Flight canceled by the FAA ground stop? Here’s when you’re owed a refund
Runways 33L and 33R at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Photo: Thomas Wang, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
If Friday’s nationwide ground stop canceled your flight out of Bush Intercontinental or Hobby, and you did not take the airline’s offer to rebook, federal rules say you are owed your money back. Not a voucher, and not travel credit, unless you agreed to it.
The Federal Aviation Administration halted departures at all U.S. airports on the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 13, after what it described in a brief statement as communication problems affecting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers. The order was lifted that evening, but the knock-on cancellations ran into Saturday.
At a press conference Saturday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said FAA contractor L3Harris had been switching copper lines to fiber-optic cable at a remote site when a new router flooded the FAA’s network with connection attempts, The Astorian reported. Officials said they saw no evidence of a cyberattack. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said about 4,500 flights would need to be canceled Saturday as airlines recovered, according to the same report.
Here is what the rules say about getting your money back.
Canceled flight: refund if you don’t travel
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s refund rules are blunt. If an airline cancels a flight, “regardless of the reason,” and you choose not to travel or not to accept credits, vouchers or other compensation, you are entitled to a refund. An air traffic control outage is outside the airline’s control, but that does not matter for refunds.
The refund goes back to your original form of payment. Airlines must pay within 7 business days for credit card purchases and 20 calendar days for other payment types, under DOT’s refund rule, 14 CFR Part 260. If an airline offers a rebooking and you do not respond and do not fly, the refund is still due.
The catch: if you took the rebooked flight, you are not owed a refund for the original ticket.
Long delay: the 3-hour line
If your flight was not canceled but was significantly delayed, the same refund right applies if you chose not to fly. DOT defines a significant delay as departing 3 hours or more off schedule, or arriving 3 hours or more late, on a domestic itinerary. For international trips the line is 6 hours.
Meals and hotels are a different story
Refunds and expenses are separate. Airline promises to pay for meals, hotels or ground transportation apply to cancellations and delays caused by something within the airline’s control, according to DOT. A nationwide FAA ground stop generally is not, so travelers stranded overnight Friday may find their airline will not cover a hotel. Check the airline’s customer service plan, which DOT tracks on its airline customer service dashboard, before assuming either way.
How to ask
Request the refund through the airline’s website or app, or by phone, and keep the cancellation notice. Airlines are required to tell you about your refund rights when they cancel or significantly delay a flight. If the airline refuses or misses the deadline, you can file a complaint with the DOT’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protection.
For checked bags that did not show up, DOT counts a domestic bag as significantly delayed if it is not delivered within 12 hours of your arrival, and that can trigger a refund of the bag fee.
The FAA and DOT say they are still working to determine whether the router failure came from a faulty device or a faulty installation. More on household money questions is in our Finance section.
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