In the wake of the government shutdown that resulted in nearly one out of every 10 flights getting delayed, you’d imagine the Trump administration would do something to restore its reputation and consumer confidence in air travel ahead of the holidays. But, wild pitch here: what if they did the exact opposite? In a new filing from the Department of Transportation, the Trump administration said it would kill a Biden-era rule that would have required airlines to provide meals, hotels, and cash to passengers hit with flight delays.
According to the document, the Trump administration has decided that it isn’t authorized under existing rules to require airlines to provide compensation to travelers, which seems like one of the few times it is concerned with what the law says. It also argued that the changes wouldn’t “yield meaningful improvements in airline flight performance.” Even if that were true, and performance didn’t improve, there would be a rubric in place to compensate people when their carrier of choice fails to get them to their destination on time. Now there is both no incentive to improve and also no mandate to compensate affected travelers.
The Trump administration cited industry groups representing the airlines that claimed the required payments could cost carriers up to $5 billion per year. The groups also not-so-subtly suggested that cost “could potentially be passed down to American consumers in the form of higher ticket prices.”
Instead of the required compensation established under Biden, the Trump administration is going with the old “free market” approach. “The Department concludes that it is consistent with this statute to continue to allow airlines to compete on the services and compensation that they provide to passengers rather than imposing new minimum requirements for these services and compensation through regulation, which would impose significant costs on airlines, and potentially consumers,” it wrote.
The Biden-era rule, first proposed in 2023, would have required airlines to pay travelers between $200 and $775, depending on the length of their delay, as well as offer free meals, lodging, and rebookings when flights were disrupted for circumstances within the control of the airlines. While most carriers do offer things like free rebooking and vouchers for food or hotels during extended delays, the rules vary depending on who you’re flying with. None of the carriers, prior to the Biden proposal, offered cash compensation for the inconvenience of getting delayed.
Had the rule gone forward, it would have standardized what people can expect from an airline during a delay. Instead, we’re back to a free-for-all. Consumers will surely take solace during their next delay that their airline won a battle in the marketplace of ideas to deny them compensation.