So my father-in-law was flying to Boston yesterday. During his lay-over in Minneapolis his flight to Boston was cancelled due to "snow". Airline would not pay for hotel or to transfer to another airline.
When he finally flew to Boston the next day he talked to a gate attendant and was told that no flights had been cancelled the day before and there was no snow.
We are assuming that the airline cancelled his flight as it wasn't full enough and they wanted a fuller flight.
But now my father in-law is out a nights hotel, food, transportation, plus missing appointments he had.
Can any legal pede's out there tell me if this was legal? Seems really sketchy by the airline to cancel a flight and not offer any reimbursement.
Write to the DOT! They used to slam airlines for pulling these stunts!
Airlines suck
Hubby is a commercial pilot and has been for about 20 years. Just because there is no snow in Boston doesn't mean anything. There was a huge storm on the east coast and the way that the weather was fluctuating could have been very dangerous for a plane to fly through or around because of air flow around the storm.
DOT complaints are bad news in the airline industry! Keep complaining and never stop! Big problems for the airlines
What airline, what flight number?
Probably, northeast just had a big storm so they would be protected under a reasonable safety statute would be my guess.
I'd suspect your hunch was right, but it's not what you know, it's what you can prove.
Spirit does this all the time and as far as I know they're covered by their minimal contract of carriage.
You can check the flight number and history on flightaware.com and verify whether the flight flew or not. You can then check at the historical metars between the departure and arrival airport to get a good idea if weather was much of a factor.
Operationally, yesterday was a real mess in the northeast. Snow, high wind, very low cloud deck, constricted routings, etc. Also the rebuild carryover from the day before, crews out of place, airplanes out of place, etc. It takes about 24 hoursto get all of the moving pieces, from airports, to airlines, to the FAA, back together again.
Plus they add the indignity of wearing a mask the entire time
file a complaint with faa and consumer affairs