Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - With flights canceled or delayed on a routine basis during this busy summer travel season, some travelers may panic and sort through a website that might not be a legitimate one for an airline. AAA says there are scammers with fake sites and fake numbers looking to get a dishonest dollar at your expense.
AAA's Elizabeth Carey says when travelers get to the airport, they discover their flight's been canceled or delayed, and they rush to get to an airline website. "They search online for a phone number to reach their specific airline and a fake phone number can come up and they end up calling this unrelated third party group," says Carey. She says these scammers then ask you for reservation information credit card numbers and say you need to pay all the service fees to pay a difference between flights. Carey says it's a scam. "The airlines shouldn't charge you anything. If your flights been canceled or delayed, there shouldn't be a fee involved there. If your flight's canceled, you're entitled to a refund. So they shouldn't be trying to charge you a service fees and things like that," explains Carey.
Carey says if you're at the airport, you can get help in person. "Speak with a gate agent in person, so you know that person [is] in uniform, they're working for the airline," advises Carey. You can also use the airline's app to make sure you're going right through their app and can communicate with them there. "And if you do want to call the airline over the phone, make sure you're using their website to get that actual legitimate toll free number to make sure you're calling the right number to reach the airline," adds Carey.
Carey warns the scams could cost you hundreds of dollars. "Once you're handing your credit card number over to a scammer like this, they can be charging you more and more and taking your information and your money and everything else," warns Carey.
Carey says it's been an extremely busy season for travel. "We've seen bookings with travel insurance go way up and it's much more commonplace for people to have travel insurance because then they can cover incidental expenses like meals, lodging, things like that if you are delayed or if your flight was canceled, so that's becoming more and more common as as we've seen this busy travel season," adds Carey. She says AAA booking data reveals that international travel is up more than 200% from 2022.
