Refunds from Airlines: What Do They Need? The DoD Is Trying to Fix Them, and Why Does the DOD Look At It

“When a flight gets canceled, passengers seeking refunds should be paid back promptly,” Buttigieg said. We will act to hold airlines accountable and get passengers their money back if that doesn’t happen.

At the same time, federal regulators are cracking down on a half-dozen airlines they say skirted rules, which determine when refunds are issued. As demand for air travel increases, airlines are having a hard time keeping up.

The airlines facing fines include just one U.S.-based carrier, Frontier, which has been forced to pay $222 million in refunds, and a $2.2 million fine. Frontier says it will pay $1 million out of pocket, because of the goodwill refund credit that it received.

“[T]he department’s expectation that when Americans buy a ticket on an airline, we expect to get to our destination safely reliably and affordably. And our job at DOT is to hold airlines accountable for these expectations, many of which are a matter of law and regulation,” Buttigieg said.

Last month, the Department of Transportation said of the 7,243 consumer complaints received about the airlines in August, almost one in every five concerned refunds.

Blane Workie, the DOT assistant general Counsel for the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection spoke on the call and explained the process of getting refunds from airlines.

She said that if the DOT hadn’t been involved, Frontier would not have given refunds to tens of thousands of passengers.

There are more enforcement actions and investigations underway, according to Buttigieg, who said that “there may be more news to come by way of fines.”

The holiday travel season is expected to be among the busiest of all time, according to Buttigieg.

The U-s Fines Airlines $7-5-million and They Must Refund Customers For Cancelled-Flight: A Brief Overview

He touted other actions taken by the department, including a new airline consumer service dashboard to help people see what they are owed when a flight is canceled or delayed because of an airline issue.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg Monday announced that the department is assessing fines totaling $7.5 million against six airlines, and the DOT is ordering those airlines to pay $600 million in refunds to hundreds of thousands of customers who had been denied them.

The airlines often wouldn’t cancel the flights until the last minute because of travel restrictions and the Pandemic, but that was a big problem for would-be travelers. In those instances, airlines usually were not required to offer refunds, but many did offer vouchers or credit for future travel instead. People had to wait before they could travel again due to the expired vouchers and credits.

And delays, cancellations and significant changes to flight schedules has become a significant problem this year, as airlines initially scheduled more flights than they had the staff to operate.

Even so, flights still get canceled. And when that happens, DOT will be here to make sure that a refund is available and that it’s processed as promptly as possible, that we’re going to have people’s backs when they experience a disruption,” Buttigieg told reporters in a news conference over Zoom Monday.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/14/1136678315/u-s-fines-airlines-7-5-million-and-they-must-refund-customers-for-cancelled-flig

Why aren’t Airlines Fined? Consumer Appeals in the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Critics Controversy

But consumer advocate Bill McGee isn’t so sure. While he says these enforcement actions are a small step in the right direction, “It’s really too little and too late. The fact is, the biggest offenders here don’t seem to be addressed.”

“Why is it that none of these other airlines have been fined?” Mc Gee has a question. Why is the investigation taking almost three years, since all the data is public?

“Airlines that brazenly skirt the rules deserve to be fined, but this latest round of enforcement from the USDOT comes almost three years too late and leaves out the most egregious U.S. offenders,” McGee says.

According to the DOT, consumers can file air travel consumer complaints online http://airconsumer.dot.gov/escomplaint/ConsumerForm.cfm or by voicemail at (202)-366-2220.