* Automatic Refunds for Cancellations: Airlines want to remove the requirement to provide automatic refunds when flights are cancelled or significantly altered. Passengers may instead receive only vouchers or no compensation at all, leaving them without recourse in the event of a major flight disruption.
* Transparency of Fees: The airlines also aim to strip away rules that require them to disclose all fees (like baggage, seat assignments, and service charges) upfront. Instead of the clear, itemized pricing system that passengers currently rely on, airlines could hide fees until later in the booking process, making the true cost of a ticket much higher than expected.
* Family Seating Guarantees: Under current regulations, airlines must ensure that families with young children are seated together without additional charges. This would no longer be guaranteed under the new proposal, meaning families could face extra costs just to sit next to one another.
* Accessibility Protections for Disabled Passengers: The deregulation proposal also targets protections for disabled passengers, weakening their access to support and assistance during air travel.
Nasty site full of a gazillion trackers etc.
There is not coverage beyond one adult already in the US. With an additional adult and one child, the airlines already adds in fees. It’s also non-transparent when booking that they have made sure the easy path is the charged path, especially now that airlines make you pay to guarantee being seated together prior to flight checkin 24 hours in advance of takeoff.
Basically half of flights I've ever booked have had a cancellation. Usually the airline customer service had to rebook a new itinerary for the same purpose, but once in the past year they had to issue a refund because all possible routes went through DFW and they had lightning, which they have all the time.
It's absolutely ridiculous to even suggest that you should be able to take someone's money and not render services. That's a fundamental part of commerce.
I wonder if there are any anti-retaliation provisions, or if they’ll just have a special no-fly list for people they sold non-existent flights to, and that refused to pay up.
Capitalist money-making idea: guarantee young children are seated as far away as possible from their parents if the fee is not paid, then offer to collect the fee from other passengers seated next to the child. Double the cost if it's a baby.
Would airlines even get away with that, given that card payments for non-provided services can usually be trivially charged back?
Presumably business travelers would not always care enough, but their company's expense management department certainly would.
I suppose we’ve just given up on the concept of trying to do anything but nakedly extract profit at any cost. You’d think shareholders would be pro-competition in the end, though—I certainly would prefer that.
Edit: I mean short-term profits. As a shareholder I would prefer long-term profits via competition and diversification.
The end game of capitalism is monopoly. Why would shareholders want competition that prevents them from extracting maximum profit?
Airlines profits are basically zero per ticket. Adding $10 per trip would be some sort of fantasy land windfall for the shareholders.
Deregulation badly broke this industry.
Your comments remind me of the arguments Ma Bell gave to justify their monopoly. Oh noez, quality will suffer if there's telecom competition. Well, people ended up being willing to make the tradeoff.
You did score a hit with airline profits being low. The whole purpose of regulation was to artificially inflate prices to ensure profits for airlines.
What the actual F? Deregulation of airlines was massively beneficial to consumers.
"Base ticket prices have declined steadily since deregulation.[15] The inflation-adjusted 1982 constant dollar yield for airlines has fallen from 12.3 cents in 1978 to 7.9 cents in 1997,[16] and the inflation-adjusted real price of flying fell 44.9% from 1978 to 2011.[17] Along with a rising U.S. population[18] and the increasing demand of workforce mobility, these trends were some of the catalysts for dramatic expansion in passenger miles flown, increasing from 250 million passenger miles in 1978 to 750 million passenger miles in 2005.[19]"
Also, are those prices apples to apples with pre-deregulation tickets?
Like, can I just walk up to the terminal, same day, pay that price, and get the equivalent of business class on the plane, and still pay 44% less than real 1978 prices?
https://otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/air-travel-complaints-resolution-p...
But note: > Due to a high volume of complaints, there will be a delay between when a complaint is submitted and waits in the queue and when the complaint process will start.
wat
They call what we have now “clear”? Where when looking at a page of flights I don’t know how much the multitude of economy/economy+/economy++/premium economy/business/business++ seats will cost until I click on each flight? Where every carrier offers slightly different variations of these seats such that I can’t cross-shop on Google Flights?
Is that the clear and transparent system the airlines are complaining about?
Netherless to say with anything else in shops. For me USA as country and as system left in my brain as one big endless lie comparing to Ukraine, Russia, Thailand and other not Western countries I glad to be resident for a long time. I'm not saying anything about people, about views and or nature.
I had very strong aftertaste that USA as part of the Western Civilization at this moment built on top of hidden slavery, when you don't own even your money. And this insight was a shocking, because I thought that my country was "developing", happy to be outside. World is much more honest and better for people like me who traveled a lot and experienced different ways to live.
Sales tax on literally everything is fairly different state to state (and within sometimes) but petrol is a major daily thing that is tax inclusive.
I suspect the person above hasn’t even travelled to the US.
However, this doesn’t apply to gas stations in the US. The displayed price is always inclusive of all taxes and fees. I don’t think there are any states in the US where that isn’t true.
Which is why the comment above is illogical. The prices are posted on a big sign outside. The prices are posted in real time on the pump itself.
Equating gas stations to slavery can’t be a real comment, can it? This feels like someone who hasn’t been to the United States trying to tell a story about the United States being bad based on how they imagine it working.
States in the United States are more than just administrative districts. in the case of the first thirteen states, the predate the federal government.
Each one has its own elected government. They have their own criminal and judicial system, as well as their own tax regimes.
Apart from the tax regime though, some states are home to large refineries which produce gasoline and many states don't. The distance you are from the point of production of the gasoline also comes into play.
How is this any different than filling up a car in any other country?
Gas stations post their prices outside. You should get a feel for how many gallons are going into the tank when it’s half full or mostly full.
The pump shows the price in real time as you’re pumping. You can stop whenever you want. I’m having a hard time believing your story because it’s so clear what your price is by the second as you pump.
Also FYI: You could have walked into the gas station and asked the attendant for “$20 on pump #3” and then pump #3 would only dispense $20.00 of gas before stopping.
> I had very strong aftertaste that USA as part of the Western Civilization at this moment built on top of hidden slavery,
Gas stations charging by the gallon is slavery? What? I’m having a hard time believing this comment is real and not just some “America bad” thing. You can’t honestly equate paying for gas to slavery or act like paying by the gallon only happens in the United States.
It does. In other countries they pay by the liter and it's also much more expensive unless you're in the middle east.
Does this mean when the passenger cancels or when the airline cancels? If it’s when the passenger chooses to cancel, this seems fine and fair: he paid for a flight; he chose not to take it. If it’s the latter, then it seems very unfair.
> Transparency of Fees
This seems patently unfair. Folks should know what they’re going to be paying ahead of time.
> Family Seating Guarantees
On the one hand, this seems fair. If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege. It doesn’t make sense to tax every other passenger for it. OTOH, families are a net benefit to society, so maybe it’s right for everyone else to pitch in a bit. Also, nothing is worse than the folks who didn’t pay up ahead of time who bug one, ‘may we switch seats so we can sit together?’ So perhaps free family seating makes life easier for everyone.
> [Elimination of] Accessibility Protections for Disabled Passengers
I wonder what that actually means. It could be fair (for example, folks too large for one seat purchasing two) or unfair.
Airline cancellations. Seeing as they're talking about making a change, I assume it's airline cancellations, since no airline will currently refund you for a passenger cancellation.
I understand airlines are very feast or famine and often operate on very thin margins, but at this point I’m willing to pay a little more for the experience to not be so categorically and consistently miserable
Otherwise I find everything ok. The flights are fine -- packed but it is what it is there's high demand. I could do with/without the food if it reduced the price, I can pack my own. But otherwise I find them fine.
What makes air travel miserable for you?
They’re eliminating it because the new CEO is trying to speed-run them out of business.
This CEO is a freaking idiot. Is this an excel jockey/MBA a-hole like the kind that ran Boeing and Intel into the ground?
What’s wrong with the board that voted this idiot in?
Similar things happened to family members multiple times where their initial flight (overseas) was delayed by 6 hours, they had many issues, and nobody provided information about their rights. I told them about what to ask for and voila, $1100 refund.
Agreed. I think they leave too much money on the table. Use of window shades and lavatories could be behind a subscription service as well, with Sky Comfort+ affording you the privilege of multiple lavatory visits for those who have chosen the luxury IBS lifestyle. I'll let you know if I think of anything else those pesky airline passengers take for granted.
I’d offer $300 roundtrip to Lahaina for 5-10 days, airlines? Any takers?
They tried to straight up remove the window shades, but that’s currently required by Ireland so no dice. A toilet charge has been floated but is apparently difficult both legally and technically. However given Ryanair’s usual treatment of passengers with disabilities I have no doubt a passenger with IBS would have an experience.
Separately there should be a fee for opening/closing the AC vent and using the overhead lights.
I'd rather pay a monetary tax on my ticket to keep families organized together instead of the discomfort tax of sharing a row with parent+child that has been unexpectedly split up from their partner and is now trying to manage the child's behavior for the duration of the flight without the benefit of teamwork.
This presumably would mean you’d be feeding a random kid a bottle on long flights. God knows how they’d accommodate breastfeeding.
With an infant, having two caregivers within reach is huge. When flying with infant in arms there's nowhere to put the kid down, you don't have a free hand. An extra set of hands to wipe up spit-up, help adjust clothing for breastfeeding, collect the diaper bag, etc is a huge help.
The idea that parents need to pay more to help their children is cruel. I would expect people seated next to a child to end up swapping, to help the parent and to escape the noisy child. But that slows down boarding as people shuffle seats and adds anxiety that we're perfectly able to resolve.
Some of us parents ask that question for your benefit, not ours. Do you want to sit next to my three-year-old?
I solved the problem by preferring southwest, but their new CEO is an a*hole, and instead of raising ticket prices $50 a seat is adding assigned seating, removing legroom, charging for bags, adding ticket change fees, etc, etc.
Tough luck then buddy. Have fun with the kids.
There has to be some kind of middle ground here, imo. Nobody wants to sit next to kids. Families don't want to be penalized financially anymore than they already are for providing a benefit to society.
Not particularly, no. What I want is for you to purchase the seats your family needs ahead of time, not ask me for them for free.
I know that travelling with kids is really tough. I sincerely sympathize! But it’s not a surprise that a kid needs a seat next to his parents. They know when they bought the ticket that he’ll be coming along, because they’re buying the ticket. They should select the necessary seats then.
Sure, if the airline had to move flights around then 1) they should attempt to preserve group cohesion 2) in extremis folks should negotiate. But for awhile I was getting requests from late-boarders every single time I flew. That’s not an accident: they are flying on cheap tickets and trying to get extra value. I sympathize with that too! But I pay for the value I get, and I don’t appreciate social pressure to give it away.
Your gripe here is with the airline.
In all seriousness I understand your point but I think it's worth considering that you're also applying social pressure.
No, ok never mind, enjoy your flight.
Many airlines have punitive seating algorithms (looking at you, Alaska), or pull crap like moving your seats around and separating you after you select them unless you have status (United used to, at least, since they had a practice of selling non-existing flights, then bin packing planes the day before) so without this you can end up having a breast feeding infant sitting across the plane from its family.
In essentially all cases, the kid can be put next to the parent without splitting up another parrty.
This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another. It's seems like Mafia-tactic to seat people apart from another unless they pony up another $500 in upgrades.
I refuse to fly with United. I understand that there may not be 10 adjacent seats when flying with a big group, but spreading out a family on purpose just so you are more likely to buy an upgrade is evil.
I understand paying for checked luggage because luggage handling costs money. But purposely making the experience worse just so you can charge money for upgrades is evil.
They also free up the cargo hold so they can transport mail. Speaking of which, did you know the TSA screening area is a farce?
If it were, they probably wouldn't be doing their 8-group boarding process that takes 20 minutes just to let people start boarding, because gate-time is expensive for them.
My man, the TSA is a jobs program disguised as security theater. It's also a funnel for money into contractors' pockets (see: Leidos).
> This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another.
Bin-packing is tough (look at Kubernetes!). Economically, giving folks willing to sit in a random seat an extra $10 and charging folks who want to sit together $10 is a wash.
Evil is, you know, torture and genocide, not efficient allocation of limited space.
Most people don't give a shit where they sit, so most seats are not reserved. Traditionally, airlines tried to just put people close together when they booked together. When we check in, we just get random seats that are close together. That's okay. I'm fine with taking whatever seats no-one else wants.
If I understand United marketing correctly, they will actively sit you apart from others in your group unless you buy an upgrade. That is, instead of assigning you some of the free spots close together, you get put as far apart as possible, and they hope that you will buy an upgrade to sit close together.
Other airlines don't do that.
I am very tall and I always pay for a seat with extra legroom in economy. Whenever I’m picking my seat early, almost every seat in economy is available. People could pay to reserve a window or aisle seat, but anecdotally it seems like almost no one does this. Everyone I know just tries to check in as early as possible so they can grab a good seat before they’re all taken.
I don’t think airlines are actually losing any money by seating families together. It’s not like all those window and aisle seats would have been paid for otherwise.
It’s fair only if he does it at the last minute OR the seat goes unsold.
As someone who pays for an assigned seat so I can sit where I want, this annoys the crap out of me as now they expect people like me to move.
When I point this out, their response is "why should I pay for that?"
I agree with the airlines here but if it makes life overall less stressful for all to put families together due to the bad behavior of those parents, I'm fine with it.
I remember as I was annoyed that this whole thing was holding up my flight. Family asked someone to move, they declined, family kept insisting. Boarding line was getting held up due to this. FA arrives, starts imploring the man to move his seat, obviously just trying to get boarding complete so we can all move on with our lives. Eventually the man got up & changed.
(to be clear, I don't do this personally and pay extra to sit together but I do hope people start parking their kids all over the plane since that's what we all seem to want! It's tempting.)
I don't understand, are people buying random tickets and hoping to be put together once on the plane? I've literally only bought assigned seats on flights except on Southwest.
Though when we had young children, we seriously considered not paying and enjoying having somebody else looking after our four or five year old for the flight :-)
Given it is a necessity, I feel it should either be a compulsory extra cost if you have children below a certain age or it should (ideally) be free to be seated together, so that people who do pay for particular seats know that there won't be an unsupervised child allocated to the seat next to them.
We get about 2/3 of the down and there's now nothing, so I say -- with some desperation -- "If someone would be willing to switch seats so my daughter and I can sit together I'll give you $20." A guy says "I don't want the money but I'll switch."
Which sort of shows that if you're not a jerk, and you ask nicely, often people will go out of their way to help you.
Families who seem to expect other passengers to move, especially when there's assigned seating, are another story, and deserve the condemnation they get, IMHO.
South Korea had to publicly come out and say they wanted to accept Trump's deal, but it had to have some concessions or else they would go into economic collapse!
And the EU just allowed something like 30% more access from USA food which was previously considered not fit for human consumption under their health laws right? Please correct my figures if they're wrong.
But the governments of the big operating companies have vetoed this so far. Sometimes deregulation actually makes it easier to implement regulation.
And for example if you take TGV from Paris to the German border, and you have to get on an ICE. If the TGV is late, you miss the connection to the ICE, and have to sleep in the border town, TGV doesn't have to pay.
And missing connection is quite common, specially because Germany is ... not very German.
In terms of safety, a train accident can kill 100s of people. They just don't happen very often.
Made it much easier to get compensation for delayed and canceled trains. ( Of which there are many ).
It's not a significant amount for minor delays, but it makes traveling on trains just that little bit less miserable.
The air industry seems like a good example of just the right level of regulation: There's tons of competition, different pricing tiers with their corresponding levels of quality, and a lot of dynamism combined with a good set of consumer base regulations (24 hour cancellation period, for example).
In my experience, it has been rapidly going up in price and down in quality since the end of the pandemic. You have very few protections as a passenger, and while you may have some rights on paper, they have been made excruciatingly difficult to pursue with the way support lines work with airlines.
To add insult to the injury, look up the history of bailouts airlines have received.
1. Remove DEI hiring of air traffic controllers. (Obama administration had changed air traffic controller hiring practices to favor candidates not suitable for the job [0].
2. Deregulate airlines.
I'm in favor of one of those policies. I guess I would rather pay more if it ensures my safety.
https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...
In 2013, the FAA sought to diversify the air traffic controller workforce by introducing a biographical questionnaire, which replaced the proven AT-SAT test and deprioritized job-relevant skills in favor of arbitrary factors like LOW grades in science or history. This abrupt change ostracized graduates of the FAA-endorsed CTI programs, which had successfully cultivated highly qualified candidates for years. The process was further marred by reports of corruption, including an FAA official coaching select candidates on how to cheat the questionnaire, undermining fairness and trust in the system. These actions disrupted the training pipeline, reduced applicant quality, and caused lasting staffing shortages and safety concerns in aviation.
- price of the ticket was as advertised - a checked bag was an option at the same price it has always been. - I was able to assign a seat next to my husband without additional fees.
Now while this flight was not cancelled, I’ve had to reschedule some flights with Delta due to illness previously and they just gave me a 100% credit for the cost of the flight that was easy to use.
The only contrast for cancellation I know is the nightmare of Air Canada. In the past I’ve had flights get cancelled and only got “vouchers” that could only be used by calling a specific number that took 1 hour+ and were not applicable for taxes (you know half the cost of a Canadian Airline Ticket), and would be lost of not fully used in one purchases
It also means that you're often still out actual money if you use award miles.
Checked bags are also extra for either seat.
I'm not even talking about pay-by-weight as was famously tried between pacific islands. Nobody wants to have someone spilling over the armrest into their seat, and I'm sure plenty of people who are wider than the seat would like to fit without going first class. I'm not even so unusually sized, but cannot sit in the aisle without being hit by every person and trolley passing by.
Next up, $200 for head-room. You didn't think you could fly keeping your head upright for free, did you?
The airline market is so constricted and basically well across the line of a cartel, but I guess they think they get something out of it or do they just like the getting one over on people? "ha, you thought you were going to have a good time with your family or see your grandmother's funeral for X price, but we squeezed another $200 out of you, Sucker! *board room high fives all around*"
Or maybe is it a kind of momentum of the people and organizational structure that was built up over many years, aimed at facilitating the con and fraud perpetrated on the public that still has power to manipulate the airline enterprises themselves? The people who used to do that are after all, as I assume adept and oriented towards being deceptive, manipulative, scheming.
It's all a bit odd to me and I would love if someone could spill the beans on what motivates the airlines on being so adamant about cheating, lying, abusing, scamming, conning and generally being really awful to people and society.
The second is price discrimination - think current McDonald's prices. Soaking people who can afford it and letting people who are very frugal navigate your confusing system and membership etc is worth a good amount of money
As long as it's in my anticipated budget, I want comfort, consistency, and courage. These undercutters have me scared they shaved off a wing to save on price. @#$% them. I fly with my airline, and these jerkoffs who want to bend over for fascism can die with it.
Honestly, people fly too much. I’m 6’5 with a 24” shoulder - flying economy is painful for me and the poor soul stuck next to me.
I don’t need to fly for business and am fortunate to have a lot of PTO. So, I fly first class, business class, or not at all. If the cost is too much, i drive. There’s virtually no east coast trip that is more unpleasant to me via car. I’m young enough that I can do NY to Georgia or Chicago overnight with no ill effect. There’s so much wasted time around the airport many flights don’t even save time.
I’m going on a trip to Asia in the early spring with my kid. I could save like $4000 flying in the back… but why? If that amount of money is breaking the bank, I cannot afford two weeks there anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bmGff5f-Ug
(They are available from all the usual podcast places, but it just happens that the youtube mirror is the easiest way I know to link a specific episode.)
Give me a link, document, reference, or something to back up the claims. Otherwise it comes across as FUD.
This one is wild. You want to sit next to somebody's crying 2 year old? Go nuts. Change their diaper while you're at it.
My spouse and I just finished our first two flights with our 11 month old this weekend which were about 3.5 and 4 hours apiece. Even with an extra seat reserved for them and an overall extremely well tempered baby, I cannot imagine how much harder the flight would have been if the gate agent hadn't been able to rearrange our seats so all three of us were sitting together.
Having to get an extra seat to fit a car seat for an infant isn't required, but flying with the infant in a car seat is strongly recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Having somewhere to put the baby or their various toys/bottles temporarily helps a whole lot over a four hour flight. This already added $500 onto the price of our trip.
The cost of raising children is already very high in the US, so it will really suck if flying becomes yet more expensive and stressful. In my opinion, this (and many others) are a cost which we should spread out if we actually want people to have kids.
I get the idea of paying for the privilege, but at the same time, it's not like they roll out the red carpet for someone who flies with their kids. Pretty much every time that I can remember them ever rearranging seats to get us together, we always wind up sitting in the rows at the very back of the plane close to the bathroom, which is fine with me. If I wanted red carpet treatment, I'd pay for first class for everyone. But I'm not about to do that.
All I do know is that if they were to stop rearranging seats, it would make the frequency of our flying go down quite a bit. At a minimum, if they went that route, I would want there to be a guaranteed payment to be able to get everyone to sit together. That way I can at least plan for the extra cost. Knowing airlines they would probably use a sliding scale based on age or something.
What with orange two-chins in charge, MAGA, ICE, deregulation across the board, and the general shit-housery that seems to be going on over there, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to attempt it again in my lifetime ... it's not the actual travel that is the issue, it would be the non-stop gag-reflex on landing ...
RIP USA ...
> Automatic Refunds for Cancellations
> Transparency of Fees
How does a lawmaker justify this being in the publics interest ? I'm not even joking, I know "well lobbyist going to lobby", but this is a legitimate question. How does a regulatory body say "Yup, that's okay with us to remove" ?
duxup•1h ago
>American Joins Delta, Southwest, United and Other US Airlines Push to Strip Away Travelers’ Rights and Add More Fees by Rolling Back Key Protections in New Deregulation Move
grafmax•1h ago