When I am wrong, I will admit I am wrong. Last week I criticized US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for issuing an “empty warning” to Delta Air Lines over its handling of a week-long meltdown via tweets. As it turned out, the pressure from Buttigieg was instrumental in Delta finally relenting and offering to pay for tickets on other carriers and reimburse other expenses.
Buttigieg Tweets Were Instrumental In Key Reimbursement Policy Change From Delta Air Lines During Meltdown
Buttigieg took to X in a trio of tweets over Delta’s operational difficulties. He promised to hold Delta accountable to “applicable passenger protections” and reminded Delta is must provide:
- “Prompt refunds” or “free rebooking”
- Timely reimbursements for food and hotel stays incurred due to Delta flight delays or cancellations
- “Adequate” customer service
- No stranding of passengers overnight
- No multi-hour waits to speak to a customer service agent
I wrote, “There is no immediate fix. There is no way to get the operation back in a single day or suddenly eliminate hold times. And Buttigieg knows this, which makes his tweets sound as self-serving as Delta’s myopic blame on CrowdStrike when intervening issues were also at work.”
But the day after Buttigieg’s tweets, Delta relented and agreed to reimburse for “reasonable” unplanned expenses including rental cars, train tickets, and airline tickets on other carriers:
Delta has continued to offer meal vouchers, ground transportation and hotel accommodations, where available, to customers whose travel has been disrupted with canceled or significantly delayed flights. We know many customers have incurred unplanned travel expenses, including purchasing tickets on other airlines, rental cars, train tickets and more. Delta will cover reasonable costs for additional categories of expenses incurred during the duration of the travel waiver (which currently applies for flights between July 19 and July 28)
> Read More: Delta Air Lines Offers Olive Branch To Stranded Passengers, But It Must Do More To Take Accountability For Meltdown
There’s not a smoking gun directly attributing the pressure from Buttigieg and the Department of Transportation in forcing Delta to broaden its reimbursement policy.
But the pressure coming from Buttigieg and other top government officials certainly had a role in moving Delta to change its policy. After all, what else would cause Delta to suddenly change its mind several days into the meltdown as recovery loomed?
And here, there was not even a mandate that had to be issued. Instead, Delta was pressured to do the right thing…without anyone forcing it to. That should be celebrated too…that government can successfully pressure, without having to use its regulative power, positive, consumer-friendly policy change.
So I stand corrected. There was a reason behind Buttigieg’s tweets and they worked…Delta relented and is now paying back consumers who were forced to buy tickets on other carriers to reach their destinations. I would think there would be bipartisan agreement that this showcases the power of government to encourage accountability.
image: Delta
Buttigieg reading angry airline tweets was a brilliant move. It covered so many issues and solutions in a well paced video that reached out to a wide audience. More effective than a slow and often repetitive press conference. While a press conference certainly has its value, this allowed passengers to have a voice.
Reading funny tweets made DL react? Mashing the X button to doubt pretty hard on this one. I think it’s just coincidence, and that =/= correlation. Just another pro Buttplug propaganda from the author
“Pro Buttplug” makes it clear how reasonable and objective your views are.
Such is an example of “regulate yourselves or we will regulate you”.
I have noted in the comments earlier that even this may encourage overinvestment in remedies. What, for example, happens to a cheap fare when an airline must have the bandwidth to respond to customers in 60 or 120 minutes of a weather or software meltdown? US consumers have spoken, loudly, about that they value by what they have purchased – they want low fares even at the expense of stripped down comfort and ancillary service.
But I think we see with the struggling business models of Sprit and Frontier (and the recent changes to them) that consumers do want a bit more and are willing to pay for it.
That would be nice.
20 or so years ago, AA introduced “More Room in Coach” – something like 33 inches. Customers, as a bloc, generally went to Expedia and “spoke” by buying the cheapest option, but not rewarding AA. AA “listened” and abandoned More Room in Coach.
The suggestion was meant to be punitive in nature. By having to meet certain standards, it reminded Delta of the need to get its IT act together lest it have to make those kinds of payouts again.
Except there ARE regulations about aviation delays and compensation. Secretary Pete was reminding the airlines to follow them or potentially face record fines as Southwest did last year. https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/flight-delays
No.
Secretary Buttigieg was not telling Delta to follow the regulations. Delta’s legal team is there for a reason. To the contrary, comments about, for example, how long someone might wait on hold tell Delta that if it does not exceed regulatory requirements, new regulations are coming.
Telling an industry to self-regulate beyond existing regulations is not entirely bad – the industry knows better than the government how it can improve the customer service experience without needing to pass on inordinate costs to the same customers they serve. At bottom, however, Buttigieg did not simply tell Delta to follow existing regulations.
Buttigieg did exactly the right thing. His primary role is not government directing airline policy. It is protecting the interests of the customer. I was imagining the howls from conservatives against government coercion and intervention.
Any chance to now disclose how this story ended? https://liveandletsfly.com/swiss-first-class-family/
I think you must read between the lines, but I cannot say anything more.
I’m just in the comments to say that Pete Buttwinkle is a polesmoking DEI hire.
End Transmission
Matthew, please ban this clown. His comments are a disgrace to your website.
Someone here hates humor, and free speech.
Sir, humour is supposed to be funny.
And so it is.
No, we just don’t care for hate speech.
Yet another Live and Lets Fly article ruined by your lack of intelligence as demonstrated by your homophobic slurs. Thankfully there is a special place in hell for you.
So there is a hell? Nice to see you admit there is a higher being and a heaven and hell. So what part about God saying homosexuality is a sin don’t you understand? And why would he punish Chi for speaking his beliefs?
Dave, unless God is a miserable woke commie pig-dog, I’d say I have nothing to worry about.
“Jesus” if he existed, certainly was what you would refer to as a “woke commie”. Washing the feet of the poor, turning over the money lenders tables, preaching peace and sharing, the list goes on and on.
Have you even read the bible?
The bible also says eating shellfish is a sin, or working on the Sabbath, or wearing clothes with more than two fabrics, the list of ignorant crap in the book is yards long. Don’t get all self-righteous when you’re being a total hypocrite.
Thank you for your service
Comments like this are indicative of someone living in the closet.
Go drink some Orange KoolAid there Chi.
As I have said in a prior posting, I’m glad Pete rattled his saber via the twits to remind the airlines of their responsibility with cancelled flights.
Not happy DL handed situation so poorly (credits instead of refunds, avoiding PAX expenses at all cost, etc).
DL CEO was too distracted with his girl friend & Olympics when he should have stayed stateside and fixed his house after the storm!!
Tarnished their image….which is hell to fix in the long run!!
I agree with you. I am not overall in the Pete fan club… but in this situation, I think he did exactly what he should have in his position. He stated again what the law requires and told airlines his department would be watching.
Another day showing that Pete would have been a much better VP (and Presidential) candidate than this Walz clown. If we had a legitimate media this guy would be disqualified immediately.
But Cackling Kamala was fearful of Pete overshadowing her in almost every area policy wise. The man can speak a coherent sentence, something I’m not sure she is capable of.
Interestingly, both Walz and Bootiegag have ingested large quantities of semen.
Peekaboo. Time to come out.
Okay, I’m out, come eat my ass, and make me feel it. You wouldn’t be the first.
This is absolutely disgusting
Why isn’t this comment section monitored for hate and vulgarity? Not a rhetorical question, I would really like to know why.
Ugh, you really a hateful troll.
I don’t think it worked at all because all you see on Twitter and threads are rejection letters that Delta sent people one simple search reveals it all.
You may post those links here.
Is there a reason you haven’t banned this gross homophobe Chi guy from your site? At the very least, you should be moderating – deleting – his comments which add nothing to the discourse.
This is the first article of yours I’ve read. It sounds like this is an ongoing problem. Yuck.
Not as gross as your face, Karen.
LMAO
I also have read about people receiving rejection letters from Delta. I think most of those rejection letters are because they are not providing proper documentation meaning actual receipts for rental cars, hotels, flights on other airlines. There are a lot of people out there trying to scam the system I think Delta has to do their due diligence and make sure before they send someone money they absolutely verify this individual was in fact booked on a canceled Delta flight and then confirm their documentation is in fact genuine. Delta has stated this will cost them at least $ 500 million dollars so they know the cost and have the money set aside. What they now hav etc do is keep the scammers at bay because once they send someone a check or a refund if that person is scamming Delta they’re not getting that money back.
On the flip side there also stories of people getting 100% of their expenses covered when they’ve provided correct documentation. Some of this stuff I read on X and Reddit I take it with a grain of salt because the last thing Delta wants is for the government to step in and crack down on them for not following the law.
@ Snarky , Did you watch it? It wasn’t meant to be funny. It was meant to be helpful.
No hourly waits on the phone. Contact alligent airlines its over an on a normal day. Their customer service is terrible and thats said lightly
I think he acted correctly but I don’t think it had much effect on Delta at all. Check out today’s WSJ for another viewpoint. Delta is still screwing thousands of their customers. They will get over on this and pay as little as possible,
Pete just rocks. He just does. We need more men like him in Washington running the show. This is an example of how to be assertive without being aggressive.
A sign of greatness is the ability to say, “I was wrong”.
Nice article!
Mayor Pete hasn’t been very effective for the most part but I am happy to give him credit on this one. Nice work, PB.