Skybus lawsuit?

Question

I was one of the unfortunate people left holding worthless Skybus tickets for travel in May. I contacted my bank right away and had to fill out dispute forms to get my money back. The bank guy said its basically hopeless b/c Skybus filling bankrupcy will result in goverment protection. He said the only way to get my money back was to join a class action lawsuit.

Does anyone know if there's one going on? Any contact info on it?

Oh! BTW. I had used my debit/check card b/c I had the money in my account and didn't want to charge it to a credit card and have to pay interest. So the money was instantly removed from my account. Not like a cc that I could just dispute paying the charges...

Answer 1

I think that your bank gave you some bad information or there is a misunderstanding.  They should have told you to file a claim with the bankruptcy court. The court supervises all claims against the airline and decides who gets paid and how much.

The bad news is that ticket holders are unsecured creditors. Secured creditors (those with liens or some sort of collateral) get paid first. The lawyers also get paid ahead of you. If there is any money left after that, then it will be apportioned between the unsecured creditors. In many cases, it takes years to resolve and unsecured creditors get pennies on the dollar if they get anything at all.

I'm not sure that a class action suit, if one exists, would do any good. The payment process is defined by law. A judge has no authority to overturn the law and give ticket holders their money ahead of secured creditors. If there was enough money to pay everyone back, then they wouldn't be bankrupt.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that's how it works.

Next time, use a credit card to protect yourself. If you have enough money in your bank account to pay by debit card, then you can simply put that amount aside to pay off your credit card bill instead of letting the airline debit your account. You'll pay no interest and you'll be protected against problems like this.