How You Can Actually Get Reimbursed for That Delayed Flight

Step one: never toss your boarding pass.
How You Can Actually Get Reimbursed for That Delayed Flight

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It’s sad but necessary to fully grasp the realities of air travel in 2017: Unless you’re catching the travel industry on a good day (best of luck to you!), something’s inevitably going to go wrong. Maybe you’re stuck on the tarmac for two hours without an explanation. Maybe your flight is re-routed through Idaho, six hours late. Hey, if you’re lucky, maybe your airplane’s crew doesn’t even show up in the first place!

Once you’ve processed the horror of modern travel, take action. With the assistance of Scott Ginsberg, the brand manager of AirHelp—an app which, as its name promises, helps passengers understand their rights and file claims against airlines who’ve done them wrong—ready yourself with receipts and get back what’s yours (even if you didn’t know it was yours in the first place).

GQ: Let’s start broadly: What rights do airline passengers have, and how can they fight for those rights?
Scott Ginsberg: From a traveler perspective, most people don’t really know that they have rights, or, if they do know, maybe [they think] “of course I have rights as a traveler!” They don’t know specifically what those rights are. It’s like the movie Inception: there’s these different levels that you have to go through.

The challenge is that it’s at odds with the customer experience of being a traveler. When you’re at LaGuardia and you’re flying to London and it’s 6pm on a Saturday night and it’s delayed and delayed and delayed and everything is getting worse and worse, what the airline does is offer you options. They’re going to offer you options that will result in the lowest spend for them, because they’re a business. They are going to offer you food and drink vouchers. They may start offering you travel vouchers. We’ve all been at the airline where it’s like a casino: “Ok, we’re offering $200! $300! $500!” And it just keeps going up and up, and what happens is, we get romanticized and excited: “Oh a free flight to anywhere in the country?” What we don’t remember is that there is another option, and the airline is not going to tell us about that. It doesn’t mean they’re lying. They’re doing what’s in their interest.

Let’s dig into the minutiae of it all. If you try to handle a flight issue with the airlines directly, is there specific language you should be using? What’s the best way to get the airlines to work for you?
There are four different words that you need to know at the very beginning of the process, otherwise it’ll mess up everything going forward. The four different types of disruption are: Flight delay, a cancelation, an overbooking—which is also known as “denied boarding” and that’s when the airline intentionally overbooks the flight knowing that a percentage of passengers won’t show up and then sometimes it doesn’t work out and people are asked not to board the plane because it just didn’t work out—and then there’s luggage.

The next step is most likely before you talk to the customer service person from the airline itself, you’re likely to speak with a gate agent. Gate agents at the airport are personally some of my favorite people because they have the hardest job, they get no love, and all they do all day is get gunshots from passengers that think that they’re the problem, but they’re just the messenger. Kiss those peoples’ asses. Ask them how they’re doing. I think there’s an initial sense of approachability that’s really important with them because these people are the first layer of champions for you to potentially get compensated.

Once you get into the specifics of the disruption, it gets a bit more complicated but I can give you some very straightforward advice. Let’s say you have a flight delay. You are traveling from Miami and you are going to Amsterdam. This is an EU flight, because you’re going to an EU state, so if your flight is delayed, a couple key things. First thing you want to do is hold onto your boarding pass. You may have that physically printed out, you may use your phone to do that, so if it’s on your phone just take a screenshot to be safe, and if it’s paper, hold onto it, don’t crumple it up. That is one of your most important travel documents. It has the booking reference number on it, it has the barcode, and all of these elements are going to be important as you file for compensation. If you’re going through a flight delay, it’s been four hours, just go up and ask them. “Hey, I was just really curious, why is the flight delayed?” And I think that’s the right language to use. Don’t be like, “What the fuck is going on? Why are you doing this?” Don’t be that guy. Just be curious and be friendly and be like, “Hey guys, what’s happening, I’m kind of curious?” Everything they say, write down. Take notes. Use their exact language.

Now, let’s say you are waiting at the airport for an extended period of time. You can ask the airline to cover your meals and refreshments. It is legally your right to get food and drinks. A couple of other key things. It is extremely important before you sign any document or waive any offer that you pause. It’s attractive, and it’s enticing, especially when you’ve got the hangries and people are giving you potential flight vouchers. Don’t sign yet. The reason is: If you sign a document, that can potentially waive your right to filing compensation in the future. So you can’t like, sign the document to get on a later flight, or sign a flight voucher for $400 and then go to AirHelp and file. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You have to make a stand.

If you’re delayed, also, the airline can provide you with a hotel room. [Ed note: unless it’s weather-related. More on that later.] That is legally your right. But if you throw away that voucher, for example, and you get to the hotel, the hotel’s not just gonna say “Oh I’m sorry you were delayed, here’s the king-sized penthouse suite.” You have to show them the piece of paper.

I had an airline run-in recently, where my bags got sent back to New York from Florida, but I was stranded there for two days because of a snowstorm, so we had to pay for hotel and clothing and toiletries.
Ok, so let’s go to the beginning of the story here. So the first thing is: You flew domestically from Florida to New York, correct?

That is correct.
One of the challenges of air passenger rights in the United States is that our laws are not anywhere near as generous as Europe. It’s unfortunate. So in the States, in terms of what’s legally owed to you when it comes to luggage, the laws are great, but for delays and cancelation and even overbooking, unfortunately you don’t have as many rights. If you were stuck on the tarmac for more than three hours, there’s an opportunity to file for compensation. Did that happen to you?

It did not. We didn’t even get on the flight. Our bags did!
Ok so there’s one example. Even though it’s harder to file a claim in the states just cause the rights aren’t as good, tarmacs are a great instance where if you’re on the tarmac for that extended period of time, you can get up to $1350 in compensation. So if in your particular case, you and your friends were stuck on the tarmac, then immediately I would have filed your boarding pass on the app and filed for compensation because you probably could’ve gotten paid for that.

Something else that people ask a lot about are these snowstorms, or windy weather, all this kind of stuff. Regardless of the country that you’re in, weather falls under the category of “extraordinary circumstances” and is not eligible for compensation.

Did you save your receipts from the hotel and the toiletries and the clothes?

Yes, and we submitted all of those — and we also saved the checked baggage fees receipts, and we got those reimbursed as well.
Ok, so you did that correctly. You saved the receipts. You kept everything. You documented it. That’s another smart thing to do. That’s what I personally usually mess up, because I’m so right-brained and I’m so not detail-oriented, and I’m not organized when it comes to stuff like that. So well done on that front, and for everyone else out there that is trying to learn about this, just save everything because you never know.

So something else about the luggage – when your luggage didn’t arrive, were you in the baggage claim area, talking to anyone? Or did you only interact with the airlines?

We only interacted with the airlines. When they rebooked us to New York two days later, they booked us into JFK but our bags were stuck at LaGuardia. They wanted us to go retrieve our bags from the other airport. That took some negotiation as well. We had them delivered to our house.
Good for you. That’s another smart thing to do. You don’t have to take that trip. They want you to air-hop because it’s cheaper for you guys to take the tram from JFK to LaGuardia than for them to deliver bags to four different people. Again, there’s something that is not an obligation, but it’s just the airline trying to save on costs. So that was a smart thing to do, to say, “No, we have a meeting to get to. This is ridiculous. These are going to be delivered to our house.” And they’ll say, “OK.”

That’s exactly how it happened.
Good. I just tend to not care. That’s a thing that people do, especially if it’s a business trip. People tend to not care because they’re expensing it anyway so they don’t care what it costs. So it becomes an interesting experience because if you’re a business traveler, you’re probably less likely to file a claim versus a family of four, who has screaming children and who has a wedding to go to. Depending on your situation and if you’re reporting to someone, you may or may not file.

So let me get back to one other thing about luggage. You had lost luggage. That’s the classification of your particular disruption. But there’s also damaged luggage, and that didn’t happen to you, but what’s important is when you’re at the airport, if your luggage shows up and it’s broken, there’s a little office, and you have to fill out the damage claim form, also known as the Property Irregularity Report. This is very important, because if you do not fill out the forms and you just leave the airline in a huff because you’re upset, like “Oh I’ll deal with it tomorrow.” That happens a lot, which I totally understand. If it’s 3 in the morning and you have a meeting at 8 and you’re like “Fuck it, I don’t care, I’m just gonna leave,” walking off the premises of the airport property, you just lost your right to get compensated. So don’t leave! Fill out every form. Take a picture of the form with your cellphone if they don’t give you a copy. Just do all of that. That didn’t happen to you, but [it’s] another moment where people tend to mess up.


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