Airlines urged to provide refunds, extend voucher deadlines for pandemic-canceled flights
March 10, 2021
Millions of Americans who booked flights in good faith in 2020 were prevented from flying because of government lockdowns and safety concerns brought on by a once-in-a-century global pandemic
Groups call for airlines to extend voucher expiration dates through at least end of 2022
The consumer groups’ letter notes that complaints to the U.S. Department of Transportation about airline refunds have jumped dramatically over the past year
With the one-year anniversary of the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown approaching, Consumer Reports and U.S. PIRG sent a letter to ten domestic airlines today calling on them to provide full refunds to consumers whose flights were canceled or affected by the pandemic. At the very least, the consumer groups are urging airlines to extend the expiration dates for vouchers they issued for canceled flights to the end of 2022 or longer.
President Biden signs executive order mandating masks on airline flights
January 22, 2021
President Biden was praised today for signing an executive order requiring airline passengers to wear masks and urged the new administration to adopt additional measures to ensure safe travel during the pandemic.
“Mandating masks during flights is an important first step to ensure airline passengers are protected from the risk of contracting COVID-19,” said William J. McGee, Aviation Adviser for Consumer Reports. “But masks alone won’t stop the spread of this deadly virus for travelers passing through airports and flying as the pandemic rages out of control. We need additional mandatory health and safety rules to provide consistent and effective protections at every airline and airport in the United States to keep travelers safe.”
Press Release
CR Delivers 62,000 Petition Signatures To DOT Demanding Airline Safety Standards To Protect Passengers During COVID Crisis September 23, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Consumer Reports delivered over 62,000 petition signatures to Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao today calling on her to establish mandatory health and safety standards for airlines and airports to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. While the DOT issued COVID-19 health and safety recommendations in July, airlines and airports are not required to follow them and practices can vary widely across the industry.
“Americans are already wary about traveling during a global pandemic and deserve to know that strict COVID-19 safety precautions will be followed if they choose to fly,” said William J. McGee, Aviation Adviser for Consumer Reports. “We need mandatory, enforceable health and safety rules so that every airline, airport and passenger can be
crashes. and then later, the faa itself came out and said actually two things. there was some new information and evidence that apparently had been gathered on the ground in ethiopia, ntsb investigators are there, part of the teams helping out. and also, they refer to this satellite data. and essentially what this data shows is the upward motion of the aircraft. the ethiopian airline, from the moment it took off to the moment that it crashed. they took that kind of data track and they matched it up against the lion air flight, and what they found was that it was very, very similar. in fact, strikingly similar. so much so that the faa said given all that, it was best that they err on the side of precaution and become the last nation to declare that the flights, the planes would be grounded. thank you very much, martin. i want to go to bill mcgee, aviation adviser. bill, it s pretty frightening because they overlay those two