Hotel stay due to delay?

Luckily I have never been on a flight that is cancelled or severely delayed and pax are put up in a hotel.

I am just interested to know what the rules are (UC only, all passengers, only those who can't possibly get home) and what standard of hotel they take you to?

Thank you

[Neil]

It all depends on what is available really, but I don't think there are any set rules/quality of hotel that must be offered. When our flight was cancelled, we were not even taken to a hotel and had to cope with the airport terminal for about 20 hours.

Thanks Neil I can see if they don't officially organise anything or at least confirm the earliest departure time the next morning it would be risky to personally arrange to check into a hotel off terminal in case they call your flight without notice. A friend of mine has just spent the night at an airport and eventually went the next afternoon (not VS) with only the minimum food and drink vouchers offered. When I lived in Brighton we were always seeing coach loads of delayed tourists being put up at a 4* hotel on the seafront and then going back to the airport first thing next morning but maybe the compensation laws have made this less likely nowadays.

[RichardMannion]

There aren't any rules for the quality of the hotel; the one time I was IDB'd on a CO flight from EWR-MSY, they tried to book me into a Howard Johnson at the airport. Like that was going to happen after spending the 2 previous nights at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. Fortunately my travel insurance covered Denied Boarding and offered up to 450 for a hotel, meals and refreshments - so it was off to the nearby Westin for the night and a nice steak dinner in comparison to the $15 in food voucher they were offering for dinner and $10 for breakfast.

I then used the point of not taking their hotel as leverage for the increase in denied boarding compensation.

quote:Originally posted by Jacki
Luckily I have never been on a flight that is cancelled or severely delayed and pax are put up in a hotel.

I am just interested to know what the rules are (UC only, all passengers, only those who can't possibly get home) and what standard of hotel they take you to?

Thank you


Hi Jacki

The only time we have been delayed was out of Orlando a couple of years ago.

We were treated very well, taken by taxi to the huge hotel on IDrive, the Rosen, which is near the convention centre, were given vouchers for meals (others had a buffet), phone vouchers and 50,000 miles
The hotel being mainly for conventions could easily swallow a 747 load of passengers and was clean but basic

David

Richard, good call, I'll check my insurance as I have no idea if it covers denied boarding. I staying at the Waldorf for a a few weeks once when relocating and have very fond memories.

David, I know the hotel well as i have been to a few medical conferences at the centre over the years and would not be upset if I ended up there for the night. It does seem a bit hit and miss though, and getting fussier by the minute in my old age it clearly pays to be prepared.

In my experiance of very delayed flights, it can depend on what time of day it happens, early morning alot of people would be checking out of hotels leaving more avaliable rooms for people to stay in, however if your delay was late at night it become alot harder to find places for pax as hotels are generally full up, especially if there are 400 and odd people to find beds for!
I was delayed once myself and missed a connection however it was quite a small number of us who'd missed it meaning there were rooms found in a hilton which wasn't so bad, even though I only got to enjoy it for around 5 hours!