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Spirit Airlines and American Airlines have angered customers all over the United States in the last week with mounting flight cancellations.
Spirit and American both have canceled or delayed more than 1,000 flights since Sunday, variously attributed to weather conditions, staffing problems, and IT issues. On Wednesday, more than 60% of Spirit’s flights were canceled and another 10% were delayed, while American canceled a much smaller 4% of its flights on Wednesday but delayed about 19%, according to Flight Aware.
A Spirit spokesperson told CBS on Wednesday that the company is working to provide refunds and cancellations affected travelers, and that cancellations are expected to “progressively drop in the days to come.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for American told NPR the company’s team members “are working around the clock for our customers” amid a major storm in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where the airline’s biggest hub is located.
But if stranded travelers ultimately feel legal action is necessary, they could be out of luck.
American added a class action waiver to its contract of carriage — the document outlining legal responsibilities of both an airline and its customers — in April 2020, and Spirit has had one since even before that. The waivers essentially force passengers who want to file class action lawsuits against the company to instead go through arbitration.
The arbitration process essentially gives companies a detour out of court for most disputes, forcing potential plaintiffs to have their complaints heard before an ostensibly-neutral “arbitrator” rather than a judge or jury. In most cases, the decision of the arbitrator is binding and cannot be reversed in court.
“What the airline is saying is: If you ever have a dispute with us, the only way you can pursue this is in private,” said Deborah Hensler, Ph.D., a professor of law at Stanford Law School, told The New York Times back in April. “These types of agreements are usually an effort to prevent people from having an effective way of challenging a company on what might arguably be a legal violation.”
Forced arbitration is usually quite effective at limiting loss for companies — so effective that few people even bother to go through the process. For example, per data submitted by Google and Facebook to Congress two years ago, the two tech companies had just a handful of arbitration cases between 2014 and 2019, with Google reporting 14 and Facebook showing only five.
And it’s already quite difficult for airlines to be sued in the United States, The New York Times noted, as they are exempt from state and local laws. That already leaves class action lawsuits one of the only avenues airline passengers can use to right any perceived wrongs, and arbitration makes that all the more difficult.
That hasn’t stopped class action lawsuits from being filed against airlines with arbitration clauses — anyone can sue, but that doesn’t mean the lawsuit will be successful.
In 2020, Spirit successfully pointed to its class action waiver in its contract of carriage to defend itself from a lawsuit over a $6 security shortcut pass that plaintiffs argued was a sham.
More recently, a Florida couple sued Spirit over a similar “shortcut boarding” upgrade that was allegedly rendered useless by strict loading and unloading protocols mandated during the coronavirus pandemic. That lawsuit is still playing out in court.
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36 thoughts onFlight Cancellations Mount, But Customers Looking to Legal Remedy for Airline Woes May Be Disappointed
add me this airline should be shutdown
ADD ME
ADD ME THIS AIRLINE IS A JOKE
I bought a ticket on Aeromexico from San Francisco to Salvador, Bahia, Brasil and it was canceled due to covid. They would not refund my money. Said I had to use ticket within 1 year, even though Brasil was not allowing travelers. And made me pay more money to finally use the ticket. I want to sue them.
Please add me.
I’m one of the major cancellations in St Maarten. Had a return flight with AA on Tuesday 3/17/2020
AA canceled our flight at 10:00PM Saturday 3/15/2020 with no recourse as Airport was shutting down Sunday @ 6:00pm 3/15/2020
I persued a reimbursement after many hours trying to get a flight out of the country. No response from AA after 9 hours on phone. Very long story.
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I’m one of those cancellations. As was my fiance’. There was absolutely no bad weather. All the other airlines were running smooth. Spirit chose to have no regard for us. We were in Cancun. We were to return Thursday. They informed us in the morning that our flight is cancelled and they might be able to book us a new flight in , get this,…… 2-3 days!!!
Ha. Sure. We don’t have children waiting for us. No jobs. We can just stay in Cancun for 3 more days. Or maybe more. Who knows. No problem.
They proceeded to NOT offer a refund, but instead to take a $50 voucher. That way we are stuck with Spirit once again.
I will NEVER fly with them ever again. DELTA saved our butts that day(as far as getting home). The emotional toll it took in me and my fiancé is totally unacceptable though. I am officially afraid or in fear of flying again. Being stranded is a phobia of mine. What if we had no money left? What then? We were in Mexico. They weren’t going to let us stay for free. As bad as it was on us, I can’t imagine how much worse it must have been for some.
Shame on you SPIRIT AIRLINES
Same. I was left in Cancun with a canceled flight on 8/2 the morning of. Needed to pay up to book a flight on the way to the airport. Spirit Airlines phone wouldn’t even work…
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What I’m trying to figure out is why is this article even being written? What help did it provide? The problem with all the airlines who have this so-called arbitration clause written in their contracts is due to FAA allowing them to get away with it–hence not holding the airlines accountable for their abuse! That’s what it is, unlawful use of their money for a goods/service that they fail to fulfill in a timely or professional manner! These lawsuits should be directed and aimed at the FAA(the crooks)! FAA allowed these laws to take affect years back…inciting these crooked airlines to mistreat passengers!
Deb, I agree and great point. I stopped flying Spirit when I had to drive 1.5 hours to Oakland Airport to find my flight was canceled.
I actually flew Spirit one and one time only–and I vowed I’d never again fly their airline. I’m a past flight attendant and never knew the FAA allowed them to change the “passenger bill of rights”. I had the most horrific flight from Fort Lauderdale to Las Vegas. It was the only flight left/available at the time due to some event happening in Vegas(I didn’t have a choice). Then I was stranded in the las Vegas Airport after checking out of my hotel and pre checking in for my flight to get to the airport to have them tell me I was bumped from my flight and would have to get another flight departing 8 hrs later–then told after that flight never arrived to pick us up, I’d have to catch another flight possibly after midnight. I never stepped foot on another Spirit Flight again! But FAA is in thick as thieves with all these airlines…allowing them to create these so-called new passenger bill of rights and letting them write in laws only to protect their bottom line. It was never like that when I flew as a flight attendant back in the 90s. If a passenger was stranded/delayed for more than 4+ hours-the airlines had to either refund their money, get them on another flight, and or pay for accommodations and their meals for the time they were stranded. that’s what kept them professional and honest. Now they only get away with this abuse because FAA made it easy for them to mistreat the passengers. And they’re being paid handsomely to look the other way. I wish you luck, but if I were these passengers, I’d sue the FAA.
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