Hello all. My fiance was scheduled to fly HVN-PHL-BWI last Friday. Unfortunately, the HVN-PHL segment, which was the last flight of that night, was cancelled due to ATC(she was noticed after she left for the airport).

Even more unfortunately, US agents at HVN were not very helpful, refused to any alternative rerouting(such as providing ground transportation to LGA in order to fly BWI) nor refund of the ticket, just offering next day flight, which is >12hrs later than scheduled.

I understand it's due to ATC and HVN is small station(was heard only ~5 passengers were waiting for that flight), but what is official rule in case of ATC delay/cancellation? Is an air carrier totally immune to any responsibility other than "Take tomorrow morning flight"?

TIA ;)

Note: HVN is a ridiculously small airport, with consistent delays and problems (e.g., fog and the fact that the only flights are to PHL which has its own problems). US is the only commercial carrier with service there. In short, I am surprised that US hasnt abandoned it as it has so many other small airports. I have colleagues at Yale (3 miles away) that routinely drive to Hartford (BDL), or take the train down to any of the NY airports. They must be preying upon ignorant travelers who look at the map and see it as closest to Yale, New Haven, etc. They fly mostly dash-8s there.

Note 2: The terms of transportation are notoriously interpreted inconsistently by employees and travelers. That doesnt mean anyone is wrong. I may even be wrong in my interpretation below.

Back to original question: I think the "letter of the rule" responsibility would be to get them on the next available flight, even if on another carrier. Being a small station, with no other flights or airlines, I can see their reply that their job was to get her on the next flight which was the next day.

http://www.usairways.com/customers/travel_policies/terms/terms.htm

If other carriers had flights out that could have reasonably gotten her to BWI, then I think the agreement is to try to do that.

The problem is that the terms above say "US Airways may offer the customer ground transportation to the destination". It sounds like they chose not to.

That being said, I do not see why the ticket was not refunded. Your fiance could have driven to BWI and arrived by midnight easily instead of waiting overnight in HVN.

What am I missing here? (Said to others, not the OP).

I am not absolutely sure of the official T&C, but I have read in other places that ameneties or other carrier Rule 240 reroute are not strictly required due to weather or ATC delays.

I do have a couple of questions and observations though:
1. Do you know for sure that there were available flights from the NYC airports to the destination;
2. What is the approximate cost of a van service or cab voucher say from HPN to LGA;
3. I would have thought that HPN would be a small station with helpful agents that would do what they could for their customers whether by the letter or the spirit of the rules. I have never flown out of HPN, but that is just my silly impression of what that station would be like;
4. I don't know how much your friend tried to negotiate. Often in a service business the first answer is the brush off. One good story to illustrate this... I was on UA DSM to BOS. There was some sort of delay, weather/ATC, and they were offering to put me on TWA arriving BOS well after midnight. I asked for a hotel voucher instead, and they advised no due to weather related delay. However, I politely pressed on, and in the end, they gave me 2 confirmed regional upgrade certificates on United, and a comp upgrade the next day out of DSM;
5. They also should have offered you an involuntary refund even if your ticket was nonrefundable due to a cancellation. If they refused, and that is what you wanted, you could get that through US customer relations since its kind of a cut and dry issue.

If US is the only carrier at HPN I guess they could not endorse the ticket over to another airline out of HPN which is often done in these situations with airports with numerous airlines.

But this all boils down to who you get, more than any official rule. Believe me, the "rules" are written very slanted to favor the airline after all the airlines wrote the rules. The agents at the airport can pretty much do whatever they want, though it depends on the way any particular station is run too. It may be that the HPN station manager is very tight with money and thus strongly discourages issuance of ground transportation vouchers. Perhaps on here we have some regulars at HPN that can ellaborate and advise whether this is SOP or an abberation.

Generally, if the delay is due to weather/ATC, the airline's only obligation is to provide a seat on the next available plane on that airline. Although they sometimes do, they are not obliged to reaccommodate on another airline or provide overnight accommodation. This differs according to circumstances and airport, but generally the above rules apply.

ATC does not cancel flights. Weather may delay flights but only the airline itself cancels a particular flight.

I do have a couple of questions and observations though:
1. Do you know for sure that there were available flights from the NYC airports to the destination;
2. What is the approximate cost of a van service or cab voucher say from HPN to LGA;


jetsetter (and others) - just a note that the OP was referring to a flight from HVN (New Haven, CT) not HPN (White Plains, NY) ;)

I am guessing chances would have been slightly better if trying to get to LGA from HPN (but who knows).

ATC-induced cancellations do not obligate the carrier to reroute via a different carrier but they do have to offer you the option of a refund on the unflown portion.

Note: HVN is a ridiculously small airport, with consistent delays and problems (e.g., fog and the fact that the only flights are to PHL which has its own problems). US is the only commercial carrier with service there. In short, I am surprised that US hasnt abandoned it as it has so many other small airports. I have colleagues at Yale (3 miles away) that routinely drive to Hartford (BDL), or take the train down to any of the NY airports. They must be preying upon ignorant travelers who look at the map and see it as closest to Yale, New Haven, etc. They fly mostly dash-8s there.


I don't know about HVN, but there is a federal government program which guarantees carriers a certain profit margin in order to fly to "underserved markets"--for example, in Maine, AUG, RKD and PQI all fall under the program, and so US Airways (Colgan, actually) flies between those cities and Boston using turbojets even though there are often only a few passengers on the plane, and is heavily subsidized for doing so.

For an airport like PQI, which is far, far away from civilization, there is an argument to be made for providing air service to those people, but AUG and RKD are a ~1 hour drive from the fully commercially viable PWM (and not much farther from BGR, which also manages to do okay on its own). Your tax dollars at work.