Non-refundable tix and Jury Duty...
 

Inspired by a current OMNI thread, I was curious if anybody here on FT has experience getting an airline to wave change / cancellation fees due to being selected for Jury Duty. IMHO, it seems like the ethical thing for airlines to do would be to waive the fees since the pax has a civic duty to appear when summoned for jury duty. What do you think? Any experiences with this situation? good or bad?

Id say the opposite that mearly presenting proff to teh Court that you have already paid for tkts+, should be enough for you to get the JD pushed off. That is unless you have 2nd thoughts about going away as planned, and want to use JD as the way to get out of it

I got a jury summons a couple years ago and I already had a trip booked that week. I called immediately and got jury duty delayed, then I moved out of that state.

You should be entitled to 1 delay. Have you used your delay?

Here in Dallas (and I'd guess it might be state-wide), having purchased tickets for leisure travel is sufficient reason to be granted a jury duty postponement. Interestingly, they say that business travel is not a valid excuse, although if you show them a ticket receipt, I don't see how they could tell the difference.

Here you can have I believe two delays, having prepaid transportation counts for it, just let them know. The ticket has to be dated before the summons for serving so you can't rush out and buy tickets once you get it I don't know the policy of the airlines, I would assume each one is different, but I wouldn't expect any of the majors to do much about it for you.


It's not the airlines responsibility to cover you, no matter what the duty was, you took that risk buying a non refundable ticket and not getting insurance for it.

I didn't have to do anything. I just said I wanted it to be postponed in NY and that was all they needed. NY doesn't do any automatic exemptions for professions like doctors which I thought was odd. One can't just claim to be a physician without some type of license to back the claim.

While it does seem that the airlines are waving new fees in our faces every day, just by way of one example United Airlines Contract of Carriage notes that the change fees associated with have to re-schedule due to jury duty are indeed waived.

I always show up unless I will actually be out of down the days of required service - because my experience is sometimes I just show up for the two days and never get selected for a jury and that fulfills my duty for the next 2 years. The one time I was selected for voir dire and was initially chosen I spoke with both attorneys and informed them I had a non refundable ticket to travel before the estimated finish of the case and they excused me - I think neither was happy about the prospect of having a disgruntled juror on the panel.

If they postpone it multiple times, and you have "leisure travel" planned for each of the postponements (especially if always to the same city), I could see red flags eventually being raised.

I postponed it in MA three times until they gave up on me and said I was no longer needed. Maybe I got lucky.

The airline does not refund nonrefundable tickets without all sorts of fees. Hmm, probably why they're called nonrefundable. Also, you probably have hotel rooms, tours, all kinds of other things pre-paid that also cost money. Instead, I was asked to send a copy of the tickets/receipt to the judge, and he excused me from jury duty. You do not have a "civic duty" if it will cause you financial hardship. I was a little worried because the first time they called me, I was in Africa and had no way of knowing about it until too late. But fortunately they understood all that. (Louisiana) I guess that's the chance they take when they mail summons to an address, instead of actually serving it to an actual person.

i'd guess it isn't statewide, as each county's court is responsible for setting their own standards for jury duty.

they used to, but not anymore. i believe i even read that the automatic waiver for physicians don't happen

I've been exempted from Jury Duty in my state (in Australia) due to planned travel. Simply advised when contacted that I would be overseas during the period and never heard another word.

I have found that not being a citizen of the country in which I live works perfectly. ;) 30+ years in the US, and not one summons for jd...

That's because they usually use voter registration as the basis for jury duty selection.