USAir denies refund to terminally ill cancer patient

$4,200 is a decent sum of money. It's not like some jaunt to Florida on a super-saver. If the woman is able to win her cancer battle again, she'll likely need the money for medical expenses. If not, she might feel it would be better used helping her family after she was gone.

I'm sure it's not her top priority, but I don't see it being unreasonable to seek a refund or get frustrated by the callousness of the airline and want people to know what happened.

 

The travellers in those cities should have used the SWA service. Use it or lose it. If there is no competition the price goes up.

 

I get the principle, but it's quite the "Eff you" to the customers who helped you become the dominant carrier to then immediately septuple your fares just because you can.

 

True enough, seems like a bit of a screw job as reward for using their service.

 

PlayThrough, I think you missed my point - I don't quite understand why she isn't going anyway. The airline is in the wrong here, but I think she should take this trip anyway. If I'm dying and book a trip to Hawaii, then my doctor says I shouldn't travel, I'm going to tell him to screw and spend my last days in paradise.

 

"Jesus, if we made this ONE exception, everybody would be all over us . . . "

US Air remains a sewer.

 

Is terminal really terminal if a doctor says you can't travel because it may harm your health?

 

Airline should have treated it like a broken lease. "If we can sell these seats, then we can refund your fare."

But if the family tied up those seats for months and then canceled soon before the flight, and the airline cannot get anybody else to pay $4,200 to use them . . . then no way should they refund the fare.

We ALL have life and death consequences we deal with. Mom dies and you need a ticket in 48 hours? You'll get a slight accommodation by the airline --- provided you cough up a death certificate --- but you will still pay through the nose for that ticket.

How many people in this country get sick/injured and cannot make a trip they booked? Think this woman is the ONLY one this has ever happened to?

 

If the family set up a Twitter bucket list, they could have avoided this mess.

 

But I'm white!....

But the way I look at it, it's sort of buying a tank of gas and then wrecking your car. You can't get a refund from the gas station. You could try and transfer the gas to a new car, but you're not going to get your money back from the station.

I know, it's not exactly the same.

 

I don't know what it is, but when people buy an airline ticket, they feel like they are entitled to so much. I was asked once to charter a private aircraft for a family that was delayed and was going to miss their connection. It was a family of four and they paid less than $1,200 total, roundtrip, for their tickets. And she was serious. There were private planes that you could see from the terminal and she wanted to know why we couldn't use one of those. Her four tickets COMBINED couldn't charter an aircraft, yet because she was going to get where she wanted to go five hours later than planned, the airline should shell out large sums of money to make her happy.

I know that's an extreme case, but not by much.

Do airlines nickel and dime? Sure, they do. So do lots of companies. Going on playthrough's example of purchasing a car, sure, you can buy a base model for cheap, but if you want the extras, you're going to have to pay. Otherwise, you're like Southwest, and the price of the car is the same for everyone, regardless if you take the options or not.

In addition, and it's not much of an excuse, but the agents that you deal with are overworked and underpaid, stations are understaffed and there is a heap of responsibility they deal with on every flight.

A gate agent for most airlines starts at 9 bucks an hour. They have to deal with delays and cancellations, angry passengers in addition to making sure FAA regulations are followed, TSA regulations are followed and company procedures are followed. It's incredible the amount of responsibility that is heaped on typically undertrained and underpaid people.