Here’s the story — a man is involved in a near-death plane accident on a private jet and suffers from PTSD. He also happens to be a frequent United flyer, a 2-million-miler Global Services member. Going forward, whenever he flies he books a corresponding award ticket for his wife. On the day of travel, if he feels up to flying by himself he will cancel his wife’s ticket. If not, she will accompany him for emotional support reasons. He has flown over 220K miles on United this year, cancelling the award tickets for his wife about a dozen times over this period. One day, with no notice, United shuts down his account, garnishing his 500K award miles and taking away his lifetime status earned through over 2M miles of flying. United claims he broke the rules by buying tickets “with no intention of flying”.
That’s his side of the story and I know United may spin the facts differently, but I am immediately sympathetic to the man for two reasons. First, he offered to provide United a note from his doctor explaining his condition and the medical necessity of having a companion to travel with if needed. Second, he is a 1K/Global Services member and a published benefit of that status is the ability to cancel and redeposit award tickets without fee. There are no stipulations limiting this. Delta, for example, does not even exempt Diamond Medallion members from its policy that awards must be cancelled or re-deposited within 72 hours of travel or else they lose all value. That’s fair — unsold seats that go to upgraders or employees at the last moment represent lost revenue to the airline. But United has no such rule and most egregiously, did not even give this man a warning.
Warnings are not necessary for blatant program violations, but there is nothing here to suggest the man was manipulating program rules (i.e. for lounge access or other benefits) but rather these last-minute ticket refunds were for a bonafide reason.
All the Way to the Supreme Court?
As for using the law to fight this decision, the battle will be an uphill one. I wrote about the Northwest Airlines v. Ginsberg case and although the cases are not analogous, the man here must be careful should he proceed to court — the case cannot seek to compel United to operate its MileagePlus program in good faith, it can only argue that it violated its own rules.
Two provisions come into play here (bolding mine).
The United Contract of Carriage states:
UA reserves the right to cancel bookings and/or reservations which it deems abusive, illogical, fictitious, which are booked and/or reserved with no intention of flying, or for which the passenger makes a misrepresentation without notice to the passenger.
United.com also contains this warning:
Without limitation, User shall not make any speculative, false or fraudulent purchase or reservation, or any reservation in anticipation of demand. In the event United determines that an individual has confirmed such reservations to one or more destination(s) on or about the same date(s), United reserves the right to cancel all confirmed space associated with the multiple reservations without notice to the passenger or the person making the booking.
And of course United reserves the right to suspend to terminate any MileagePlus account at anytime for any reason at its discretion.
Thing is, if this man’s story holds up, his wife did intend to fly every time — if she had to. The speculation was not “in anticipation of demand” but because her husband could not fly without her if he was not calm.
I mentioned United could prove it has turned over a new leaf through smalls acts of compassion and this case seems like a tremendous candidate. If this guy was Global Services flyer, he likely spent tens of thousands of dollars on UA tickets each year. He also was loyal on a long-term basis by virtue of his 2MM status. Seems to me United should have reached out to him before shutting him down. They could have told him to stop and he would have — he had no idea he was doing anything wrong and I don’t think he was doing anything wrong…
You can read the discussion here and chime in below with your thoughts on whether he should have been booted from United or not.
Are actions taken under reward programs subject to the ADA? Seems this should trigger a “reasonable accommodation” analysis, though that might require him to have previously requested this as an accommodation. His response I’m sure would be that there was no channel through which to request the accommodation, nor any notice that what he was doing required such a waiver.
He’s a dummy for even going through the whole PTSD argument. If he books two seats each time and sometimes cancels one, he should have simply said, “I always fly with my wife and on those occasions she cannot make it through unforeseen circumstances I cancel her ticket” That way the whole intent part is thrown out the window. He could say she was sick, work reasons, personal reasons, any number of things.
At the same time UA is run my complete clowns. They would risk the bad publicity and the revenue this guy has given them for many years over a few cancelled tickets. Stupid business decision on their part and a stupid reason given on the fliers part.
@Harland Everything that in any possible way touches a common carrier is covered by ADA. Even as as the fact that if you charter the entire plane from United, your charter becomes subject to the ADA.
This is a classic ADA claim, and while I cannot fault UA’s initial decision (due to their lack of knowledge of the disability or reasonable expectation of knowledge), once they were informed they should have immediately kicked it to the ADA compliance or legal department. I’m certain that there are some people in for ADA retraining once legal hears about this one. Your employees don’t have to have the Act memorized, but they do need to know how to spot potential issues and escalate accordingly.
As a lawyer, I can say I believe this is a clear violation of the ADA.
While the ADA does not authorize monetary relief, he could ask for equitable relief or injunctive relief. The injunction could require that United reinstate his account because it violated the ADA. The bottom line is that United is a deeply troubled company that loves litigating (and for no good reason). They’ve litigated before, and they might litigate on this small issue.
However, United should keep in mind that the current federal district courts have a lot of Obama nominees who are generally quite sympathetic to ADA claims. In addition, the federal appeals courts also have a large number of Obama nominees. Thus, I do not think that United would prevail against an injunctive claim should this man pursue that legal strategy.
I think this Global Services/IK flyer’s status should have warranted United contacting him with its concern and giving him a warning that his status was jeopardy due to his apparent violations. United here handled the situation poorly–a typically poor customer service handling for any large bureaucracy.
That being said, we don’t know the potential lost revenue for United in the cases where this flyer booked and then cancelled award tickets for his wife. Perhaps it was more egregious than is being relayed. That still doesn’t warrant the unilateral action that United took, in my opinion. But if this passenger was spending so much on United tickets, it makes me wonder if perhaps there is more to this story than is being discussed publicly. As often as United can handle customer service poorly, it doesn’t seem obvious to me that it would behave SO badly for a customer providing so much revenue to the airline–unless that same passenger was costing the airline so much more revenue or actually had received fair warning already.
He books a ticket. Holds the seat that then could not be sold. And then last minute he cancels the ticket. Lost revenue. Not just once but over and over again. Millions of dollars lost. Someone else will buy his seat. And just for the record I think his story is a crock.
How can he be sure that he doesn’t need his wife’s support on the return? Sounds fishy.
I work for a major airline. More than once, I’ve observed passengers in the gate area before a flight as they interact with the gate agent. I’ve overheard their conversations as they ask for something from the agent. This same passenger will then get on the plane and ask us for the same thing the agent told them was not available. Or, they will blatantly lie to us about what the agent said. The point I’m trying to make is that people will tell all kinds of stories to get what they want from an airline.
He must be booking AnyTime awards which removes revenue seats from inventory. If these awards are cancelled at the last minute, it means UA has lost the ability to sell that seat (and I assume most of these are premium class seats) and ultimately they end up taken by UDU eligible elites or RPU/GPU waitlisted elites. This is a real revenue issue to UA and I agree with their decision. This fellow could certainly change airlines if UA bans him, or change jobs so he doesn’t have to fly so much. Or as others have suggested, proactively made arrangements with UA to cover these circumstances.
@Lisa – That can be said about any customer, regardless of the business/company. Everyone wants to get it their own way. I’m sure you do the same when you’re a customer.