The Biden administration planned to require airlines to pay passengers for flight delays – a U.S. equivalent to Europe’s “EU261” as a shorthand. The Trump administration just killed that effort.
President Biden proposed this in spring 2023 but never fast-tracked it. It was kept as something they would do if he was elected to a second term.
In fall 2024 it cleared review by the administration’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, and was docketed for early 2025. At the time I wrote that if Donald Trump was elected President it would likely get shelved and that is exactly what’s happened – the Deparment of Transportation has withdrawn plans to promulgate a rule.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said this compensation would have created a bad incentives for airlines to be cautious and take delays or cancel flights for safety – that compensation compromises safety. While that’s the obvious incentive created, this hasn’t happened in the EU where airlines are required to pay today (but airlines there often ignore the rule).
The Biden administration, for its part, said this was simply an incentive for airlines to operate on time. (Delays are highly costly to begin with, of course, so airlines are already well-incentivized.)
Such a rule would have represented a significant shift in power to consumers and a huge expense to airlines. It would also would have given unions, especially pilot unions and mechanics unions, tremendous power – because their members exercise discretion that can delay flights for small details, which could have cost tens of thousands of dollars per flight.
Another concern was higher airfares. One way to think of this is the government requiring consumers to buy ‘delay insurance’ with every ticket. Right now consumers travel without this coverage, and it does not come free. Under the rule, it would be required, and every ticket would be priced to include it.
Ultimately, though, my best guess is that any rule that the Department of Transportation advanced requiring airlines to pay passengers cash compensation in the event of significant delays would have been struck down by the courts.
- The Biden administration sent legislation to Congress to require these payments. They believed they needed Congressional authority to do it.
- The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a planned DOT regulation on fee disclosure exceeds the agency’s authority. Requiring cash compensation purely based on existing authority for promoting ‘safe and efficient’ air travel or protecting consumers from ‘unfair and deceptive’ practices seems like it would have been a stretch (and certainly within the judicial circuit where it would likely have been litigated).
Of course, any administration that wants to reduce the delays experienced by passengers would focus on the actual throughput of the system: more gates, runways and taxiways at congested airports; more air traffic controllers; and better technology (and management) for the air traffic control system. Right now we’re seeing more cash investment in air traffic control. That’s overdue, but insufficient.
The shorter explanation is that Trump is more in the pockets of big business than Biden was.
There ought to be a law. Literally.
He made empty promises
Dang, can’t @1990 have a vacation in peace!?
The airlines are quick at taking your money, but God forbid they have to compensate you. Crooked.
Let’s be realistic here. It’s not like anyone living in the real world expected such a consumer-friendly rule to go into effect under this administration. Remember the last round with this President when he killed off the fiduciary rule so that consumers would be protected from advice that is directly against their best interest? The administration decided that it would be much better for people to get fleeced by their financial advisors. This is just more of the same. Maybe some people will belatedly recognize that the current administration literally doesn’t care at all about normal people.
This administration makes anarchy attractive. We the traveling public, could make better organization of what we are receiving.
you mean all the angst that clogged up the internet for the past 2 days had absolutely no impact?
The US airline industry was deregulated in 1978; the government has been trying under various administrations to re-regulate the industry bit by bit.
how is it that the most profitable airlines also run the most reliable operations?
Biden was slow on implementing promises, maybe because his “advisors”, who were actually running the government from the shadows, didn’t see the reasons to implement them earlier.
B.i.d.e.n was slow on implementing promises, maybe because his “advisors”, who were actually running the government from the shadows, didn’t see the reasons to implement them earlier.
Previous attempt awaiting moderation.
Biden, promises made……., hey let’s go get ice cream!
Something something trump bad something something brownie points something something virtue signal something something!!!
This is dirty politics. If Biden was serious about protecting the consumer, he had 4 years to do something about it. He won’t have waited till they were just four weeks in his presidency.
Leopards eating faces come to mind. Anyway you got the billionaire loving guvmint you wanted
With certain airlines massive investment in Trumps fascist candidacy, this was expected to happen.
I scratch your back….mentality!
How long of a delay before you get paid? Details matter.
Personally I don’t care as much if I’m waiting in a terminal. But if I’m on a plane I want strict enforcement of the 3 hour rule, in fact a 1 hour rule would be better. I don’t care if it is weather or ATC. Go back to the gate and allow people to deplane and make alternative arrangements instead of holding them prisoner. Or just wait in a terminal where there is food and space.
We need an EU261 or APPR equivalent in the USA. I’ll never understand those that continue to ‘carry water’ for billionaires and large corporations…
As George Carlin said, “it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” Unless you’re at least a centi-millionaire already, should be in favor of air passenger rights protections for consumers and better labor conditions for workers.
Alas, we have some real corporate shills on here… which is sad. Y’all should know better.
“Thank you for your attention to this matter…” (or, does he do it ALL CAPS?)
@L737 — “I guess I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue…” (Airplane! 1980)
American voters are revealing themselves of having poor judgment by shooting themselves on the foot at the ballot.
Their “leaders” are flying private anyway, so they don’t care about ordinary people. Enjoy being stranded and your money locked next time an airline computer system collapses.
What a banana republic.
So Biden tried to implement a new law unilaterally, by fiat, despite knowing he didn’t have the power. Isn’t that what tyrants do? I guess it took a “fascist” to undo his attempt to usurp power.
Bring back the old “Rule 240”. When the delay is caused by the airline, be it maintenance, catering, no crew, mishandled luggage etc., then the airline should be held accountable. Other businesses can be held accountable for similar actions. A force majeure is different. The majority of passengers don’t know what that means. Look it up. The common thing I hear about is “well the weather is good here and at the destination…”. What about the weather in the middle of the flight?? The airplane can usually carry enough fuel to get around the weather, but maybe not enough to carry all of the passengers. The airline has a tough choice…carry all of the passengers booked for the flight or carry enough fuel to get around the weather, make an approach to the destination, divert to an alternate airport and still have 45 minutes of fuel at the diversion but at the expense of the passenger load or delay/cancel the flight. Can anyone hear the “Jeopardy” jingle in this scenario?
airlines have every reason to release customer tickets if they cannot accommodate passengers within a reasonable time.
Airline-specific meltdowns are when that type of thing should happen.
It is more expensive to airlines to reimburse passengers for retail, last minute purchases of tickets than for airlines to release tickets to other airlines.
Weather related problems esp. in the NE rarely are going to result in one airline gaining or losing more than the other.
Airlines for America is a trade group that most US airlines belong to; they should be told to come up w/ passenger accommodation rules that its members accept not unlike the delayed flight promises which even the former administration required airlines to come up w/ and post. They DID NOT force airlines to take specific steps and there are differences in how different airlines protect passengers.
The same philosophy should guide protecting passengers in delayed ops.
the industry needs to fix its own problems and customers need to know what is and will be offered to them by each airline when they purchase tickets
There are no winners when a flight is delayed or cancelled. With that said, a controllable event, it is to everyone’s benefit to eliminate such. It is still “Mind-Boggling” why +30% of controllable events are mechanical for major airlines in the US!
The reason you have the airlines pay for controllable delays is so that they don’t pad their bottom lines with their customer’s time.
The reason you DON’T have the airlines pay for controllable delays is many of the customers may prefer to pay with their time.
How many people would pay $20 more for a ticket where they get paid $400 if their flight delays/cancels?
Isn’t this really what travel insurance should be for?
First and foremost probably 80% of delays and cancellations are attributed to weather and ATC delays. Sure some airline suck at operational recovery but passengers aren’t going to get compensation.
In the other less than 20% of times as a FF I understand planes break. I’d rather be on an air worthy plane. As long as the airline covers hotel and meals I’m fine with that. Now the $12 vouchers for example AA provides are a joke. That should be more like $60 for each 24 hour period.
I see we’ve digressed, so I’ll start talking inside baseball… @George Nathan Romey — What’s with the ‘middle’ name, sir? You’ve gone from ‘George N Romey’ to just ‘George Romey’ now so formal. Consider adding, ‘Sir.’ to the front, or ‘Esq.’ to the back, if applicable. Or, do us your kindness and include a ‘Jr.’ or ‘the Third’ (which would make sense because it’s your third iteration.)
Uhhhh, Mantis-
You apparently are ignorant of the federal rulemaking process that was followed. Look it up. There were proposals comment periods, and feedback involved, under a rulemaking process that was established by law. So, no, not by fiat.
This plodding process is why so many things take forever to implement in the federal government.
But “dear leader” just does sh$&t that is truly illegal, by “command” also knowing it’s not legal.
I think you need to be a patriot and resist this kind of tyranny, or are you just like an intolerable fanboy?
Perhaps you’re just another fool screaming about liberty while giving it up so readily?
@1990 – Would Esquire, P.H.D., or The Third come first? Pretentious minds (including George) want to know.
@Mantis – Are? You? F’ing? Kidding? Me?
Trump has done nearly every single thing he has done by fiat. Executive order this, executive order that. Push what ever bullish!t he wants and then clog the courts with lawsuits…which we as tax payers pay for.
Do you and the other MAGA folks on here have nothing else to hang your hat on than what Biden did and didn’t do when he had a divided Congress? It’s time you stop pointing to Biden as a reason to deflect from everything Trump is doing. Biden never threw kids in jail. Biden didn’t rip health insurance away from Americans. Biden didn’t put whack jobs in his administration that think planes are modifying the weather or that vaccines cause autism.
And, since we are keeping score, there are a number of new policies Trump and the GOP Congress have adopted that go into effect…wait for it…AFTER the mid-term elections. Why? Because they KNOW that if they were to go into effect before the midterms and voters felt the impact there is no way they would keep these people in office.
As for this policy change, I’m not surprised. The airlines have been polishing Trump’s knob to make sure they can screw their passengers eight ways to Sunday without a single repercussion. If you polish a knob long enough it’ll shine for you.
@Tim Dunn if airlines have “every reason” to do the right thing care to explain why they DIDN’T do the right thing until they were threatened with regulation. I’ll wait for you answer that I’m sure will include something about how Delta is better than United.
@Christian — I’ll admit it… I’m stumped. I’d say, ‘Hon.’ (like a judge) probably goes first, or ‘His Excellency.’ Though, that sounds a bit too ‘African dictator’ to me (see Idi Amin’s full title.)
@Mantis – get a clue. It was not “unilateral.” It was proposed in accordance with the Administrative Procedures Act on 8/22/22, seeking public comment. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/08/22/2022-16853/airline-ticket-refunds-and-consumer-protections
They got nearly 5,000 comments.
They published the final rule on on 4/24/24.
If Biden were serious about this, he wouldn’t have waited until near the end. Thus, while it would have been nice to have this, it’s not as if we are losing something, since we never had this in the first place.
I think that something along the lines of EU261 should be codified into law in the USA. Also Rule 240 should be codified into law as well. Perhaps even a repeal of the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act should be at least considered.
@Dale, I agree on the first two points. What do you think would be achieved by undoing deregulation?
Anyone that thinks these penalties won’t result in an immediate and dramatic increase in prices across the board is fooling themselves. I’m actually glad it didn’t go into effect or price increases would have been huge to underwrite that risk