Can this trip be saved? I missed my connection — how about some compensation?

If you miss a connection and your flights aren’t on the same reservation, you’re normally out of luck. But Duane Perry’s circumstances are anything but normal.

He was flying from Philadelphia to Madrid, Spain, on US Airways, and then connecting to a puddlejumper to the Canary Islands. When he made the reservations online, he tried to book the flights together so that his second flight would be protected — in other words, so that if there were an unexpected delay getting into Madrid, he could miss his flight to the Canaries and get placed on the next flight at no cost.

But the system wouldn’t allow him to do that, despite the fact that the second carrier was a Star Alliance member. He had to make two separate reservations. Realizing that the connection time was tight, he asked US Airways if 1 1/2 hours was enough connection time to get to his second flight. A representative assured him it was.

It wasn’t.

Perry’s flight was more than an hour late. Although he was one of the first people off the plane and although he sprinted across the terminal to make the fight, he missed it.

When we returned to the US Airways counter we were told that US Airways has no responsibility, because the connecting flight to the Canary Islands necessarily was booked on a separate ticket.

We ended up spending an entire day in the Madrid airport trying to negotiate the most cost effective way to fly to our final destination, that day.

After an entire lost morning and afternoon, we got a replacement flight, but at an additional cost of $866.97 for two coach seats.

We spent $3,323.60 on our US Airways travel, but nevertheless were treated with polite indifference by the US Airways agents in Madrid.

Even though we missed our connecting flight, because our US Airways flight was more than an hour late, the US Airways agents told us that it was our problem to solve at our own expense.

Perry asked US Airways to refund the $866.97 he had to spend. The airline sent him a series of apologetic form letters, first offering him two $75 vouchers, and then upping them to $150. His repeated appeals were met with the following form reply:

The travel experience you described is certainly not characteristic of the level of service we strive to provide.

With this in mind, I have reviewed both your original request and your additional request. After careful evaluation, I am unable to discover any additional concerns causing me to change the increased compensation issued. Regrettably, we are unable to honor your request for reimbursement of the tickets that you purchased to get to Canary Islands.

Again, we apologize for the difficulties you encountered. Your comments have helped us identify areas where our service needs improvement. Please be assured the necessary steps have been taken to prevent a recurrence.

Mr. Perry, thank you for choosing US Airways. We welcome the opportunity to provide the level of service you expect and deserve on a future US Airways flight.

Talk about a kiss-off.

Perry believes that’s not enough.

US Airways has offered only two coupons with a face value of $150 each, but expiring in a year, and excluding all internet (i.e. best) fares. The exclusion of internet fares renders those coupons potentially worthless.

To add insult to injury, we travelled Envoy Class on US Airways, both ways, and paid $3,323.60 for our US Airways travel. US Airways’ bad advice on connections, very late arrival, and unhelpful service for missed connections in Madrid are clearly no advertisement for US Airways or Envoy Class.

We would like to be reimbursed for the extra $866.97 we paid, if not for a day wasted in the airport.

I would send this to the “case dismissed” file if it weren’t for one thing: Perry tried to book both of these flights together, but couldn’t. He might have tried to work through a travel agent, but he did the next best thing: He sough assurances from US Airways that his connection time was adequate. They were wrong.

(Photo: mel foody/Flickr Creative Commons)

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  • Dang Ph

    I guess initially, the OP had few options: his flight with 1h30mn
    connection and the later flight at 880$. He put his bet on the 1h30mn
    and hoping, if even arriving late, he can get on the later flight
    without any extra expenses.

  • Rosered7033

    In that case, why bother with travel insurance? It’s not unreasonable to expect everything on your trip will be exactly as planned. But if you want to provide for contingencies, you can plan more time than you think you’ll need for a connection, or arrive the night before if you must be there the next day, and buy insurance in case things don’t go as planned (and in these days of cut-backs, more things ARE NOT going as planned).

  • Chris in NC

    @b71b38c218e54406c24b061e678cc787:disqus

    We don’t know the exact conversation between the OP and the airline rep. The bottom line is the rep did not err, as the connection flight met the minimum connecting time requirement. The problem was, since the 2nd ticket was booked independently, US Airways bears no legal responsibility for the forfeiture of the 2nd ticket.

    As little as I use a TA, this is the one exception where the OP should have consulted one. When the OP could not book the 2nd ticket on a single itinerary, he should turned to a live person to do the booking. In my opinion, the ultimate error was not booking this as a linked itinerary.

    Did the OP know that? I don’t know. Should the OP know that? I don’t know either

    However, every travel advice column I have read for years warns travelers to not depend on exact arrival times. In fact, even EU261 does not require compensation unless the delay exceed 4 hours.

    In this case, the OP was tripped up because the US Airways flight was delayed, and US Airways is an easy target to blame. What if the OP had a flight tire on the way to PHL? What if weather closed down the northeast corridor?

    Likewise, had the OP had a concert ticket, sports ticket or an Eurail ticket that couldn’t be used because of a flight delay, would everyone still hold US Airways responsible?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TBSCJO6WXX37T5ISTTUETH4OMM Fred Munroe

    Two tickets, two unrelated contracts, period. Every traveler should know this.

    A travel itinerary like this requires a very simple solution BEFORE you ticket it. An overnight in Madrid. My hunch about the real reason for MR. Perry buying this as two tickets, is price. Often the multi-airline ticket will cost more.

    Any travel agent (breathing human, not internet) worth anything would never let this happen. AND the services of that travel agent for their expertise on this one would be about $100, or less.

    I have clients adding a visit to Istanbul to a business visit to another European city. There choices were:

    1. Connections like Mr. Perry’s here.

    2. All flights on one ticket for an added cost of $470 each x two.

    3. An overnight break on the return to the US without any stress at a good airport hotel for about $125.00.

    I voted no. I am a travel agent and I know how to do my job.

  • Chris in NC

    and how late did the flight arrive? We don’t know this information. With a 90 minute window, the flight could have arrived late by 15 minutes and the OP still would have missed the connection.

    If you had a court case in Los Angeles at 11AM, you don’t fly in at 10AM unless you have no other choice.

    Even occasional travelers know that arrival times are never set in stone, and that changes are frequent and short delays are possible. Nowhere in the condition of carriage is the exact arrival time guaranteed. Never has and never will. Even if EU 261 were to apply, this flight would have been given a 4 hour window before compensation was due.

    Did the OP really receive incorrect information? The connection met the minimum connection times for Madrid. As AZ said, is there proof that the rep guaranteed that the OP would be fine? Rather, the more realistic scenario is that the rep said the “flight would meet the connection time requirements” and perhaps the OP interpreted that as a guarantee?

  • Dave

    Multiple problems here. First, the whole situation emphasizes my belief that the global alliances are of little benefit to the traveler; they’re just another case of benefiting the marketers rather than the customers.

    On the other hand, they were separate itineraries, and the possibility of a missed connection should have been planned for. As a mitigating circumstance, we don’t know how well-traveled the OP is. I think the people who respond to Chris, along with many on other forums, tend to forget that not everyone is a weekly flyer.

    On the third hand, this is exactly the behavior I would expect from USAirways. They have repeatedly demonstrated to me and many others that they really don’t give a rip about their passengers. The last straw for me was when I missed a connection — blamed on weather, of course — to the last flight of the night, which pushed from its gate immediately after we taxied past. Two of us in paid first class making that connection, which was the only one not held for our flight.

    I’d say there’s nothing to get involved with, but this does reflect poorly on USAirways and Star Alliance. The trip should have been bookable online in a single place if the alliance means anything at all.

  • Scott

    Sorry Emanuel, you are wrong. Employee of one airline cannot “link” separate reservations together, even from their own airline! Let alone, two separate tickets on two separate airlines. The OP knew the importance of booking on one ticket, and ignored it because he couldn’t do it himself.

  • Scott

    Another wrong assumption. The Alliance has nothing to do with a traveler booking separate tickets. The advantage of the Alliance you refer to has to do with the ability to book one ticket across Alliance partners. Just because this individual was not capable of doing so, one cannot assume that it could not have been done, as a prior poster was able to show.

  • Anonymous

    Injuries by accidents are very common but for these situations when you want claims for compensation in that situation you should talk to a personal injury solicitor for better advice.

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