tight. Lots of other people do that too. That means that all those delays pile up on Sunday and end up delaying the later flights. If you have to be somewhere the next day by a certain time, you should not fly via smaller airports or take the last (or nearly last) flight out. You should take an early flight to avoid the cascading delays airports face.
Many travellers return home on a Saturday, not Sunday. It gives some wiggle room in case of a problem and it allows for a day of recovery and unpacking. It took me a long time to realize this was actually a better option. It’s counter-intuitive to a thrifty yankee.
Consider yourself lucky — you only lost a little money and learned this lesson early in life.
Laura,
Why didn’t you get off the bus at the airport and pick your car up at that time rather than take the bus all the way to campus and have to wait another three days to get your car? That would have saved you $30.
The bus company runs a direct-to-ND bus during major travel dates for students. This arrived before the one with stops, and I was definitely not going to tempt fate by passing on it.
Oh, that’s right, I forgot about that. It’s been awhile since I took United Limo. I usually take the South Shore anyway. In that case, I don’t blame you for taking that bus. I would have done the same. I hope your exam went well. I certainly don’t miss those 8am departmental exams. You’re certainly not the only one I know of who had trouble getting back due to weather.
This was my first time on this site. A whole article about a rule one can/may invoke to improve air travel, without a single mention of what that rule is. Not even a link to a previous article, despite a mention that it’s mentioned on this site many times. Clearly all of Gawker’s GOOD writers are on Gizmodo and io9.
@I Ain’t Tryin’ a Hear Dat!:
Some short background before I respond to your insightful comments – my experience was working for Delta, in particular answering the lobby phones (Delta Direct) that are designed specifically for customers who have been disrupted mid-travel. As such I was considered an airport agent but had different powers than an actual counter agent (in some cases more, in some cases less).
I for one have never heard the term FIM, just rule 240, and all of the other airline agents I talked to seemed perfectly familiar with it. I was told that this meant we would be paying the other airline the cost of a full fare ticket, regardless of the class of ticket originally held by the customer (bulk fares and rewards tickets being the exceptions), and we also had to have guaranteed space on another airline before doing our ‘rule 240′, as well as, as you said, reissuing the ticket. So this obviously wasn’t the type of endorsement that counter agents identify as rule 240s but was rather an FIM, and it’s interesting for me to learn there’s a difference.
I agree, it usually doesn’t help to call reservations while waiting on line. Like you said, they can’t technically change your ticket once you’ve checked in. They might try to hold you a seat, but your ticket remains unchanged and until that ticket is changed you stand the chance of losing that seat until an actual airport agent can confirm it. And no, there is no one on normal reservations lines that can change your ticket, not even the supervisors. Only an airport agent can do that. The system is pretty much designed to keep too many people in different places from messing with one reservation at once and causing all sorts of problems. Airport agents have information about your flight and other flights out of your airport that reservations agents do not.
Personally I could see availability on other airlines, but not exact numbers, just more of a general ‘at the time of this update we have this many seats/we don’t have seats’. This information was not instantaneously updated (ranging from minutes old to over a day old), so in a major mess it was far from reliable. As far as I know Delta counter agents see the exact same info. At a time when passenger loads were lower I can imagine that calling to verify accuracy of the information was much less necessary, but with 90-95% loads on a lot of airlines these days there isn’t much wiggle room for numbers inaccurate by even a seat or two. It was generally a gamble unless the situation was our mechanical and only a few people needed to be rebooked to the flight in question due to a missed connection or such, which I imagine is exactly why DeltaPurser characterized it as very limited. As a counter agent you probably have a better sense of what flights on what airlines are generally emptier and a good alternative, but personally I wouldn’t risk a seriously pissed off passenger who still has no flight unless I felt very safe in doing so.
@Mary Marsala with Fries:
Your situation sounds like a good candidate for just reissuing your ticket to the other airline, as it was a small number of you who needed the new connecting flight rather than the whole plane (see above for more on that). That doesn’t necessarily mean that the airline had exact seating information for the flight they rebooked you on on the other airline, just that the agent felt that in your case the risk of you ending up without a seat was very minimal. In a lot of cases it won’t be that clear. True, I have never seen the booking system of any airline other than Delta, so I dont know for sure that United has the same dearth of information Delta does, but I can guarantee you one thing – there is no way any airline is getting instantaneously updated seat availability info from another airline without giving the same in return. Hence, if Delta doesn’t have United’s exact info, then United assuredly doesn’t have Delta’s. Sadly, airline computer systems and cooperation are simply not as advanced as people think they are or as they perhaps should be.
She should have invoked Rule 420, where they have to set you up with a bowl of the kind bud to chill your shit out if you’re unhappy.
@Buran: Qantas economy is like American business. The flight is hellish in and of itself (16 hours from LA to Sydney); if you can get a flight routed through Auckland, do so. It’s a small stop (usually about an hour), and you are hustled off the plane for cleaning and new crew. Yeah, you have to carry your carry-on crap with you, but you’re off the plan for an hour. Totally worth it (and often this route is cheaper than direct). Your seat assignment stays the same.
Flying from Melbourne to LAX, we had a layover in Auckland. We were fed dinner on the Melbourne to Auckland leg, and then again once in the air out of Auckland. We recieved snacks and water, and a pretty reasonable breakfast. Each seat has its own entertainment unit (unlike, say, United, which still uses communal giant tvs) and the selection was good. The flight attendants are helpful and nice, the plane clean. The seats in economy are still on the small side, but bigger than the AA seats we had in the US. I flew over to Melbourne via United, and the only thing they could have done to make it worse was have us all stand instead of sit cramped up. If you can manage to score an upgrade to business class on Qantas, you have won the lotto.
Oh, forgot to add: yes, Qantas costs about twice as much as United. You get ten times the service and quality. It is WORTH it.
Look into booking via AA. They are OneWorld with Qantas and your flight will be a Qantas plane and staff. However, they are more flexible about destinations within the US for your return flight, and it will be much cheaper to book a complete AA itinerary if you don’t live near LAX or SFO. If you want to travel within Australia, look at the Qantas multipass–you get to choose a set of destinations for a flat price. If you are already in Honolulu, go with Jetstar: you get business class to Melbourne or Sydney for $500 each way. Jetstar does not fly to the US mainland.