[Travelandtourism] Make Sure You Get Fair Treatment Thanks to the Department of Transportation’s New Air Travel Rules

[Hai Nguyen Ly]

http://lifehacker.com/5833809/make-sure-you-get-fair-treatment-thanks-to-the-department-of-transportations-new-air-travel-rules

Make Sure You Get Fair Treatment Thanks to the Department of Transportation’s New Air Travel Rules

Thanks to some new rules issued by the US Department of Transportation, you shouldn't have to wait in a hot, uncomfortable plane on the tarmac anymore, you should be reimbursed a tidy sum if you're bumped from a flight, and airline fees should be prominently displayed. Here's a look at the new rules and how they affect you.
The DOT's new guidelines force airlines to, as of tomorrow, reimburse passengers who are bumped from their flight twice the price of the purchased ticket (up to $650) unless they make other arrangements to get the passenger to their final destination within a couple of hours of the original arrival time. The longer the delay, the bigger the reimbursement: if the arrival time is delayed too long, passengers can claim up to four times the value of a ticket, up to $1300 (compared to $800 today.)

The rules also require airlines to prominently display all baggage, handling, cancellation, and amenity (food, pillows, etc) charges on their websites so no one is theoretically surprised when they get to the terminal or on their flight.

Perhaps most notable for people who have been trapped in a stuffy plane sitting on the tarmac for hours are the new DOT fines for airlines that let passengers sit for more than four hours: the government can fine the airlines up to $27,500 per passenger for the delay. You won't see any of that money, but you bet the airlines won't want to pay it out. Instead they'll leave on time or cancel a flight, in which case they have to arrange for your next one.

These are just the rules that go into effect this week. Airlines managed to delay an additional set of measures until January 2012 that hopefully, when combined with these changes, will make air travel a little less stressful. Photo by Christopher Doyle.

New Rules to Protect Airline Passengers Go Into Effect Tuesday | Consumer Reports

You can reach Alan Henry, the author of this post, at alan at lifehacker.com, or better yet, follow him on Twitter or Google+.

On this week's episode of Lifehacker, we're talking Google+ tricks, tips for talking to the police, clever hacks for painlessly arranging furniture, breathing new life into your old iPhone or iPod touch, and more.
This is the fourth episode in Lifehacker's summer series. The format is slightly different from our regular episodes but the content is just as good. This week's episode highlights:

How to template your furniture for more painless moves or home makeovers
How to breathe new life into an old iPhone or iPod touch
A few Google+ formatting tricks
Tips for talking to the police
We re-jailbroke our iPhones in one click with the new JailBreak.me
Installed the popular Android keyboard Swype on our iPhones
This episode's downloads of the day include Instatodo for iOS, Chuck for Mac, Tomighty for Windows, and 360 Browser for iOS.

Hungry for a little more? Check out the episodes in our summer series:

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Lastly, if you need to catch up on the first season of Lifehacker, you can find all 13 episodes here:

Learned a little about surviving the urban jungle
Upgraded our office and hid our cords
Hacked our weekends with a few of our favorite outdoorsy tricks
Untangled your wires and boosted your Wi-Fi
Cracked Windows passwords, padlocks, and Wi-Fi
Shared some of our favorite clever repurposing tricks
Supercharged your camera, took better cameraphone pictures, and painted with light
Customized our phones, laptops, apartments, and so on
Made better coffee, cut an onion without crying, and saved time with no-knead bread
Scored free money, made free phone calls, and got free space on Dropbox
Set up remote access to our home computers, remote controlled our BitTorrent downloads, and set up a remote security camera
Saved a soaked gadget, make the ultimate workout playlist, and stay cool this summer
Build the ultimate home theater, make great homemade popcorn, and always go cheap with HDMI cables
Grab it in any format you like: If you don't want to watch it in your browser right now, you can catch the show wherever you want, and in nearly whatever format you like. Visit the episode page on Revision3 to download HD or phone-friendly versions of the show in MP4 or WMV. You can also subscribe in iTunes or via RSS, watch it on YouTube and subscribe to our channel there.

 Jailbreak & Swype on iPhone, Google Plus Tricks, and Talk to the Police | Revision3

You can contact Adam Pash, the author of this post on Twitter, Facebook, or email him at tips+adam at lifehacker.com.