Blackout left many fliers in the dark
By Dan Reed, USA TODAY

For thousands of travelers whose flights were canceled or delayed by last week's blackout, the only thing in shorter supply than electricity may have been accurate and timely information about their travel options.

Most airlines were quick to waive ticket change penalties and rebooking fees over a period of several days. Some even offered to convert unused tickets into travel vouchers good for up to a year.

But many customers whose trips were delayed or canceled because of the blackout weren't told clearly that they may be eligible for full refunds.

Most major airlines' rules — officially known as contracts of carriage — guarantee refunds when events beyond the airlines' control cause massive delays and cancellations. There are exceptions. Continental, for example, guarantees only a travel voucher good for one year, not a refund.

"The airlines in some ways are going beyond what they're required to do by their contracts of carriage," says Terry Trippler, consumer advocate at CheapSeats.com. "They aren't required to rebook passengers, or call them in advance to reschedule, or a lot of the things they try to do in such cases. But most people don't know that one of their options is a full refund, and the airlines don't tell them."

That information is printed on tickets. But with the advent of electronic tickets, few travelers ever see a ticket. Most carriers do make contracts of carriage available, but not necessarily readily accessible, on their Web sites.

"If you were going to a wedding on Saturday, but you couldn't get your flight rescheduled until Sunday, then it's not fair for the airline to keep your money, or to make you commit to taking another trip to get any use out of that money you paid," Trippler says. "You deserve to get your money back."

Some travelers also had trouble getting reliable information about airlines' flight plans Friday, when Detroit and New York airports were still experiencing outages.

"The biggest problem is all the disinformation," says David Blanchard, a Dallas investment banker whose flight home from New York was canceled Friday.

It wasn't until he arrived home Saturday — after a train ride to Philadelphia and a connecting flight via Chicago — that he learned how bad conditions really were Friday at LaGuardia. "I couldn't understand why American canceled flights Friday at LaGuardia if everything was supposed to be up and running fine," he says.

Even the Federal Aviation Administration's "Airport Status" Web site, which provides regular updates on airport delays related to weather and air traffic control, was of little help Friday.

Early Friday afternoon, the site reported that New York's LaGuardia Airport was experiencing flight delays of less than 15 minutes. While technically true, that report gave no indication that hundreds of flights at LaGuardia that day had been canceled because the terminal was mostly without power.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown says the agency's airport status page (www.fly.faa.gov/flyfaa/usmap.jsp) is designed to inform passengers about problems under the FAA's control, such as rerouting of flights due to weather or clogged airways. When an unusual event like a power outage occurs, the FAA has no system to gather information on how that is affecting passengers. Dispensing information about the situation was the responsibility of airports and the airlines, Brown says.

For the most part, the FAA's air traffic system functioned normally throughout the blackout, officials said. The FAA reported only 44 delays attributed to the power problems. But many airlines opted to cancel large blocks of flights. Since canceled flights don't technically enter the air traffic system, the FAA cannot track them as easily as flights that are delayed, she says.

At the same time the FAA was reporting minimal delays at LaGuardia Airport, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was advising consumers not to go there or to Kennedy airport because of heavy road congestion around both airports and their lack of power.

Technology also was a factor in the confusion. Airlines have invested in systems that send flight status updates to travelers' personal digital assistants and text-enabled cell phones. But many cell phone systems were knocked off-line or overwhelmed after the blackout.

"Many were overloaded — 2,000 callers seeking to use one of the 1,000 connections available at each tower," says Jeff Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst in Atlanta. "Calls just couldn't get through."

In other cases, computers that manage each cell tower's operation failed because of the blackout and inadequate backup power.

"If there's anything the wireless industry learned out of this, it's the need for backup power and redundancy at each tower," Kagan says.

Contributing: Barbara De Lollis, Alan Levin and Chris Woodyard