Airlines around the world have taken a nosedive with the coronavirus pandemic, scrapping millions
of travel plans. So what's the story of the airlines tweaking their passenger agreements,
making it more difficult to get paid when you pay an airline a thousand dollars, trying
to get it back when they cancel your flight? Let's talk about this.
Yes. So basically these are a number of airlines that have added these additional clauses,
even before COVID hit, where they, you know, you have to sign these carriage of, or contracts
of carriage when you buy a ticket. It's, it's a standard industry document. If you want
a ticket, before you can even swipe your credit card to buy that plane ticket, you basically
have to agree to this. And there are clauses in there that say, if you've got a problem
with this airline, we're going to have to go to arbitration or you can file an individual
lawsuit, but no class actions. And so essentially it's one of those, what did you call a contract
of adhesion. Adhesion, yeah.
Yes, there's no choice. Yeah. So here's how it works. Airline owes
you $800 because you paid them and they, they canceled, not even under COVID, they just
canceled the flight. So you call them and you say, I want my $800 back. They say, well,
no, you're going to have to, you're going to have to go to arbitration to get it back.
Or get a voucher Or get a voucher and what ends up happening
is these, if you, if you're owed $800 by the airline, right, you can't sue them because
the cost to sue them is so much. But the way you could go after them is in a class action
where you had thousands of people that were treated the same way and it's one lawsuit.
And they say under the one lawsuit, this conduct by American airlines was wrong. It was a contract
of adhesion that you made these people sign. They had to sign in order to travel. It's
a due process argument. It's an equal protection argument. And frankly, the only way that anybody's
going to get their money back is through class actions.
Well, it's interesting because they talked about that, that class actions are actually
one of the few avenues that an individual has in order to pursue the litigation for
exactly what you're talking about. And when you say something like that, I'm like, well,
gosh, couldn't you go to a small claims court. No you can't.
In the County or state, but that's what they said. Most airlines, aren't subject to state
or individual state laws and or consumer laws that would be in place to naturally protect
the consumer. You have to sue them in federal court. The,
the, the, the chance look, here's the only good news. There is a spectacular class action
law firm handling a case on this. It's called Berger Montague. We work with them all the
time. They're our pals. We do business with them. We're partners in some lawsuits, they
are the best class action law firm in America. They're going after American airlines. They're
going after some of these other folks. That's the only, that's the only, only possibility
of changing all this, isn't it? Yes, it is. So you have American airlines,
British airways, frontier airlines, spirit airlines also have the no class action clause
and you have American airlines is one of the few that's responded and said, oh no, we give
people arbitration as an option in order to resolve complaints. And they can still bring
an individual lawsuit, which if you don't realize what that means, like you talked about
the individual lawsuit is practically a non-option. They owe you $700, it cost 5,000, just to
initiate the lawsuit. They know this, once they get the, the guy, the person that's owed
money in arbitration, the arbitrators are typically, typically controlled by the corporation.
Right, just like Amazon has been under fire for.
Yeah, exactly. There is no, there's no arbitrator there that's out looking for the consumer.
The arbitrator gets their job because of their contacts with these various corporations.
So this whole process of what American airlines is doing, what, what incense me about some
of the articles that were written is they actually, with a straight face American airlines
with a straight face, says we're trying to help our pass. That's what they say. That's
what, we're trying to help our passengers. Isn't that what?
That's exactly right though. Yeah. Again, even with the spin, oh, you know, you can
still bring an individual lawsuit with a straight face, knowing that that's going to get them
nowhere. But it, do you feel like the whole industry is going to change? Because part
of this, you know, you've got so many cancellations of flights. They owe people, billions of dollars
that these class actions are facing. It's gonna have to change.
So it seems like this is almost a hail mary on the part of the airline industry.
Contracts of adhesion are not favored by the court.
So it's not going to work out. We'll follow up.
Ah, we'll see, we'll see. It depends on what judge it appears in front of.