Dear Tripped Up,
On May 30, my wife and I were scheduled to take Turkish Airlines’ evening flight from Denver to Istanbul. The flight was delayed several hours because of what we were told was a mechanical problem. We boarded the aircraft at around 11:30 p.m., taxied to the runway and then returned to the gate. The flight was finally canceled at around 1 a.m. Gate agents advised us that no hotel vouchers were available and that we should find hotels and submit our receipts to the airline. We stayed at the airport Westin, paying $512, including taxes and breakfast, and flew out the next day. We heard — and later read in The Denver Post — that the cancellation had been caused by an overflowing lavatory. But the airline sent us a message attributing the disruption to “force majeure,” which to me means an earthquake or a war or something similar. I called the airline and was told to submit my hotel receipts online, which I did twice, but got no response. Turkish Airlines’ customer service plan says the carrier pays for hotels only if the reason for the cancellation was under its control. Is Turkish evading responsibility with this “force majeure” argument? Can you help? Neal, Broomfield, Colo.
Dear Neal,
How an airline describes the cause of a cancellation can directly affect whether it will cover passengers’ lodging, transportation and meals. For mechanical issues, the answer is often yes; for weather or air-traffic issues, it’s almost always no.
U.S. regulations define those categories, but they do not require airlines to pay for stranded passengers’ expenses. Nevertheless, all the major U.S. carriers except Frontier explicitly promise hotel stays in their customer service plans if the reason for the disruption is under their control. The Turkish Airlines policy for U.S. flights is a bit looser — but the airline usually offers lodging for controllable disruptions.
For the last couple of years, I’ve kept a file of emails from travelers who suspected, as you do, that a carrier had weaseled its way out of covering passengers’ expenses by misrepresenting what happened.
I had avoided the ever-expanding file because I knew that proving the precise cause of any one incident was most likely a fool’s errand. Disruptions can have multiple causes, and the U.S. Department of Transportation gives the airlines flexibility in determining the main one. For example, if a mechanical problem causes a delay, then a storm moves in and shuts down the airport, airlines can blame the weather. No hotel voucher for you!
But the evidence in your case seemed pretty overwhelming. When airlines cite force majeure, they are generally referring to extraordinary circumstances beyond their control — like a natural disaster. The Denver Post article had the headline “Turkish Airlines Cancels Flight From Denver Airport After Urine and Feces Erupt From Plane’s Toilet,” which is disgusting but hardly earthquake-level terrible. Citing force majeure seemed like, at best, an entertaining error or, at worst, an attempt to avoid compensating passengers for their hotels, a promise you said gate agents made at the time.
(I did also check if there were any earthquakes, floods or hostilities in either Colorado or Turkey around that time, and there were not.)
Armed with this information, I contacted Turkish Airlines about your flight. I got no response to my email (or to two follow-ups), but about a week after my first message, the airline sent you a message confirming the cause for the cancellation was the lavatory issue and sending a link to fill out a reimbursement form. You did so, and a month after that got your $512 back.
But since I had already begun to dig into my file, I didn’t stop with Turkish, choosing three more complaints — about United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines — to pursue. Unfortunately, I had far less success with them.
Edna from El Portal, Fla., wrote in about a United Newark-to-Miami flight in July 2025 that was delayed after a plane had mechanical issues. The airline had found a replacement aircraft, she said, yet the flight was eventually canceled anyway. United categorized the disruption as weather-related and did not reimburse her $457 for a hotel and meals.
A spokeswoman for United, Stella Balaskas, noted that there were storms on the East Coast that day, which explained why the replacement plane could not fly. (Historical weather maps show storms between the two cities, though not in what seems to be the most common flight path between them.)
Chelsea of Pike Road, Ala., wrote to complain about an overnight delay as she returned from an anniversary trip to Maine with her husband in May 2025. After they boarded what would have been the final leg — a short nighttime hop from Atlanta to Montgomery, Ala. — the pilot announced that the flight had been delayed, overnight it turned out, because of an equipment problem in Montgomery. Delta agents blamed the weather and refused to provide hotels. Chelsea and her husband took a $145 Uber ride home and wanted to be reimbursed.
A Delta spokesman, Drake Castañeda, emailed me a statement noting that the delay had occurred “because the automated weather observing system at the Montgomery airport was intermittently unavailable.” So though it wasn’t exactly a weather issue, it was an airport issue, which would also exempt Delta from responsibility.
Finally, Mike of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., wrote that he spent $406 in hotel and other expenses when American canceled his flight in September from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to Westchester County Airport, in New York. The first message he received about the delay implied it was maintenance-related, but American officially blamed air-traffic issues. Andrea Koos, a spokeswoman for American, said that air-traffic constraints were the main reason for the cancellation. Again, no reimbursement.
As if all this weren’t frustrating enough, things are about to get worse for travelers. Next year, the federal government is planning to enact new rules that will add a category for cancellations outside an airline’s control, including designations like “unscheduled maintenance,” among others. This change will free the airlines from taking responsibility in a set of new circumstances. Will that include “unscheduled” broken airplane toilets? Maybe so.
The government’s notes about the rule change explicitly state that it will save the airlines money, which is another way of saying it will cost travelers money.
If you need advice about a best-laid travel plan that went awry, send an email to [email protected].
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