Passengers’ rights as software outage continues to disrupt flights

The effects of Friday's CrowdStrike software outage rumble on but passengers have a right to some compensation if their plans were disrupted.

Ripple effects continue for airlines and passengers four days after Friday’s CrowdStrike outage caused massive disruptions at airports around the world. More than 5,000 flights were canceled on Friday and more than 46,000 were delayed, according to FlightAware.

Those delays and cancellations continued through the weekend now and into this week. On Tuesday morning alone, 11% of Delta’s flights were canceled.

Flights get delayed and canceled all the time, for all kinds of reasons. For passengers, it makes a big difference whether the reason was within the airline’s control or not, according to Jason Rabinowitz, an aviation industry analyst.

“In this case, the U.S. Department of Transportation has deemed the CrowdStrike incident as a controllable incident,” he said. “So that means certain protections that may not have applied before do.”

If your flight was canceled, airlines are required to give you a refund if you don’t want to rebook. If your flight was significantly delayed, airlines should rebook you for free and give out meal vouchers.

And if you’re stuck overnight? “They will typically give you complimentary hotel accommodations,” said Tiffany Funk at the travel search site Point.me.

If you miss a few nights at a nonrefundable hotel or miss your cruise, “it would be very reasonable for a consumer to expect that they would get some compensation for that kind of situation,” Funk added.

But airlines are not required to offer that. Sometimes they will if you ask — but no guarantees, Funk said.