6 ms·

I'll flip this around and say I've never understood why an airline is viewed as a special case. In the general case, if you enter into a contract and pay for a

by jbstack 1mo ago

I'll flip this around and say I've never understood why an airline is viewed as a special case. In the general case, if you enter into a contract and pay for a service, then don't receive that service, you're entitled to sue the service provider for your losses. For example, if I turn up to a hotel I booked only to find that the room isn't available, I'm entitled to sue the hotel for my cost in finding a reasonable last minute replacement. That's the case even if the room wasn't available because it was unsafe for some reason. Of course nobody is expecting that they "keep flying the plane with engine issues so you could make your important meetings". But ultimately you relied on them to get you to that meeting, and they failed to do so, so you should be compensated so that you're no worse off than if they had provided the service. The fact that an airline will sometimes fail to get their customers to their destination and will have to compensate them for it, is just the cost of doing business. Luckily in the UK and the EU your right to compensation for delayed flights is enshrined in law.

dopamean 1mo ago
I believe the contract you enter into is that the airline will get you to your destination safely. I don't believe there's any special case there. FWIW I think we should have the same laws in the US that you all have in the UK and EU.
arein3 1mo ago
There are exceptional cases, detrimental to both you and the company. Company already swallowed a pretty serious loss, in that case arguably common sense is to let it go, sometimes sh*t happens.
- thayne 1mo ago
  If they truly were exceptional that would be fine. But long delays happen a lot, and I am sure there are things airlines could do to improve that like maintain the planes better so they aren't grounded as often and having backup planes so that if one has problems they can put customers on a different one.
  - arein3 1mo ago
    I'm with you on the delays, especially since it's one sided, company doesn't loose anything, main inconvenicence is to the user so the company has to be incentivised to be on time (it may be even beneficial for the airport, since passengers would buy more overpriced stuff from waiting area). I was referring to the case when an engine went bad and company had to use intermediate airport and accomodate all users for the night. Also you wouldn't want to punish company hard for admiting technical issues, since that might cause them to underreport and create dangerous situations.
  - c22 1mo ago
    Like back-up planes at every airport?
    - thayne 1mo ago
      It probably doesn't make sense for every airline to have a backup at every airport. But maybe the airport itself keeps a couple of backup planes that it rents out to airlines when they need it.
  - twisterius 1mo ago
    [dead]
- martin_a 1mo ago
  I think that's exactly the case you would insure yourself against as an airline, so when shit hits the fan, you will not collapse.
  - abustamam 1mo ago
    Its kinda strange to have to insure yourself against an airline, when generally we insure ourselves against acts of nature and accidents and thieves.
    - KPGv2 1mo ago
      > generally we insure ourselves against acts of nature and accidents and thieves. No. We insure ourselves against unforeseen events whose effects are financially unbearable to us otherwise. You've conveniently carved out certain unforeseen events in order to serve your point rather than being intellectually honest. Businesses insure themselves against the death of an important employee, for example. If that employee is murdered, that is neither an act of nature, an accident, nor thievery. You might argue "you were robbed of an employee" and stretch the meaning of the word "thief" but then I'd say a similar stretching of "act of nature [or] accident" includes "aircraft malfunction" Businesses also insure against a great many other things.
  - pibaker 1mo ago
    How do you get an insurance for lost profits due to not making a meeting as an individual?
    - martin_a 1mo ago
      You don't. You file a claim with the airline for any losses, take them to civil court or whatever is needed to get your money back. The airline itself should insure against such events, or rather what follows from them.
stephenhuey 1mo ago
Airlines are quite a special case. Learned a lot from this a few months ago: https://davidoks.blog/p/why-airlines-are-always-going-bankrupt https://davidoks.blog/p/why-airlines-are-always-going-bankru... I've had plenty of bad airline experiences and wished they gave me more for my trouble, but clearly they are unable to at current margins. If you want the market to provide a better service, it already does: you can pay tons more to fly private, either a charter or your own jet you purchased!
- teachrdan 1mo ago
  > I've had plenty of bad airline experiences and wished they gave me more for my trouble, but clearly they are unable to at current margins. It's weird to see people simp for the airline industry. A cursory google search shows that United Airlines, to take one example, made $4,300,000,000 in profits before taxes last year. This is money that could easily be spent on things like better maintenance, more pilots and crew, and other expenditures that would make flights less apt to be delayed or canceled. Instead it goes to shareholders and executives. https://www.united.com/en/us/newsroom/announcements/cision-125435 https://www.united.com/en/us/newsroom/announcements/cision-1...
  - ngriffiths 1mo ago
    This was a fantastic year for United, and the margin is ~6%! They lost a similar amount in 2020. The earnings history definitely backs up the story of relatively low margins, weak growth and a fair amount of volatility to deal with.
    - teachrdan 1mo ago
      > They lost a similar amount in 2020 I wouldn't be surprised that an airline lost money in one of the worst travel years of all time (due to Covid). Cursory searching shows United made more than $3,000,000,000 in 2024. So even if 2025 was an unusually good year for them, it wasn't a complete anomaly. Just goes to show that when flights get delayed due to insufficient available crew or maintenance issues, it's a savings that's passed on to investors and the c-suite at the expense of consumers.
contrast 1mo ago
In the UK and EU you absolutely do not have the right to be compensated for sales or deals not closed in part due to a delayed flight. Your entire point is completely at odds to reality. In the general case, contracts do not guarantee there are never problems, and problems happening do not create an automatic entitlement to sue. The entire point of contracts is to protect both parties. Ultimately, if you are travelling, you are relying on *you* to get yourself there. Airlines and hotels will help, there's compensation available to some degree, but extrapolating that out to "everything is someone else's responsibility and I deserve to be compensated for everything I hoped to achieve" is pure fantasy.
- ddj231 1mo ago
  seems OP is not talking about compensation of the deal itself but rather compensation for the actual flight rather than a $100 voucher. Assuming his flight to Brazil was much more than that
  - badestrand 1mo ago
    Why should the entire flight be compensated? The airline provided the flight, just 24 hours later (and the delay is what the $100 are supposed to compensate).
    - HumblyTossed 1mo ago
      How many times does a door dasher have to deliver your food 24 hours later before you realize your argument has flaws?
    - crote 1mo ago
      Because the customer purchased a flight on a specific date, which was not delivered. If you book a hotel room for 1-7 August to visit a conference, would you be okay if they said "oopsie, it'll be available for you 10-17 August, here's a $100 compensation"? What about a rental car, or food delivery? Is it okay for your wedding photographer to show up a day late? Of course not, the product you bought is inherently time-sensitive.
yibg 1mo ago
I don’t think airlines are a special case? They should compensate you for cancelled flights, delays etc, which sounds like they did. What you seem to be asking for is compensation for… actually I’m not sure what. What is the value of the missed meeting they should compensate? If you take a taxi to a meeting and the taxi broke down so you missed some important meeting, should the taxi driver / company compensate you for that too? Or do they just refund you the fare, or pay for a different taxi?
Eridrus 1mo ago
> In the general case, if you enter into a contract and pay for a service, then don't receive that service, you're entitled to sue the service provider for your losses. Do you think this is how companies sell things? With uncapped liability? Do you think AWS reimburses customers for their lost revenue when they have an outage?
- 1970-01-01 1mo ago
  Re: AWS. Yes, you have agreed to SLAs. Credit is issued on your bill if they slip away from the 99% uptime contract.
  - Eridrus 1mo ago
    Yes, but they do not compensate you based on your lost revenue, they compensate you based on how much you spent with them. The best you can get from them is a refund.
    - digitalPhonix 1mo ago
      Depends on the SLA. Usually you negotiate an SLA to cover much more than a refund of the missed service targets (but with a fixed/known ahead of time cost for breaching the SLA).
      - badestrand 1mo ago
        "Usually"? How many of Amazon's AWS customers have a custom SLA with them, maybe 0.001%?
        digitalPhonix 1mo ago
        I would say even smaller; but more than 90% of those SLAs will have explicit remediation and compensation clauses, hence “usually” wrt. to negotiating an SLA.
pants2 1mo ago
This would require airlines underwriting the value of the meetings that you might miss and pricing their services accordingly. I imagine an airline would never sell a flight to CEOs on their way to board meetings, or actors on their way to filming a big budget movie. You can absolutely find someone willing to sell you insurance on whatever you need for a price, but the airline isn't in the business of insuring the value of your meetings.
roncesvalles 1mo ago
My understanding is that there is no arrival time SLA when you buy a plane ticket (barring the compensation ladder set by EU regulators). All they owe you is getting you and your stuff to the destination.
im3w1l 1mo ago
You are basically arguing that travelers with little to lose from a delay should subsidize travelers with a lot to lose, they would pay the same ticket prize but end up with different payouts. I don't think that's reasonable. If you have a lot to lose then extra insurance should be a premium offering.
jonas21 1mo ago
You must never read the contracts you enter into. Nearly every contract limits the liability of the service provider to the amount you paid them. Short of proving fraud or negligence, you're not going to get more than that.
- jasomill 1mo ago
  That seems fair. Presumably a flight from Rio to the US cost significantly more than $100.
KPGv2 1mo ago
> But ultimately you relied on them to get you to that meeting, and they failed to do so, so you should be compensated so that you're no worse off than if they had provided the service. By this logic, should I be able to sue Brooks Brothers for lost earnings if I split my pants in the middle of a sales pitch? Goodyear if I blow a tire on the way to a job interview? Taco Bell if I crap my pants in the middle of Jeopardy?
crote 1mo ago
> In the general case, if you enter into a contract and pay for a service, then don't receive that service, you're entitled to sue the service provider for your losses. This generally only applies to direct losses, though. If Amazon ships you a defective Bic pen, and it leaves you unable to sign a time-critical $1B contract, Amazon is only liable for the cost of the Bic pen - not the resulting $1B loss. You might be able to sue for the cost of obtaining a replacement pen, but anything beyond that isn't going to happen without some kind of bespoke SLA.
rpdillon 1mo ago
> In the general case, if you enter into a contract and pay for a service, then don't receive that service, you're entitled to sue the service provider for your losses. You can sue anyone for anything. But when a service provider can't provide service because of acts of god, accidents, safety issues, or equipment failure, that's just... reality. Courts are not going to give you a huge payout because Delta refused to fly you in a broken plane to make your meeting. This is why insurance is a thing.

by jbstack 1mo ago

dopamean 1mo ago

I believe the contract you enter into is that the airline will get you to your destination safely. I don't believe there's any special case there. FWIW I think we should have the same laws in the US that you all have in the UK and EU.

arein3 1mo ago

There are exceptional cases, detrimental to both you and the company. Company already swallowed a pretty serious loss, in that case arguably common sense is to let it go, sometimes sh*t happens.

thayne 1mo ago
If they truly were exceptional that would be fine. But long delays happen a lot, and I am sure there are things airlines could do to improve that like maintain the planes better so they aren't grounded as often and having backup planes so that if one has problems they can put customers on a different one.
- arein3 1mo ago
  I'm with you on the delays, especially since it's one sided, company doesn't loose anything, main inconvenicence is to the user so the company has to be incentivised to be on time (it may be even beneficial for the airport, since passengers would buy more overpriced stuff from waiting area). I was referring to the case when an engine went bad and company had to use intermediate airport and accomodate all users for the night. Also you wouldn't want to punish company hard for admiting technical issues, since that might cause them to underreport and create dangerous situations.
- c22 1mo ago
  Like back-up planes at every airport?
  - thayne 1mo ago
    It probably doesn't make sense for every airline to have a backup at every airport. But maybe the airport itself keeps a couple of backup planes that it rents out to airlines when they need it.
- twisterius 1mo ago
  [dead]
martin_a 1mo ago
I think that's exactly the case you would insure yourself against as an airline, so when shit hits the fan, you will not collapse.
- abustamam 1mo ago
  Its kinda strange to have to insure yourself against an airline, when generally we insure ourselves against acts of nature and accidents and thieves.
  - KPGv2 1mo ago
    > generally we insure ourselves against acts of nature and accidents and thieves. No. We insure ourselves against unforeseen events whose effects are financially unbearable to us otherwise. You've conveniently carved out certain unforeseen events in order to serve your point rather than being intellectually honest. Businesses insure themselves against the death of an important employee, for example. If that employee is murdered, that is neither an act of nature, an accident, nor thievery. You might argue "you were robbed of an employee" and stretch the meaning of the word "thief" but then I'd say a similar stretching of "act of nature [or] accident" includes "aircraft malfunction" Businesses also insure against a great many other things.
- pibaker 1mo ago
  How do you get an insurance for lost profits due to not making a meeting as an individual?
  - martin_a 1mo ago
    You don't. You file a claim with the airline for any losses, take them to civil court or whatever is needed to get your money back. The airline itself should insure against such events, or rather what follows from them.

stephenhuey 1mo ago

Airlines are quite a special case. Learned a lot from this a few months ago: https://davidoks.blog/p/why-airlines-are-always-going-bankrupt https://davidoks.blog/p/why-airlines-are-always-going-bankru... I've had plenty of bad airline experiences and wished they gave me more for my trouble, but clearly they are unable to at current margins. If you want the market to provide a better service, it already does: you can pay tons more to fly private, either a charter or your own jet you purchased!

teachrdan 1mo ago
> I've had plenty of bad airline experiences and wished they gave me more for my trouble, but clearly they are unable to at current margins. It's weird to see people simp for the airline industry. A cursory google search shows that United Airlines, to take one example, made $4,300,000,000 in profits before taxes last year. This is money that could easily be spent on things like better maintenance, more pilots and crew, and other expenditures that would make flights less apt to be delayed or canceled. Instead it goes to shareholders and executives. https://www.united.com/en/us/newsroom/announcements/cision-125435 https://www.united.com/en/us/newsroom/announcements/cision-1...
- ngriffiths 1mo ago
  This was a fantastic year for United, and the margin is ~6%! They lost a similar amount in 2020. The earnings history definitely backs up the story of relatively low margins, weak growth and a fair amount of volatility to deal with.
  - teachrdan 1mo ago
    > They lost a similar amount in 2020 I wouldn't be surprised that an airline lost money in one of the worst travel years of all time (due to Covid). Cursory searching shows United made more than $3,000,000,000 in 2024. So even if 2025 was an unusually good year for them, it wasn't a complete anomaly. Just goes to show that when flights get delayed due to insufficient available crew or maintenance issues, it's a savings that's passed on to investors and the c-suite at the expense of consumers.

contrast 1mo ago

In the UK and EU you absolutely do not have the right to be compensated for sales or deals not closed in part due to a delayed flight. Your entire point is completely at odds to reality. In the general case, contracts do not guarantee there are never problems, and problems happening do not create an automatic entitlement to sue. The entire point of contracts is to protect both parties. Ultimately, if you are travelling, you are relying on *you* to get yourself there. Airlines and hotels will help, there's compensation available to some degree, but extrapolating that out to "everything is someone else's responsibility and I deserve to be compensated for everything I hoped to achieve" is pure fantasy.

ddj231 1mo ago
seems OP is not talking about compensation of the deal itself but rather compensation for the actual flight rather than a $100 voucher. Assuming his flight to Brazil was much more than that
- badestrand 1mo ago
  Why should the entire flight be compensated? The airline provided the flight, just 24 hours later (and the delay is what the $100 are supposed to compensate).
  - HumblyTossed 1mo ago
    How many times does a door dasher have to deliver your food 24 hours later before you realize your argument has flaws?
  - crote 1mo ago
    Because the customer purchased a flight on a specific date, which was not delivered. If you book a hotel room for 1-7 August to visit a conference, would you be okay if they said "oopsie, it'll be available for you 10-17 August, here's a $100 compensation"? What about a rental car, or food delivery? Is it okay for your wedding photographer to show up a day late? Of course not, the product you bought is inherently time-sensitive.

yibg 1mo ago

I don’t think airlines are a special case? They should compensate you for cancelled flights, delays etc, which sounds like they did. What you seem to be asking for is compensation for… actually I’m not sure what. What is the value of the missed meeting they should compensate? If you take a taxi to a meeting and the taxi broke down so you missed some important meeting, should the taxi driver / company compensate you for that too? Or do they just refund you the fare, or pay for a different taxi?

Eridrus 1mo ago

> In the general case, if you enter into a contract and pay for a service, then don't receive that service, you're entitled to sue the service provider for your losses. Do you think this is how companies sell things? With uncapped liability? Do you think AWS reimburses customers for their lost revenue when they have an outage?

1970-01-01 1mo ago
Re: AWS. Yes, you have agreed to SLAs. Credit is issued on your bill if they slip away from the 99% uptime contract.
- Eridrus 1mo ago
  Yes, but they do not compensate you based on your lost revenue, they compensate you based on how much you spent with them. The best you can get from them is a refund.
  - digitalPhonix 1mo ago
    Depends on the SLA. Usually you negotiate an SLA to cover much more than a refund of the missed service targets (but with a fixed/known ahead of time cost for breaching the SLA).
    - badestrand 1mo ago
      "Usually"? How many of Amazon's AWS customers have a custom SLA with them, maybe 0.001%?
      - digitalPhonix 1mo ago
        I would say even smaller; but more than 90% of those SLAs will have explicit remediation and compensation clauses, hence “usually” wrt. to negotiating an SLA.

pants2 1mo ago

This would require airlines underwriting the value of the meetings that you might miss and pricing their services accordingly. I imagine an airline would never sell a flight to CEOs on their way to board meetings, or actors on their way to filming a big budget movie. You can absolutely find someone willing to sell you insurance on whatever you need for a price, but the airline isn't in the business of insuring the value of your meetings.

roncesvalles 1mo ago

My understanding is that there is no arrival time SLA when you buy a plane ticket (barring the compensation ladder set by EU regulators). All they owe you is getting you and your stuff to the destination.

im3w1l 1mo ago

You are basically arguing that travelers with little to lose from a delay should subsidize travelers with a lot to lose, they would pay the same ticket prize but end up with different payouts. I don't think that's reasonable. If you have a lot to lose then extra insurance should be a premium offering.

jonas21 1mo ago

You must never read the contracts you enter into. Nearly every contract limits the liability of the service provider to the amount you paid them. Short of proving fraud or negligence, you're not going to get more than that.

jasomill 1mo ago
That seems fair. Presumably a flight from Rio to the US cost significantly more than $100.

KPGv2 1mo ago

> But ultimately you relied on them to get you to that meeting, and they failed to do so, so you should be compensated so that you're no worse off than if they had provided the service. By this logic, should I be able to sue Brooks Brothers for lost earnings if I split my pants in the middle of a sales pitch? Goodyear if I blow a tire on the way to a job interview? Taco Bell if I crap my pants in the middle of Jeopardy?

crote 1mo ago

> In the general case, if you enter into a contract and pay for a service, then don't receive that service, you're entitled to sue the service provider for your losses. This generally only applies to direct losses, though. If Amazon ships you a defective Bic pen, and it leaves you unable to sign a time-critical $1B contract, Amazon is only liable for the cost of the Bic pen - not the resulting $1B loss. You might be able to sue for the cost of obtaining a replacement pen, but anything beyond that isn't going to happen without some kind of bespoke SLA.

rpdillon 1mo ago

> In the general case, if you enter into a contract and pay for a service, then don't receive that service, you're entitled to sue the service provider for your losses. You can sue anyone for anything. But when a service provider can't provide service because of acts of god, accidents, safety issues, or equipment failure, that's just... reality. Courts are not going to give you a huge payout because Delta refused to fly you in a broken plane to make your meeting. This is why insurance is a thing.