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The problem with low fare flying

Sorry, but we can’t get you there today. (Image: Jim Glab)

By phone: “Hello? Hello? Chris? Sorry for all the noise. I’m stuck at the airport. My morning flight to Mexico City on Volaris just canceled, and they can’t put me on another flight until 11 pm tonight. There’s an Aeromexico flight at noon, but it’s $1,100. What can I do? What are my rights? Everyone around here is so pissed off!”

By email: “Frontier just canceled my flight to Tampa four hours before I was supposed to take off. They’re telling me there is no way to get there today. Does anyone have insight here? I am so angry/sad/lost.”

My reply: “When a flight cancels, all the airline has to do is provide full refund or a seat on its next flight. There are flights on other airlines to Tampa, but they are not required to accommodate passengers on those. It’s kinda what you get when booking with ultra low cost carriers. What was your fare?” 

That’s typical of an increasing number of desperate inquiries I get from travelers marooned by canceled flights on low-fare carriers. (Low fare carriers in the US include Frontier, Allegiant and Spirit. Volaris is a low fare carrier in Mexico. European low fare carriers include Norwegian, WOW, Easyjet and Ryanair)

The sad news is that there’s very little you can do if you are stuck in an irregular operation like a long delay or cancellation (called IROPS travel industry parlance). In the case of flight cancellation, all any airline is contractually required to do is offer you a seat on their next available flight, or refund your money if you decide to cancel the trip altogether. It is not required to offer you a seat on another carrier.

The problem with most low fare carriers is that they usually only offer one or two flights per day on most routes. If your low-fare flight cancels, you might have to wait until the end of the day– or worse, the next day to be re-accommodated on that carrier. (And if you are traveling during peak season, you might have to wait a few days if flights are sold out.)

Rain

Flight delay and cancellation headaches exacerbated by poor weather & full flights (Photo: Chris McGinnis)

What’s important to reiterate is that the low-fare carrier is under no obligation to pay for your flight on another airline. Back in the day, airlines would frequently offer to put you on another carrier with which they had an “interline agreement.” but most airlines, especially low-fare airlines, have ditched those to save money. (Delta and American ditched their interline agreement in 2015, which exacerbated its operational meltdown last week.)

So, you end up “getting what you pay for” when you book a low-fare carrier with a thin schedule. A good rule of thumb when booking low-fare carriers is to check and see how many flights per day it offers, then determine your risks.

A good example of this is the market between Atlanta and San Francisco. Delta offers seven nonstop flights per day on the route– with the lowest fares usually in the $350 range. United offers two nonstops at about the same price. Frontier, which frequently offers fares as low a $200 round trip, only offers one.

This is one way major carriers with robust schedules have a leg up on the low-fare competition with their new “basic economy fares.” During IROPS, a major carrier can usually offer several nonstop or one-stop alternatives to get you to your final destination a few hours late instead of a day or two late. A low-fare carrier can’t. And you get stuck.

Has this happened to you? How did it work out? Have you flown a low-fare carrier? Please leave your comments below. 

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Comments

  1. Worked for Virgin for a while. I would have some really PO’ed customers when their flights to PVR or Cabo canceled, and I could not get them there until 1 or 2 days later. I do not recommend using carriers that do not have interline agreements with other carriers when flying to a destination with few flights.

  2. I’ve been working in aviation for 30 years. I’ve studied this topic very deep. There is a solution and a easy one. The problem is the arrogance of airline managers. They think they know at all. They just work to get free tickets but are terrible professionals. many are promoted because they know someone and not because they are competente. All they care is free vacation ticket. I’ve heard many times from airlines employees ” My boss is an idiot and incompetent”. Lots of wrong people in wrong places working for airlines.

  3. This happened to me on a very important trip to San Diego! I was flying Virgin/Alaska from SFO (Alaska was my favorite airline before this). The first weekend they cancelled and couldn’t get me on a flight until the middle of the week! I rescheduled everything and was going to try again the next weekend. They cancelled that flight again and refused to rebook the fare for a date I could actually make it. All I wanted was a flight I already paid for.

    They gave me a $125 coupon on Alaska and a $50 coupon on Virgin that can’t be combined with another offer. So if you factor in the cost of my wasted vacation days, an Airbnb I never saw, taxi fare back and forth it cost me a lot of money to try and fly Alaska. Worst part is customer service on each airline just blamed each other and told me conflicting things. I didn’t even get my refund until a month after the fact, and I had to follow up with them several times to actually get it processed.

    The experience undermined my trust in Alaska and air travel in general. From now on I’ll just drive. SoCal traffic is better than Alaska/Virgin customer service.

  4. WN isn’t an ULCC and ceased even being a discount airline after they acquired and destroyed FL. They commonly have fares that are higher than the traditional carriers. Although they don’t interline with anyone, they do tend to be more accommodating than ULCCs.

  5. Agreed. Citi Prestige coverage kicks in after a three-hour flight delay. Much better than purchased insurance. Even works for award travel as long as you pay the fees with the card (or book the ticket with ThankYou Points).

  6. Travel insurance—meh—is useful if it covers your problem. We bought it for a Christmas trip one year. UA cancelled our commuter/SkyWest at the last minute (well, one hour before flight time) and Berkshire Travel couldn’t re-book (sorry, RE-ACCOMMODATE) us because there were no available seats for three days from our tiny airport (or anything nearby), so we drove to SFO, and UA changed our flight to a later one, no charge. We wasted the travel insurance for two passengers and took a redeye to the East Coast. My recommendation: look at credit card coverage, because those cards have all sorts of trip interruption insurance built in, along with rental car insurance, etc. etc.

  7. Hey there… Travel Insurance is definitely an option here. I think you get better coverage if you buy it from a third party. One of TravelSkills sponsors is Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection and they offer some interesting options– see bhtp.com. Another helpful place to look for the right travel insurance package is InsureMyTrip.com, which offers plans from several companies along with advice on finding the one that works best for your specific situation.

  8. travel insurance. that’s a good point. Chris, do you have any insight into this? Is it better to buy it from the airline (Delta) or a third party? Or is it generally a waste of money. Would make an interesting article/comment section.

  9. One night in December 2008, I was scheduled to fly through LAS to OMA… but LAS was closed by snowfall. How did Southwest cope? They flew _EVERYONE_ headed back East to PHX and did not let any flights leave Sky Harbor until all connecting passengers were ready to board to their destination with their luggage. I got to Omaha about four hours late, but their improvisation saved my trip.

  10. Southwest has a robust domestic route structure with flying much more spread out to “mini-hubs” than the traditional hub and spoke operators. I would posit that SWA is not as prone as most airlines to leave you stranded. They weren’t mentioned as a ULCC in the article, but the topmost picture shows their gate.

  11. Not so long ago, I sought to board my easyJet flight from Milan Malpensa to Paris Orly but it was cancelled. However, I simply needed to catch my early afternoon flight to make my important dinner appointment in Paris. So, I cut a deal with a sympathetic easyJet manager to re-route me to Brussels and, from there, I caught the Thalys high-speed train from Brussels to Paris. Luckily, I made it. While I paid for the Thalys one-way and easyJet had absolutely no obligation to do anything further for me, it was much better than missing out!

  12. Not my experience at all. I have had as good, and often better, service on Norwegian, EasyJet, WOW (for example) as on any US major airlines. Because of this I have decided to now focus my air travel needs on such carriers. The majors flaunt their “supremeacy” by taking of advantage that airlines are no longer “controlled.” OK, now it’s my turn.

  13. Mainline airline passengers can get stranded very same way as these ULCC carriers. A friend and his family were flying UA via EWR to FCO from BUF. The flight didn’t make it to EWR on time, and the United agent told them that he couldn’t get them to Rome for three weeks…so much for that cruise.

  14. Two flights on Ryanair was all it took for me to swear off the ultra low cost carriers for good unless there’s no other option. Crowded, full of inebriated tourists, and constant selling. Haven’t tried Spirit or Frontier and I absolutely will not fly with Allegiant – their maintenance was abysmal for a while and I’m not sure it’s improved.

  15. Thanks Mac. And Yuck! Not a good way to see Hawaii. I’m head there in a few weeks and hopefully will not meet the same fate! Of the fate of those on one of those 4-hour flights to no where we wrote about earlier this year.

  16. I agree with the points, but would add that even with mainline carriers, the issue is how much excess capacity they have – which these days is next to none. Yes, it’s spring break.

    Just this week I waited an extra day in San Francisco to get to Hawaii – because my flight to SFO was delayed on a mechanical, eight people on my SFO inbound missed this connection by 40 minutes – all of them in the business class cabin of the outbound.

    My well planned trip with family in paid business class – was decimated. Forget Business Class seats, that wasn’t available for three days. We didn’t sit together, we didn’t get on the next available flights – because they were all booked, which included other airlines. I have to petition the airline for a refund – after the fact.

    The lack of inventory has far reaching effects. The Hertz affiliate declared my late arrival as a rate change and wanted another $600, for a rental which was a day less. Hotels were fine about the entire thing.

    I’m happy the airlines are making money, but the experience they have created by constraining inventory to get there – is horrible. There is no buffer for anything to go wrong any longer.

  17. Just like you put it, you end up getting what you pay for. As much as I hate flying United, do it because there is backups and unless your screwed because of winter weather during the holidays they will get you to your destination. I also try to avoid really low fares, again you get what you pay for. This may sound weird, but instead of taking six trips a year to California, try to figure out how you can conduct your business in just two trips a year and fly business or first class.

  18. The solution: travel insurance.
    Also, when in Europe, you’re covered by the EU261 regulation, so you might be due a lovely compensation, and the airline has to accommodate you (hotel/food/phone calls).

  19. When stuck in an IROP on a low-fare airline, my colleagues ask for a full refund. The airline is usually grateful to have one fewer passenger to accommodate the next day (or the day after that, …).

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