'Cancelled flights cost me £2,500 - but Delta won't pay up'

Annette Reeve writes

On February 18, we arrived at Aspen Airport to find that all flights had been cancelled due to the failure of a navigational aid. We were due to fly to Atlanta with Delta Air Lines to connect with a Virgin Atlantic flight back to London the next day.

Unhelpful Delta agents simply told us to come back tomorrow. We explained we had 24 hours to reach Atlanta to check in for our flight to the UK and asked to be re-routed. (We did not have a through-ticket, so we would have had to pay Virgin again if we had missed that flight.) The agent said all she could do was to give us a letter for our insurers and left us to find our own solution.

As we could not drive to Denver (the I-70 was closed due to a landslide), a friend drove us to Grand Junction airport, and we managed to fly to Atlanta via Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, arriving at 5am on February 19.

However, the new flights cost us over £2,500. After we had checked in, a Delta clerk told me that we would have been within our legal rights to insist that staff at Aspen re-route us free of charge. She said we should approach Delta for a refund and gave me the telephone numbers to call. This resulted in being passed backwards and forwards by its US customer care team. Finally I was told to make the claim online.

In the UK you have to deal with Delta’s partners – KLM and Air France – which were not the least bit interested. I was offered a £100 voucher and told to claim on my travel insurance. But Insure & Go says I have no cover as missed departure applies only if the customer is unable to reach the original departure point.

Expedia, through which I booked the flights, has secured a refund of £441 for the unused tickets, but says it cannot help pursue the airline for the replacement journey.

What are Delta’s obligations in this respect?

Gill Charlton, consumer correspondent, replies

Unlike in the EU, there are no US federal requirements covering compensation for delays or cancellations of domestic flights. Each airline has its own vague policy.  Rule 240 of Delta’s conditions of carriage  says that a passenger can either request a refund if the flight is cancelled or “Delta will transport the passenger to the destination on Delta’s next flight on which seats are available”. In my view, Delta failed in its duty of care as it could have re-routed Mrs Reeve using its own flight network.

The US Department of Transportation in Washington DC (transportation.gov) handles consumer complaints against airlines. Mrs Reeve used its web form to submit her grievance. US government departments can be tardy responders, so both of us were pleasantly surprised when a named agent came back within 24 hours. He said he had forwarded her complaint to Delta, which must provide a “substantive response” within 60 days. And if she didn’t hear back, she was to contact him again.

Delta responded 20 days later, saying there would be no further compensation as Mrs Reeve had been refunded for the original tickets. 

She wrote back to say that at the time of the cancellation, she had not asked for a refund, but had asked to be re-routed. At this point Delta capitulated and credited a further £2,164 to her card account.

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About Gill Charlton

Gill is the author of our beginner's guides to India and Burma. She is also an expert on Cornwall and consumer issues, especially legal disputes.