Robert Silk
I recall a conversation I had in the summer of 2022 with airline consumer advocate Bill McGee, a man who never lacks for an opinion.
"Quite frankly, on the enforcement side, the DOT under [secretary Pete] Buttigieg has been a tremendous disappointment," he told me.
By that time, Buttigieg had proposed new regulations on airlines, most notably the automatic refund rule for cancellations that went into effect this past October.
But with the DOT dragging its heels on enforcement measures against airlines that didn't comply with refund requirements during the early phases of the pandemic, McGee suggested that Buttigieg was all talk and no action.
Eventually the department did announce a series of refund-related fines, though none against a major U.S. carrier.
But it was after Buttigieg came under fire in the wake of the momentous meltdown by Southwest Airlines during the 2022 holiday season that everything really changed. The DOT ultimately fined Southwest $140 million for failing its customers during that 10-day operational collapse, the largest consumer-protection fine the department had to that point levied by a factor of more than 30.
Other momentous fines have followed, most notably one this past October for $50 million against American Airlines for damaging thousands of wheelchairs and for providing unsafe and delayed wheelchair assistance. And just this month, in the waning days of the Biden administration, the DOT assessed its first-ever fine against an airline for chronically delaying flights: $2 million against JetBlue.
In the meantime, Buttigieg has also pushed ahead with numerous airline consumer initiatives, including a regulation, now under legal challenge from airlines, that would require carriers to display full fares, including ancillary fees, at the beginning of the booking path. Another regulation, finalized in December, offers a series of protections to flyers who use wheelchairs.
So as the second Trump administration takes office, it's no wonder that McGee has changed his tune about Buttigieg's tenure.
"I eventually came to believe he evolved into the most proactive DOT secretary on airline issues that we've ever had," he told me recently.
It's also no wonder that airlines have been looking forward to the new administration. In November, Delta CEO Ed Bastian was uncommonly forthright for an airline CEO when he criticized the Biden administration for regulatory "overreach." Southwest CEO Bob Jordan and Frontier CEO Barry Biffle have also spoken publicly about their expectations of a more friendly regulatory playing field for airlines under the new administration.
I agree that at times the long stream of Biden DOT announcements about airline consumer protections have felt like too much. For example, the commencement by the DOT and the Justice Department in October of an inquiry into the state of competition in air travel felt excessive, coming as it did shortly after the launch of a separate DOT inquiry into the loyalty programs of the Big Four U.S. carriers in September.
But I also think Buttigieg has often provided needed oversight of an industry that has had a lot its own way over time. Case in point: the new refund rules. Left alone, airlines often misled flyers into thinking that a flight credit was their only option in cases of cancellations. Carriers can't do that anymore.
Hopefully, the incoming administration won't completely reverse the course set by Buttigieg, even if it does back off a bit.