INOT FIRST CLASS - Flyer complaints soar as airlines cancel flights, deny refunds, ruin plans

The money kept the airlines from filing for The stress “totally undid any of the rest of bankruptcy and ended up protecting the the trip we'd taken. [...] That leads to consumers losing money to use the credits for a flight they weren’t The obvious solution to the major problem able to take.) should be to refund the customers who were unable to fly due to the pandemic, regardless After all, 87 percent of American Airlines of whether their purpose for the trip was flyers only flew once a year before the canceled or whether they were following pandemi. [...] been the most punctual of the airports since May 2020.51 PAGE 10 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS The government gave $50 billion in taxpayer • The Department of Transportation can dollars to the airline industry, but it’s unclear act by cracking down on the airlines to from the statistics that it helped consumers. [...] That time frame was used to capture the effects of the pandemic as it emerged and trends since the pandemic began, and to establish the norm that existed before the pandemic. [...] The Department of Transportation advises that a complaint is to be filed after the airline has a chance to resolve the issue to the consumer’s satisfaction, so the complaints should signal how well airlines deal with the issues.