If you’ve taken a commercial flight in the last year, you’ve probably complained about one of MANY things that have been, well, bad. Unless it was your very first time flying, you know that taking to the skies feels worse and worse from the booking to landing. It’s not your imagination; things really are getting worse and a new DoT rule isn’t helping. Between the rising cost of tickets, caused by soaring (if you’ll pardon the pun) fuel prices, airlines cutting back on customer perks, and massive wait times at TSA, flying sucks. Just to be clear, those TSA wait times aren’t the fault of individual agents, they are much more often caused by systemic problems of funding, airport design, or staffing. I mean, the TSA folks just lost their chairs, so let’s give them a break here. Seriously, they really did lose their chairs.
Only two weeks ago I wrote about how the airfare is rising and it’s likely going to be quite expensive to travel around the holidays. Now, we get to add another layer of crap onto our airline experience because the US Department of Transportation has just taken away, even more, consumer protections for fliers.
What the Department of Transportation has Taken Away.
A few days before the rule we’re covering here was supposed to go live, it was delayed. The DoT pushed back the implementation of this rule until February 1, 2027. This wasn’t reported on until the day the rule was supposed to go live, October 19th, because the DoT quietly published the rule in the Federal Register on October 15th; making no other remarks in public about it. Although the rule has been delayed, it will still be implemented next year, so we’re still going to cover it.
In July, the Department of Transportation rolled back a consumer protection rule that required airlines to un-hide the hidden fees, following a court ruling on procedural grounds. This includes things like change fees, checked bag fees, carry on fees, seat-choice fees, and more. Now, the price you see when shopping for tickets is not always the price you will eventually pay. Airlines seem happy to have these fees hidden again. In 2024, three of the biggest airlines made well over one billion dollars each on these fees. Yes, one billion. Each. In one year. Allowing the airlines to hide these fees again isn’t even the policy change that prompted this article, but I’m going to take address it regardless.
According to analysis by NetVoucherCodes, a UK based company that focuses on helping customers save money through coupon links (they are akin to Rakuten) and data analysis, 100% of US based airlines charge hidden fees. According to the report, the most egregious offender of the hidden fees is Frontier, adding 376% on top of their base ticket price. Spirit airlines was even higher, at 736%, and we all saw how that turned out.
A DoT Rule can have drastic imapcts on our travel. This chart from from Net Voucher Codes shows their breakdown of how many air carriers charge hidden fees to customers.
Lest you think, I’m sure that the larger, non-budget, carriers don’t really do this. No, they do it too.
Delta increases their final ticket price by 158% over base fare, while United increases it 122%, and American by 95%. The lowest percentage markup is from Southwest at 42%.
We were close to having a world where we would see most, if not all, of these fees rolled into the public price. That day may still come, but it has been punted into the future by the Department of Transportation and the federal courts. That ruling on procedural grounds, by the way, was a determination by the courts that the DOT, in 2024, did not allow the public adequate time to comment before implementing the rule.
The current regulatory environment sets the airlines up to more easily capture extra revenue from all of us from these fees. There doesn’t seem to be any other way to look at it either. The regulators, in my opinion, are taking an anti-consumer stance. Even if the only effect on customers is that we now have to spend more time going deeper into the checkout process or doing more mental math, it still makes it a worse experience for all of us.
Even More Consumer Protections Lost
What I’m covering today is that even more consumer protections that were set to go into effect have been rolled back. These rules changes were published on September 3rd and went into effect on October 19th. The Department of Transportation published an amendment to the final rule (linked above). What they changed in the final rule was removing a proposed suite of protections to make flight cancellations less expensive for you, the customer. Under the plan, you would have received $200-$775 per passenger in forms of cash compensation for airline-controlled disruptions. It would also have required the airlines to cover hotel, rebooking, and even meals as a result of these disruptions.
To give you some idea of the scale of this, over the last year, almost one quarter of flights by US Carriers were delayed, meaning that is was 15 or more minutes late. Furthermore, almost 7% of all flights experienced carrier delays. Of delayed flights, carrier caused delays were the most common reason for a delay at just shy of a 30% share. That means that if your flight is delayed, it’s a near one in three chance that the delay was attributable to the airline.
It’s these delays that the changes are most likely to affect. However, we don’t know what the knock-on effects of this policy change will be not only in the current delays, but also the corporate culture changes that may occur when liability is taken away from the companies.
What Are The Changes
Here’s the Department of Transportation’s official list of what the airlines will no longer be required to provide compensation for.
- An aircraft that must be cleaned following the death of a passenger.
- An aircraft is damaged by extreme weather, foreign object debris or sabotage.
- A baggage or cargo loading delay is caused by an outage of a bag system that isn’t controlled by an airline or one of its contractors.
- A cyberattack causes the disruption and the airlines are in compliance with federal cybersecurity regulations.
- A shutdown or system failure of government systems occurs that directly affects the ability of an airline to safely conduct flights and that is not expected.
- A plane’s brakes are overheated due to a safety incident in which emergency procedures were used.
- Unscheduled maintenance that must be addressed before the next flight is necessary.
- An emergency requiring medical attention that the airline has no control over occurs.
- An unruly passenger must be removed from a flight.
- An airport closes due to volcanic ash, wind or wind shear.
If any delay is categorized into these ten causes, the airline will not have to pay compensation. That means that you’re on the hook for any costs associated with the flight being canceled or delayed for these reasons. Since I try to be very factual in my work, even while having some fun, I want to recognize that airlines may voluntarily compensate you for delays or inconveniences, this rule doesn’t stop that from happening, but the previously proposed rule would have required it.
How Will This Affect Me?
This rule’s ability to impact your flight and compensation is pretty critical, so we’re going to take the time to go over this and discuss how each item could influence your experience.
1. An aircraft that must be cleaned following the death of a passenger.
This seems fairly reasonable at face value. A passenger dying on an airline is going to cause delays, among other things. Not that the delays are likely the most important thing at that moment, but they will still happen. There aren’t detailed statistics on the number of deaths on airplanes each year outside of fatal crashes, so I don’t have any data to show you regarding how often things like this happen. This does happen though and, if it happens on a flight that you are connecting with, you’ll be on the hook for any disruptions you experience.
2. An aircraft is damaged by extreme weather, foreign object debris or sabotage.
Once again, this sounds mostly reasonable. The airline is not at-fault for hail hitting the plane, which makes some sense. However, the foreign object is a bit more of a question mark for me. What if the foreign object was a piece of something used by the ground crew that broke off. What if that object broke because of poor maintenance by the airline? What if something was left unsecured and damaged the plane when the engines started? I know the airlines don’t want these things to happen, but if they do and they would reasonably be concluded to have been, even if only in part, the fault of the airline, why is the customer bearing the burden of that failure? Once you look at it, this item has too much wiggle room for my taste.
This new DoT Rule is shaping the air travel industry toward a less consumer friendly position.
3. A baggage or cargo loading delay is caused by an outage of a bag system that isn’t controlled by an airline or one of its contractors.
If you’ve never thought too hard about exactly how your bag makes it through the airport and who is tasked with caring for it, you’re not alone. I imagine most people haven’t thought about this. The answer to who is responsible for your luggage ultimately rests with the airline, but who is responsible for the handling of checked bags at an airport has variation.
Much of the time, the airline is responsible for hiring the baggage handlers or contracting with a company that handles the bags in the airport and gets them onto the planes. In some cases, the airport may hire the staff directly. If the airline has issues with the bag system in the airport and it delays the plane, they might not have to compensate you.
The key here is the “isn’t controlled by an airline or one of its contractors.”
Much of this new DoT rule comes down to the fine print of what part controls what. It makes it less likely that consumers will be compensated when something goes wrong.
If this is the reason given for the delay, the airline has room to blame parts of the baggage system that they don’t control. If the conveyers the bags travel on are controlled by the airport, for example, they could be blamed for the delay in loading bags on the plane and mean that you aren’t compensated when your flight is behind schedule.
This is, again, another way that airlines are being given room to shift blame to parties that remove liability from them.
4. A cyberattack causes the disruption and the airlines are in compliance with federal cybersecurity regulations.
This rule means that if an airline suffers an attack on it’s computer systems but it’s in compliance with federal cybersecurity regulation, then it is not responsible for compensating passengers. I have a lot of opinions on this. Well-informed opinions.
In recent years, the federal government realized that it needed to do better with cybersecurity regulations and legislators acted in accordance. In 2018 the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA was created by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018. To be fair, this wasn’t the first time that a centralized digital protection service existed. The current agency began as the National Protection and Programs Directorate or NPPD, back in 2007.
The 2018 reorganization gave CISA significant power to create and enforce security standards, which it was doing. It didn’t just do this in a vacuum either, it had the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee which had members from many different walks of life. Mayors, CEOs, university chancellors, professors, and directors of emergency management agencies all found themselves working with CISA to guide them on implementing policies.
Quite frankly, I don’t trust the current cybersecurity standards to be rigorous enough to support this new DoT rule.
However, CISA has been weakened since 2025 by layoffs and dismantling of the organization. It’s in such a sorry state that this last May, it was discovered that they left open up a massive security vulnerability. So when I’m told that the airlines won’t need to compensate customers if they are in compliance with federal cybersecurity regulations and suffer a cyberattack, I can’t help but question if those standards are enough.
Keep in mind, cyberattacks on airlines and airports are increasing. The idea that a cyber attacker could cripple an airline or airport is not some fanciful tale, it is reality. In 2025, Kuala Lumpur International Airport was brought down for over 10 hours by ransomware. Airlines including United and Hawaiian have publicly been targeted by cyber attackers. Most of these attacks haven’t been successful, but from 2024 to 2025, the European Aviation Safety Agency reported a 600% rise in cyberattacks on airports and airlines, so the bad actors aren’t giving up.
5. A shutdown or system failure of government systems occurs that directly affects the ability of an airline to safely conduct flights and that is not expected.
Government systems could be anything from TSA scanning devices to air traffic controller communication equipment. These elements are often very much out of the airline companies’ control, that is true. I certainly don’t want to fly if, say, radar isn’t working. You’re still going to be in a tough spot, though.
I agree that things like radar and ATC systems need to be working for a safe flight.
6. A plane’s brakes are overheated due to a safety incident in which emergency procedures were used.
If you’re thinking, this sounds very specific, you would be correct. Situations like this are quite rare and what it means is that the plane has done something where they have to land either overweight or in a less-than-controlled manor, leading to the breaks overheating and either having to be replaced or cooled off. If this leads to cancellations or delays down the schedule, regardless of fault, the passengers may be on the hook for any issues that come from it.
Now, this is again about safety, which is always paramount but, I want you to keep this one in the back of your mind for a few minutes because we’re going to come back to it.
7. Unscheduled maintenance that must be addressed before the next flight is necessary.
“Unscheduled maintenance” is a far too broad category for me to like it in this context. To illustrate, let me paint a picture for you. This could mean that an airplane’s computer isn’t working and it can’t take off or even start up. That’s a pretty good reason for a delay. That exact scenario happened to me a few years ago. They had to swap out the computer and almost had to swap jets; there were many hours of delay.
This new DoT rule allows airlines to blame unscheduled maintenance when something goes wrong and not compensate you.
Now, that sort of thing could be completely unexpected, things happen and you can’t predict everything. However, it could also be that the pilots had been logging issues steadily and the airline hadn’t scheduled the plane for the proper maintenance and now the plane is delayed unexpectedly.
Yet again, this is a blackhole of interpretation that the airlines could use to avoid compensating passengers when something goes wrong.
8. An emergency requiring medical attention that the airline has no control over occurs.
How this is defined will be a huge key factor. A heart attack is something they have no control over, but if an older person falls over and breaks a bone because of turbulence, is that out of the airline’s control? I would say the airline bears little responsibility in that scenario in most cases but, context is everything. The more questions there are, though, the more wiggle room there is for the company not to pay something to passengers that have their travel disrupted.
9. An unruly passenger must be removed from a flight.
Unruly passengers are always popular to cover in various travel articles. There are tons of videos, some fairly famous, of people having meltdowns on planes. Sometimes it’s anger issues, other times it’s mental illness, but often it is alcohol that is a leading cause of these situations.
Airlines have a responsibility, at least in my opinion, to not overserve passengers and not allow inebriated passengers to board. They do often reject passengers that are intoxicated, but it’s still a problem and this new DoT rule gives the airline an out if it happens.
Airlines have to deal with drunken passengers more often than you might realize. Quite often, those passengers were inebriated when they got on the plane, so it isn’t entirely the airline’s doing. Consider, though, if the airline keeps serving the passenger alcohol and they become unruly, wouldn’t that give the airline at least some culpability? Not according to these new rules, it seems.
If a passenger gets overserved and starts throwing up or hitting people, it’s a problem that the airline must deal with now. Sometimes, that means duck taping passengers to their seats. Sometimes that means an emergency landing. Maybe that landing leads to overheated brakes. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the behavior was caused by alcohol that was served on the plane or on the ground before the flight, the passenger was let on the plane or served more alcohol when, arguably, they shouldn’t have been and now, you’re on the hook for the delay.
10. An airport closes due to volcanic ash, wind or wind shear.
Yes, I do agree, a volcano or wind closing an airport is out of the hands of airlines.
The Real Problem Is What To Do In The Moment
In my mind, several of these items seem reasonable, the rest are far too open ended. The problem isn’t really how much responsibility the airline actually has, though, it’s dealing with what is happening in the moment.
Take, for example, a cyber-attack. If hackers take down an airline’s booking systems and the gate agent cannot scan tickets, in that moment, to you the passenger, it doesn’t matter whether the airline was in compliance with regulations or not, you’re still stuck. It could take months to figure out if an airline was in compliance or not, but you need a hotel now. You don’t have time to wait for fault to be determined, the problem exists in the moment.
That’s the issue at heart here. The old rules were in place to protect and care for consumers when things go wrong. Customers won’t spend weeks, months, or years, trying to get reimbursed for expenses that they technically should have been compensated for. By requiring airlines to pay passengers in the moment that disruption happens, it incentivized airlines to work diligently to avoid those situations and ensured passengers have hotel rooms or money to get one.
Those protections are out the window now. Instead, customers will have to fight for compensation and argue with customer service agents. We’ve all lost protections we had because of these rule changes and it sucks. Even if some of these changes seem reasonable, I doubt you will feel that way if these things happen to you. I’ve flown too many times to believe that people remain completely calm and level headed when their flight is delayed or cancelled. That’s especially true if it’s because of “unexpected maintenance.”
What Can You Do?
Perhaps it sounds quaint right now, but you can call or write to your representative in Congress. Ostensibly, they have the power to change the requirements of the regulatory bodies and pass laws to protect us. Letting them know how you feel doesn’t protect your travel in the moment, though.
The best thing you can do if you’re traveling is get some travel insurance. A travel insurance policy can protect you from delayed or cancelled flights, missed bookings at hotels or cruises, and make sure you don’t face a huge loss if something goes wrong.
Yes, things usually do go the way they are suoosed to when you’re traveling, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take steps to protect yourself and let those in power know they need to protect us.
I don’t want you to get the feeling that I’m here to sell you on buying another thing by fear mongering, I’m not. The truth about travel is that the VAST majority of the time, everything goes right and you get to where you need to be, when you need to be there. If it didn’t work that way, then people would get pretty fed up pretty quickly. Things do go wrong, though, and now there are fewer rights that protect you so, you might want to take a step to protect yourself.
If you’re taking a flight somewhere and are wondering how to get that travel insurance, we’ve got you covered. As you might have guessed we are a travel agency and if you are looking to book a trip to a resort, take a cruise, or just get away for a few days we can help with that! Each year we book hundreds of vacations for individuals, families, and large groups. We’ve got years of experience and firsthand knowledge to make sure you get the best trip possible with support all along the way. Our team of travel professionals can help find and book the best rates and discounts for your trip because it’s our job. So don’t book on your own, use our expertise and book with us so we can help get you, far far away.
