Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday that officials helped airline passengers get $600 million in refunds and imposed $7.25 million in fines in cases in which carriers were slow to take action after canceling or delaying flights.
Frontier Airlines faced the steepest fine, according to the Transportation Department, saying tens of thousands of passengers were affected. The budget airline has agreed to a fine of $2.2 million and returned $222 million to ticket holders, the agency said. The department also took action against five foreign airlines for violations of refund rules.
, the recovery has been bumpier for passengers eager to get back onboard, with periods marred by delays and cancellations on top of growing ticket prices.four times higher than 2019 levels, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Many complaints are tied to securing refunds from foreign airlines.
It also proposed new rules for price transparency and other measures to protect consumers. But some Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates pushed Buttigieg to take stronger action, including issuing fines, and circulated proposals to allow state attorneys general to take a role in protecting passengers.William McGee, a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, said the fines were too late and would not address disruptions at the biggest U.S. carriers.
who contract the coronavirus or another communicable disease before they travel or who have plans derailed by public health guidance.Under the Trump administration, the Transportation Department opted at the start of the pandemic not to punish airlines if they did not issue timely refunds, within seven days for tickets purchased using a credit card, as long as it judged them to be making efforts to comply.
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