Flying has never been worse — but hope is on the way

I do not know anyone who heads to the airport and thinks to themselves, "Oh man, I bet this is going to be an awesome experience." Just booking a flight means contemplating a sliding scale of unfortunate scenarios. What if my bag is lost? What if the flight is overbooked? What do I do if it's delayed or canceled? Once you get to the airport, things only get worse: the headache that is maneuvering through long security lines, swallowing eye-popping airport prices, or wondering just how scared you should be if you wind up on a Boeing. At this point, it's more of a pleasant surprise if a flight actually goes as planned.

Beyond the low-level dread that accompanies every trip, several high-profile recent incidents have driven home how frustrating air travel can be. Southwest's December 2022 meltdown, due in large part to its outdated scheduling system, resulted in nearly 17,000 flight cancellations and more than 2 million stranded passengers. This summer, Delta canceled thousands of flights as it struggled to recover from the CrowdStrike outage.

Before you set your passport on fire and declare that from here on out you'll only be hitting the great American highways for vacation, know that help is on the way. On the consumer front, the federal government is trying to make flying less disastrous where possible. It's making it so that when the airlines have an oops, they don't get to hold on to your money — and they can't wait until you have a hissy fit to give you a refund. In the wake of the pandemic, for example, the Department of Transportation took action against six airlines that dragged their feet on giving passengers over $600 million in refunds. The government is also trying to make airlines be up front about fees and ax some charges. The message to the airline industry: You've had a few too many screwups to be left to your own devices.

"This goes through cycles," said Bob Mann, an aviation analyst. "Airlines behave badly, airlines behave badly. Customers react, customers react. Finally, the DOT reacts."

William McGee, a longtime consumer advocate and senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly think tank, is a guy who thinks a lot about all the problems with the airline industry. He was fairly unimpressed with President Joe Biden's administration, particularly Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for the first year or two, but now he's a fan. The airline industry's screwups in recent years, capped off by the Southwest debacle, were the "turning point" that, in his view, got the administration to step up.

"I've seen more progress in the last year on consumer protections than I have — I'm not being hyperbolic — in the last 15," he said.

Over the past couple of years, the Biden administration has introduced a slew of rules and services intended to make airline passengers' lives easier. Some are aimed at protecting people's pocketbooks, others at just helping them stay informed about their options and rights.

In April, the DOT announced a final rule requiring airlines to automatically issue refunds when they cancel or significantly change flights. The rule, set to go into effect in October, also says airlines have to give people their money back on fees for other services when they are not delivered as promised, like if their checked bag gets super delayed or the plane WiFi they purchased doesn't work. Importantly, the DOT stipulates that the refunds have to be in cash or the original form of payment — no more vouchers or credits that lock up consumers' money.

"They've always been reluctant to give refunds," said Janet Bednarek, an aviation historian at the University of Dayton. "They much prefer to keep your money and keep you as a customer by giving you a voucher, which can only be used on their company."

Biden signed the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill in May that included the stipulations about automatic refunds for delayed and canceled flights, giving the DOT rule even more legislative bite. (The part of the rule specific to refunds on ancillary fees won't kick in until the fall.) Buttigieg also sent a reminder to airlines in July about their obligations on passenger refunds.

"I am hearing reports of some airlines only offering flight credits to passengers for cancelled flights," he wrote on X. "Let me be clear — you are entitled to get your money back promptly if your flight is cancelled and you don't take a rebooking."

The airline industry seems to be relatively on board with the refund idea. A spokesperson for Airlines for America, an industry trade group, told me in an email that its members "strongly support" rules requiring automatic refunds and that its carriers "abide by — and frequently exceed — DOT regulations regarding consumer protections."

The industry is not so on board with other parts of the Biden administration's make-flying-less-awful agenda. Major airlines and A4A have sued to challenge a DOT rule aimed at protecting consumers from what the administration has called "junk fees." It would make the airlines tell consumers up front about extra charges for checking or carrying on bags, canceling a trip, or changing reservations. The industry, on the other hand, holds that disclosing fees immediately would "greatly confuse consumers who will be inundated with information" and that the DOT's efforts to regulate the charges are beyond its authority. (Courts have temporarily blocked the rule.) In essence, the DOT is arguing that airlines should be clear about their fees so that consumers can accurately compare prices, while the airlines are saying it's unnecessary. In an email, the A4A spokesperson argued that airlines already do enough to inform consumers about fees and described the rule as "a bad solution in search of a problem."

The DOT has also proposed a rule that would bar airlines from charging a fee for parents to sit next to their kids. Some airlines already do this — but not all of them. A4A says all its carriers make "every effort to ensure families sit together," but each has its own policy. The rule is now headed to a public-comment period, meaning it will be a while before it's finalized, if it ever is. The Biden administration is also trying to make flying specifically better for people with disabilities and improve standards around accommodations.

Beyond rulemaking and enforcement, the DOT has made some efforts to help consumers navigate various airlines' policies. It's launched a dashboard to let you see which airlines offer services such as free family seating and free rebooking in the event of a "controllable" cancellation or a long delay, meaning a problem caused by the airline.

The dashboard and the various rules about refunds are nice — knowledge is power, after all — but the effect is limited because not a lot of passengers know about them. Most Americans fly maybe once or twice a year, and even people being informed about the whole deal doesn't stop airlines from trying to first offer a voucher instead of a refund or charge their litany of fees.

"I guess it's better in that consumers have access to better information, but there is still a lot of push and pull out there," Bednarek said. "How many consumers actually go to that dashboard to find out how open are the airlines about what the rules actually are? How do you tell the difference between a controllable and an uncontrollable delay?"

Still, McGee says the Biden administration's consumer-protection efforts have been admirable: "Buttigieg has stepped up, and it's like there's a new sheriff in town, and the airlines don't like it, and they're very critical of him, and they're critical of Congress."

Like a lot of businesses and industries, airlines tend to overreact at the slightest hint of new rules and regulations, even just stuff at the margins. That seems to be a lot of what's happening here — none of what the administration is pushing is that dire. I can see the argument that listing fees out on a site like Expedia or Kayak might be a little jarring for consumers at first, but that should be a solvable user-experience problem. On the refunds thing, I mean, come on — if you order a burger at a restaurant and the restaurant is out of burgers, it doesn't get to charge you for the burger anyway.

"If you ask the industry to do something, they will first say it's impossible," Mann said. "And after making it clear that it's definitely not impossible, they will say, well, we could do that, but it would cause us irreparable harm."

Consumers do have the opportunity to vote with their feet and go to better airlines, but there is a natural limit to this, given that almost every airline is experiencing hiccups and using many of the same tactics. Still, not everyone agrees with the government's meddling. George Ferguson, an airline analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, told me he thinks the market should be able to sort itself out.

"In most other businesses in the US, the government doesn't step in and tell a business whether it has to give a refund or a credit or how that has to work," he said. "As much as you could kind of see the airlines sitting on people's refunds, some of them split with the pack; some of them were better than others in getting refunds."

In many cases, however, it was hard to know which airline had which policy, and now whether and how fast you'll get your money back doesn't depend on the airline.

Getting a refund on a service that wasn't delivered seems like a bit of a gimme. But there are plenty of other problems with the airline industry that need solving — some the government can take care of, and some the government is causing. The FAA is short thousands of air-traffic controllers, which affects schedules and, if you really want to worry, potentially safety. The agency has dealt with tech headaches and has been accused of falling short on some of its oversight duties. The recently signed reauthorization bill should help in some areas — getting more air-traffic controllers and safety inspectors hired, for example — but the FAA still has its fair share of issues.

Gallup polls suggest more Americans have a negative view of the airline industry than a positive one. But there are all sorts of ways flying can and should be better. Airport prices for things like food and beverages, whether a full meal or a simple cup of coffee, are truly outlandish. Flights are packed and often overbooked. The fees really are hard to figure out. The argument that airlines make is that it's a positive for passengers to be able to get the lowest price and then add on, but when the starting price for a ticket you see on a travel website winds up being $100 lower than the fare you wind up paying, it's annoying. The fees also create a bunch of weird incentives — everyone tries to board with their bags to avoid paying extra, and the planes just aren't made to accommodate everyone's bags. At a higher level, it's easy to wonder whether the airline industry is competitive enough or whether deregulating the airlines in the 1970s was really the right move.

The reality is also that the way the airlines get better — either because they decide to or, more often, because passengers, lawmakers, and regulators demand it — is often through a major screwup. Things get bad enough that finally there's some action.

Absent the public failures, there wouldn't be a lot of political will to take these actions, Bednarek said. "You say, OK, we can all agree that this was unacceptable. And the airlines themselves recognize that this could be damaging to their bottom line," she said. "They will take action, and they will put a Band-Aid on it. They will fix those who were affected by that particular incident, but making broader, long-term structural changes, that's a whole other ball game."

That cycle, in and of itself, isn't really sustainable. But for now, it's the best we've got. So remember: Next time your airline cancels your flight, say no to the voucher and get that cash sent straight to your credit card.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.