Airline Pax Had To Pay For Fuel En Route

[The Davy Crockett]

A new funding model for Amtrak? :angry2:

From the article linked here: http://www.wtop.com/?nid=681&sid=2636847

Hundreds of passengers traveling from India to Britain were stranded for six hours in Vienna when their Comtel Air flight stopped for fuel on Tuesday. The charter service asked them to kick in more than 20,000 pounds ($31,000) to fund the rest of the flight to Birmingham, England.

Later in the article is this quote:

The situation was highly unusual in Europe, where airlines are tightly regulated, said Sue Ockwell, a crisis management expert at Travel PR.
"It's a bit like, well, boarding a train and saying that you can't go on because they've cut the electricity off because they haven't paid the bill," Ockwell said.

Almost makes one wonder if Ms. Ockwell has been following the Amtrak debate in Congress.

 

[Anderson]

Mind you, I hate flying, but given the likely cost of that trip, I'd have been inclined to simply take an impromptu train trip from Vienna to Britain and then sue the airline for what was very likely a breach of the contract of carriage, demanding both a refund and the coverage of the cost of a basic rail ticket from Vienna to, in this case, Birmingham.

I'm actually wondering if anybody had the idea to simply take their bags, walk off, and take the train out of Vienna. Checking the math and a reference of Vienna-London fares (I'm assuming the "regular" fare, which I presume to be the "walk-up" fare), even absent the principle of the matter, it's almost a break-even proposition...and yes, I'd be burning up the phone to my solicitor (hey, it's Britain) while en route. Of course, I'm also wondering what the airline would have done if a bunch of passengers had thought to do that.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Although it's pretty amazing I don't believe this story has any bearing on Amtrak or on us. It's not a legacy airline. It's not a discount airline. It's not even a lowly Ryanair or Spirit type of nickle-and-dime airline. It's a statistically insignificant second tier chartered service sold through a third party reseller that 99.99% of us have never heard of and will probably never encounter in all our travels. There are plenty of important developments happening in the aviation world at the moment, but I'm inclined to say this isn't one of them. Presumably the lack of scheduled service allowed these bozos to slip through the regulations that protect most airline passengers heading in or out of Europe, but my guess is that those loopholes will be receiving renewed interest after this mess.

 

[Anderson]

Although it's pretty amazing I don't believe this story has any bearing on Amtrak or on us. It's not a legacy airline. It's not a discount airline. It's not even a lowly Ryanair or Spirit type of nickle-and-dime airline. It's a statistically insignificant second tier chartered service sold through a third party reseller that 99.99% of us have never heard of and will probably never encounter in all our travels. There are plenty of important developments happening in the aviation world at the moment, but I'm inclined to say this isn't one of them. Presumably the lack of scheduled service allowed these bozos to slip through the regulations that protect most airline passengers heading in or out of Europe, but my guess is that those loopholes will be receiving renewed interest after this mess.

It does seem like an odd loophole. Then again, I'm left wondering what would have happened if an authority had been contacted on the spot (say, someone had called the police alleging extortion).

 

[jis]

Checking the math and a reference of Vienna-London fares (I'm assuming the "regular" fare, which I presume to be the "walk-up" fare), even absent the principle of the matter, it's almost a break-even proposition...

As long as no cost is incurred due to the considerable additional time involved. If time consumed matters then it becomes a far from breakeven proposition.