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Summer air travel woes have customers asking ‘Where’s my refund?’

Bad weather, labor shortages and other issues have led to long waits for some at airports, but it can take customers even more time to get refunds or hotel vouchers after being stranded.

As storms raged outside DFW International Airport last Friday, a TikTok user posted a video on the social media platform showing a massive line of customers winding through Terminal A and ending at a crowded American Airlines customer service desk.

Storms had sidelined more than 150 flights and delayed over 500 more out of the 980 scheduled at DFW that day. And 2021′s bumpy return to air travel is leaving customers to wonder how to get relief when their travel plans are sidelined.

Airlines, particularly Dallas-based Southwest Airlines and Fort Worth-based American Airlines, have been hit hard by technical, staffing and weather issues just as they are seeing leisure customers come back in large numbers.

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During some of the more troublesome delays for airlines, passengers are facing hours-long lines at customer service desks and sometimes even longer waits on phone lines to reschedule flights or ask for refunds.

“It’s been a very difficult resumption to air travel, and it may get worse as the summer goes on,” said Kurt Ebenhoch, executive director of consumer group Travel Fairness Now. “Flights are being canceled six to eight weeks before travel, and the call centers are completely overwhelmed.”

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Complaints to the U.S. Department of Transportation surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, even as the number of people flying dropped to historically low levels. A vast majority of complaints were about refunds, and the agency even threatened penalties if airlines didn’t start giving money back to passengers.

But now that flight schedules have normalized, complaints are still about three times as high so far in 2021 as they were in 2019, according to Department of Transportation data.

Ebenhoch said airlines have been historically stingy about giving refunds to customers whose flights are canceled or delayed. Airlines are required to compensate customers if a flight is canceled for any reason and the customers choose not to take a replacement flight.

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Customers also can get refunds for a significant schedule change or delay, but the agency “has not specifically defined what constitutes a ‘significant delay’” and getting a refund depends on “many factors,” according to the Department of Transportation’s website.

Specifically, airlines are not required to compensate passengers for delays stemming from bad weather, air traffic control problems (such as being stuck on the runway apron) or mechanical issues. Airline policies usually only require refunds when the carrier is at fault, such as for overbooking flights.

But even getting through to airlines to request a refund can be complicated. Getting refunds means contacting your airline, and contacting that airline usually means a call to busy customer service phone lines. Phone banks have been the busiest on days with heavy travel delays as thousands of customers try to change flights or get refunds.

“We’re currently experiencing some hold times that are longer than we would like as customers make plans to return to travel,” American Airlines spokeswoman Rachel Warner said. “We’re excited to see demand come back and are hiring hundreds of reservations agents to support our customers.”

Last month, American Airlines added a callback option: Customers can avoid waiting on hold and will get a callback within seven days.

Southwest Airlines also acknowledged that customers have been facing long hold times to talk to customer service agents.

“We typically see higher call volume during peak travel periods combined with large-scale weather or operational disruptions such as the ones we experienced the last few weeks,” said Southwest Airlines’ Dan Landson. “We appreciate our customers’ patience as our teams work with customers to find solutions to their unique situations.”

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Caitlin Sweeney of Fort Hood said she waited four hours on hold with customer service after getting delayed in June on a flight from George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston to Philadelphia. She had to cancel her flight and get a ticket on another airline since her husband, who was on military leave, couldn’t wait overnight to fly.

“Finally someone called back at 3 a.m., only to tell us to fill out a form online to try and get the money we paid for the canceled flight back,” she said.

Further complicating the issue for passengers are travel vouchers and other credits that were issued during the COVID-19 pandemic for canceled flights. Now that customers are booking travel, many have to contact airlines over the phone to cash in those credits.

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American had planned a summer schedule that was about 20% bigger than its next-largest competitor. Now it is taking steps to ease its operations, chopping 1% of its flights from schedules for the first half of July.

That might have helped over Independence Day weekend, but North Texas storms snarled flights at its busiest hub at DFW Airport.

American Airlines said it accommodated about three times as many passengers over the Fourth of July weekend as it did a year ago, about 2.7 million passengers in all. TSA agents at U.S. airports processed more than 10 million passengers between July 1 and 5, the agency reported.

There were hundreds of cancellations on July 1 and 2 due to weather, but American did much better the next two days when skies were clear, according to a letter to employees from chief operating officer David Seymour.

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Ebenhoch said airlines have gotten off easy over the last four years of the Trump administration when it comes to rules for refunds. In November, the Department of Transportation finalized a rule on “unfair” or “deceptive” practices that many consumer advocates say strongly favored airlines. The new rule says airline behavior can only be “unfair or deceptive” if it “causes or is likely to cause substantial injury, which is not reasonably avoidable, and the harm is not outweighed by benefits to consumers or competition.” The Department of Transportation even acknowledged that the rule could result in fewer enforcement actions.

But the scales may be tipping back toward consumers under Democrat majorities in the White House and Congress. Last month, the Department of Transportation said it intended to adopt a rule that would require airlines to give refunds on bag fees if luggage arrives more than 12 hours late. There also would be refunds for wireless internet that doesn’t work and for other ancillary fees that aren’t delivered.

Another proposal on the Department of Transportation’s agenda says that “carriers and ticket agents must provide prompt ticket refunds to passengers when a carrier cancels or makes a significant change to a flight.”

Consumer advocates would like to see penalties against airlines that are steeper when customers are inconvenienced. Ebenhoch said airlines have been much more responsive since federal officials set harsher penalties for airlines that kept passengers stranded on tarmacs for more than three hours on domestic flights and required airlines to provide food and water to passengers.

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“The penalties for these things are heavier in Canada and Europe, and you see better outcomes for passengers,” he said.