There was an interesting article in the NY Times today that recounted Ralph Nader's effort to get US Airways to refund his money for a flight that he cancelled.

He basically wrote US Airways asking for a refund, was rebuffed several times, but when he mentioned that he would take the case to small claims court they relented and refunded his ticket plus the $150 fee he was charged to change the ticket.

The take away from the article was that people don't use small claims court enough to deal with unreasonable airline restrictions. I was wondering if anyone has had experience with this?

On the one hand, I could see the airline just wanting to get Nader off of their back and this might not translate to Joe Traveler. On the other hand, it might work for the average traveler since the airline might not want to deal with the hassle of court.

Another way of looking at that might be that most people recognize that they purchased a service based on a written set of terms and conditions that they did not have to accept and could have avoided by purchasing a higher priced service. I don't know of any flights that don't offer fully refundable changeable tickets if that is what your want and need.

No doubt, many airlines would cave and give you your fee and fare back rather than go to court which will cost them many times that. But if lots of people started doing it, they would just start adding that cost in and the fares would all go up.

What keeps tickets affordable is the fact that some of them are non-refundable. With non-refundable tickets, airlines are better able to predict their cashflows which is a good thing for any business. Aside from buying a refundable ticket, one might want to consider travel insurance. Granted, travel insurance doesn't cover "I changed my mind" but it will cover a number of other instances.

In the olden days you could fly on someone else's ticket. I know I flew on my brother's ticket a couple of times when he couldn't go somewhere. It was a quick turnaround trip. I think couples unable to use their weekend vacation tickets would give them to friends who could use them. Then came 9-11, which changed everything.

These tickets need to be made transferable. For many they may not get their money back, but if you can resell the ticket you ought to be allowed to do so.

AFAIK, you can file the small claims court dispute in the jurisdiction of the Airline and not your personal home town. So,unless you live in the same city/town as the airline- it can be expensive.

The big carriers maintain contacts in most or all 50 states and would therefore be subject to longarm statutes that would give the local courts jurisdiction in many cases.

Fares can be about tradeoffs. You get a better fare, but the tradeoff is you can not refund the ticket. If the carriers have to start refunding tickets, they will raise the fares.

The last time Nader took US Air to court, or whatever they were called back then, it went all the way to the Supreme Court, and we now have bumping policies in place.

I'm sure when he phoned them up and spoke to their legal people (as mentioned in the story) they heard the words Ralph Nader, Court, and said you know, lets just shut him up this time like we should have done the last time.

I also tend to think if I called them and somehow managed to get to their legal team and said "Look, I bought a non refundable ticket, and it was going to rain, and I drove instead, I'll take you to small claims court if you don't give me a refund" they would be laughing too hard to respond.

This is not a story about taking a big airline to small claims court, it's a story on if you are famous enough to be an actual threat to them, they will back down.

Most of people who buy tickets on US Air do not fit into that category, and they would say go ahead, take us to court.

If his flight did take off and land on the day it was scheduled, he should not have gotten a refund (interesting the story does not mention if the flight did fly that day or not), unless US Air offered travel waivers. But he did because he's Ralph Nader, not because of the small claims threat.

Nader is a huge advocate of harassing companies in Small Claims Court. In a documentary where somebody opened a bank account with a dollar, and then proceeded to buy a few things causing overdrafts to rack up the fees (for the benefit of the film), nader said

He's a champion of advocating people agree to something, then sue when they break that agreement.

And in the olden days you could not fly as cheaply as you can now and tickets came with all kinds of conditions, Saturday night stay, booked a month in advance etc etc. I can fly places now for a few hundred that used to cost one thousand and up in the "olden days"

What part of non-refundable ticket do you not understand? You have a choice. Buy cheap non-refundable ticket or buy expensive refundable ticket. You choose the cheap option and yet expect all the benefits of the expensive option. Do you walk into a BMW dealership and demand a new BMW but at a Hyundai price? Because this is exactly what you're demanding here.

In that situation, cheap tickets would be snapped up a year in advance by scalpers, then resold at inflated prices.

I personally think that there is a fairly strong argument that all airline contracts are illusory and therefore the contract is void.

Airlines have purposefully written contract to be non-commital their part. Airline can cancel routes, cancel flights, or change schedules at will. They are under no obligation to hold up their end of the bargain. Instead they just refund money received. With any other industry or contract, a blatant breach such as a schedule change would result in breach of contract and the breacher being responsible for subsequent damages.

Airlines have specifically worded the contract in such a way that they are really not bound to do anything. So I think there is a very good argument that the contract is illusory.

Small claims court is a pain in the neck, and the two parties always have the option to settle out of court. Most of the time the defendant simply does not show and the plaintiff wins a default judgment.

US Airways has let me change tickets without a $150 change fee in the past, and without me having to threaten to sue them. They and I simply negotiated in good faith and we reached an agreement of mutual benefit to both of us.

(Specifically, me being flaky and showing up late to the airport for a flight 3 times in a row, spread across 2 days, and US Airways' friendly staff rebooking me each time, as they were used to seeing my face at DCA two times a week. I ended up needing to completely change my travel plans halfway into a circle trip and ended up buying a walkup Y fare on them, and felt no pangs about doing so after their excellent treatment of me a few days earlier.)

Airlines offer ridiculously cheap fares for people to fly places, often running billions of dollars of losses for years on end until they go out of business or file bankruptcy.

I don't get why people hate the U.S. airline industry so much. Nobody's stopping anyone from hiring charter flights or buying time on NetJets. People would just rather pay $250 for a transcon and then whine about the service levels, ignoring the fact these trips used to cost thousands of 2011 dollars and that chartering a private jet runs around $6,500/hour.

Well, Nader's in the wrong here, and to some degree it's armchair-quarterbacking, but I think the reason many people 'hate' the airline industry so much is that there are so many things the airlines do poorly that they could obviously do so much better, without much effort or cost.

Staff that are rude for no particular reason, aircraft with buy-on-board running out of food, lousy communications, "seat sales" with no seats available, doing an aircraft change and throwing away all the seat assignments, showing a Disney movie in a flight full of business travellers... and on and on.