Cheap airplane tickets or cheap vacation packages are the goals of many travelers, but once passengers are stranded at an airport moving on to their destinations becomes priority one. Stranded airline passengers rights differ significantly by airline and by country. The most recent example of this is how differently the 5 million passengers who were stranded at European airports recently were treated as a result of the Iceland volcano spewing ash into the skies.
Every one of these passengers needed food and somewhere to stay. However, most of them who purchased flights on U.S. carriers were left to take care of themselves. Almost all of the stranded passengers who bought tickets from European airlines had their hotel and food bills taken care of.
Customer care in the event of airline disruptions vary widely based on the geography and citizenship of the passenger and the airline.
Given the rapidly increasing world of global airline alliances, whereby allied airlines sell joint and connecting flights as if they are a single airline, global rules need to be put in place to protect passengers equally. Right now, when things go wrong, each alliance airline is often governed by very different consumer protection laws.
In order to discourage carriers from overbooking flights and thus bumping passengers, the European Union requires carriers to pay hotel and meal costs of their customers whose flights are canceled. U.S. airlines are only required to pay for stranded passengers hotels and meals when the cancellation is directly caused by the airline, usually the result of plane malfunctions.
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