A new Department of Transportation rule requires airlines to refund tickets when flights are cancelled or delayed 3 hours for a domestic flight or six hours for an international flight.
- When airlines don’t deliver the service they promise, they shouldn’t be able to keep your money.
- But these standards aren’t great. They’re worse than what United and Delta already offer. American was better before the pandemic, but never reversed their pandemic refund slowdown – requiring a 4 hour schedule change before offering a refund (or 90 minutes if the change happens within 72 hours of your scheduled departure time.
- There’s risk that more generous airlines could revert to DOT requirements, in which case the rule would make things worse for passengers on those carriers.
- The rule requires that refunds are automatic, and in the rush to comply airlines may wind up cancelling and refunding tickets, leaving passengers stranded when they’d rather be accommodated on other flights.
The rule requiring refunds should have been stricter in terms of time. If a customer buys a ticket to travel at a specific time, and their airline changes its schedule more than an hour or two, there’s no reasonable justification for keeping that customers money if the new schedule is no longer attractive to them. They might have purchased a ticket on a different airline, and flown someone else instead!
However the prompt for a refund of nearly every consumer product or service requires the customer to actually say that they want one. Instead, this rule, in § 260.6, says that if the customer doesn’t respond to alternatives offered by the airline by whatever deadline set then they must process a refund.
Consumers who don’t watch their email, or if messages go to spam, if they just forget or get busy may find themselves without a ticket and not even realize it. That will be the law of the land, and it’s good if this portion of the rule gets fixed.
And while it’s tempting to dunk on Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) over legislative language that appears to address it (“Ted Cruz Wants Airlines to Keep Your Cash When They Cancel Your Flight”), this was not an attempt to overturn the DOT’s final rule let alone an evil plot by Cruz to undermine consumer protection.
- The Biden administration had asked for a refund rule in the FAA Reauthorization bill
- This language was included in the Senate bill back in February, long before the DOT released its final rule. The Senate committee that produced it is chaired by Maria Cantwell (D-WA).
- The law was written to guarantee refunds, which the Biden DOT (and its predecessors) hadn’t been doing.
But even if the new FAA Reauthorization bill was intended to be a corrective to DOT action, even though it was written before DOT action, that’s… reasonable.
- It seems as though the automatic portion of the rule goes beyond the DOT’s statutory mandate for a safe and efficient air transportation system and to prevent deceptive practices.
Expecting a consumer to request a refund when they want one is not deceptive, as long as the process is clear, simple and available and airlines provide refunds properly within a reasonable period of time. Everywhere else we’re expected to request a refund when we want one. Air travel following the same normal standard cannot be deceptive.
- It is precisely the role of Congress to correct decisions made by agencies in carrying out what are, effectively, congressional mandates (agency authority only comes from legislation).
Senator Elizabeth Warren isn’t having it. She doesn’t like the work done by Senator Maria Cantwell’s Commerce Committee:
Last week, @USDOT gave consumers a win with new rules to force airlines to automatically refund passengers in cash when flights are canceled.
But a line buried on pg. 429 of the new FAA bill says passengers would still have to jump through hoops to get the refunds they deserve. pic.twitter.com/8kE8ulHWX5
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) April 29, 2024
It does seem highly misleading to suggest that this language is ‘buried’ in the ‘new bill’ when it’s there in order to guarantee refund rights, as requested by the administration, and has been there in the Senate language for at least two and a half months.
The only thing buried is Warren’s head up her …. She speaks with a forked tongue.
The huge problem is already known. With the new rules, if an airline has a meltdown, they will simply refund passengers and let them walk or try to rent a car. Airlines will then be able to claim that 98% of ticketed passengers got there on time during the meltdown without saying that 70% of passengers were left to walk or hitchhike.
Everyone needs to lay off my cousin…she’s doing the best she can,
The whole “don’t reply by X day” and get an auto-refund is irritating. Like I just an hour ago got a schedule change email from Allegiant. It wasn’t very specific, just “your itinerary changed” which I’ve got to figure out which one it was (they don’t mention a PNR, just a routing). So it gets pushed off until later once I figure it isn’t urgent. Then it appears they aren’t done messing with the schedule change, so I’ll come back to it next time I think about it which could be a week. So in these new circumstances/rules, they could say if I don’t affirm or deny within some arbitrary period like 2 days, here comes by refund like it or not? I’m sure there is zero language about reinstating anything or honoring a fare.
Warren. Ugh.
@Pocahontas. Thanks for the laugh.
LOL.
Truly the perfect being the enemy of the good.
This is super tiring. Improvements always come in small steps.
Let’s keep supporting more consumer right as opposed to bashing it on some very minor technicalities. We all know what airlines do when there’s no protections and are deregulated.
@NedsKid I suggest that you read the rules before spreading misinformation. How can you be “sure” of anything if you haven’t done your homework????
While you make plenty of valid points on the substance of both the DOT rule and the bill, I don’t see what’s “highly misleading” in Warren’s tweet. Saying a specific provision is “buried” when it is just one small piece of a much larger bill is certainly an overused trope, but is hardly misleading. I’ll also give you that “jump through hoops” is a bit hyperbolic. But the DOT’s new rules would do what she said, and the bill would overturn that, as she also said. This doesn’t exactly register on the Richter Scale of misleading statements by politicians.
Im sure airlines would love to be able cancel a low load flight, set a short window, automatically refund everyone, then collect last minute fares from the folks who actually need to go where they were planing to go.
There is too much desire in Washington, particularly among Democrats, to regulate everything. These new airline rules are a perfect example. They are a solution in search of a problem. Do we really need a federal workforce policing this stuff, and airlines to spend time and most insuring compliance? Why? The Market seems more than capable of sorting this stuff out, These days, I see no evidence of any of the major airlines “taking advantage” of travellers when cancellations occur. Just leave it alone, and only regulate important stuff.