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Fiascos and Fixes
These travelers encountered extreme airline problems and asked the Consumer Rescue team for help. Each article contains an air travel fiasco and a fix from our consumer advocacy team.
A Delta Air Lines passenger believed she could fly to China with an expired passport, but was denied boarding. She says Delta made a mistake rejecting her documents and should have allowed her to take the flight to China.
Now she’s hoping for a refund and additional compensation for her troubles.
What’s going on here?
Mary Bradley says she was billed hundreds of dollars extra for a United Airlines Travel Bundle on a self-booked ticket. She doesn’t know what these fees are, but she wants a refund. Can our advocacy team help?
United Airlines repeatedly changed Joseph Baloun’s flight to Hawaii so significantly that it bore little resemblance to his original schedule. After he returned home, he wasn’t sure what he was owed for the extended flight delay so he made a wild guess. A really wild guess. He calculated the airline owed him $10,000 for the unpleasant 16-hour delay.
But does United Airlines owe him anything at all?
What happens when your middle name is on your passport and airline ticket, but your last name is missing? Eleanor Rasmussen can tell you because it happened to her.
If your middle name is on your passport, you probably always try to add it to your airline ticket. But many airlines and booking agencies don’t give you that option.
The reason for this omission? Travelers aren’t required to include a middle name on their airline ticket – even if one is displayed on their passport.
In Rasmussen’s case, the online booking agent her friend used to book their airline tickets didn’t have a specific field to add a middle name. That led to a travel fiasco that left her with an unusable ticket to Tokyo with only her first and middle name.
Now, with her middle name on her ticket where her last name should be, Rasmussen is asking for our help. She’s hoping Consumer Rescue can convince Singapore Airlines to correctly rewrite her ticket.
But will the third-party booking agent cooperate
Yevgeniy and Artyom Yevtushenko flew LOT Airlines from Toronto to Astana, Kazakhstan, via Warsaw, Poland, last June without a hitch. But it was a different story when they tried to check in for their flight back to Canada in August. That’s when a stern LOT Airlines agent reviewed their passports and quickly denied boarding to the father and son.
Confused by the employee’s announcement, Yevtushenko assumed there was some mistake that the airline could easily correct. That is until a supervisor appeared who promptly ended that assumption. He confirmed that LOT Airlines was required to deny boarding to the pair because they were missing Canadian visas.
But the agents had some good news for the rejected passengers. Since their ultimate destination was Grand Rapids, Michigan, LOT could reroute the pair and avoid Canada altogether. However, there was bad news as well: the new itinerary would cost an additional $2,249.
Given no other choice, a frustrated Yevtushenko paid the fee, and he and his son flew home to Michigan.
Now, Yevtushenko is asking Consumer Rescue for help getting the money back. He hopes we can convince LOT Airlines that its employees mistakenly denied boarding to him and Artyom. They didn’t need Canadian visas, and he can prove it – if only someone would listen and look at the facts.
If you’re familiar with our team, then you know he came to the right place to find someone willing to listen.
Andrea Smith believes United Airlines made a mistake by allowing her to book two identical tickets — or maybe it was an Expedia glitch. She isn’t sure how it happened, but that mistake cost her $915, and she wants a refund.
But could the error actually have originated somewhere closer to home?
It goes without saying that if you get a free upgrade on your British Airways flight you won’t qualify for a refund.
So why does this passenger disagree?
It goes without saying that travelers should not get in the TSA PreCheck line unless they’ve been approved for the program. Or does it?
Attention Vantage Deluxe World Travel customers: The news isn’t good if you’ve got a trip planned with this tour operator. The unfortunate reality is that you might not be going anywhere.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, my consumer advocacy team has been fielding a heavy volume of Vantage Travel complaints. But recently, the number of pleas for help from customers of the troubled tour operator has skyrocketed.
On April 21, things went from bad to worse. That’s when the Vantage Travel website suddenly went offline and its phone system stopped working. Simultaneously, the administrator of the tour operator’s Facebook page disabled commenting.
But not before angry Vantage customers began sharing disturbing stories.
Stepping up to the check-in counter of Alaska Airlines, new mom Jisu Lee wasn’t expecting any problems. She was well-prepared for the grueling 20-hour journey ahead, flying alone with her infant from Seattle to Auckland via Vancouver. In New Zealand, her parents were excitedly waiting to meet their granddaughter for the first time.
Lee had anticipated almost everything – except the possibility of being mistakenly denied boarding by a confused agent of Alaska Airlines. That error caused the trip to morph into an expensive four-day travel nightmare for the frazzled mother and baby.
Now Lee is hoping Consumer Rescue can help. She’s asking Alaska Airlines to admit it made an error refusing to allow her to board the flight. She also wants the airline to repay her for all of the additional expenses she incurred as a result of that mistake.
But what is the real reason that Alaska Airlines denied boarding to Lee and her child? That’s the question of the day.
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© 2024 Consumer Rescue / Michelle Couch-Friedman
