Airlines are picking a new fight against the Biden administration’s automatic refund rule — a policy recently enacted in a must-pass spending bill this spring that guarantees customers are returned their money for delayed or canceled flights.
The move comes just as the airlines attempt to block a different consumer protection from the Biden administration. On Monday, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a notoriously industry-friendly court, granted airlines a major win by stalling a Department of Transportation rule taking on airline junk fees, extra fees for bags or seating.
Now, the airlines want to stop consumers from getting potentially billions of dollars back in refunds for unused flights, too.
On July 3, Airlines for America, a lobbying group representing the country’s biggest airlines, submitted a letter to the Department of Transportation writing of “serious concerns” with the automatic refund rule, which President Joe Biden signed into law on May 16. In the letter, which the Transportation Department posted publicly this week as part of its normal procedural process to implement its rules, the airline lobbying group pushed for the agency to weaken its interpretation of a key aspect of the refund policy.
They argued the new refund requirement “would cause substantial harm — acutely to the impacted traveler and more broadly to the traveling public,” wrote Graham Keithley, Airlines for America’s general counsel, in the group’s comments, reasoning that a requirement for automatic refunds might lead to customers failing to be properly rebooked when a flight was canceled.
Keithley advocated for the Transportation Department to adopt a narrower enforcement of the automatic refund rule — one that may leave consumers on the hook to request refunds from airlines, experts told the Lever.
“It’s clear that the airlines have a knee-jerk reaction to just fighting, tooth and nail, against any…
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Auteur: Katya Schwenk
