fees

Tag Archives for fees.

Court Blocks DOT’s Airline Fee Rule—Even Though It Had Authority, The Justification Was Botched

by Gary Leff

delta check in airport
Jan 29 2025

Airlines sued to stop the rule, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit issued an injunction suggesting that the carriers were likely to prevail on the merits, and suffer irreparable harm if the rules went into effect in the meantime. DOT itself estimates the cost to comply with the new rules in the hundreds of millions.

The court heard the case, and mostly sided with DOT but still sent the rule back for reconsideration because the agency failed to follow the Administrative Procedures Act is promulgating the final rule.

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Congress Declares War On Airline Fees—But Political Grandstanding Could Ground Low Fares For Good

by Gary Leff

Dec 04 2024

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a hearing today on airline fees. It’s the end of this session of Congress, the chair is losing his position as control of the Senate changes party. So there was one last opportunity for grandstanding against airlines, who are a popular punching bag.

Sometimes airlines make it easy! But most of the punching would make for bad policy in ways that would drive up the cost of travel and leave consumers worse off.

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Congress Created The $12 Billion Airline Fee Problem—And Could End It With A Simple Tax Fix

by Gary Leff

Delta, United, American, Spirit and Frontier together generated $12.4 billion between 2018 and 2023 in seat fees alone and that this can be more than checked bag fees – citing United earning $1.3 billion in seat fees vs. $1.2 billion in bag fees last year. The total number is artificially low – fees were down during the pandemic when travel was off.

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Court Halts Airline Fee Rules: What It Means for Your Next Flight

by Gary Leff

Jul 30 2024

DOT should certainly enforce refunds for services charged but not provided. But they shouldn’t lock airlines and airfare search sites into displaying specific charges in a standardized way, the same everywhere. We should be encouraging competition in meeting consumer needs, not making airline sites and Expedia displays the same forever. It’s not only seat and bag fees that matter – and even those don’t always matter!

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Fact Check: Biden’s False Airline Fee Claims As Campaign Tries To Regain Footing

by Gary Leff

Jul 01 2024

With the whole world talking about the President’s debate performance Thursday night, whether he should still be running, and whether he’ll be replaced at the top of the ticket the campaign would very much like a return to normal discourse. So they’re back to talking about middle class pocket book issues. And nobody ever loses points beating up on airlines.

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Frontier Airlines Announces ‘The New Frontier’ With No Change Fees And Premium Upgrades

by Gary Leff

May 17 2024

CEO Barry Biffle has been willing to try a lot of things, and it’s interesting to watch. He’s also a great marketer. He was the marketing mind at Spirit Airlines back when their ads went viral for having the sense of humor of a 13-year old boy.

Now the airline says it is eliminating change fees on most fares, and that is… sort of true?

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