Ted Cruz Working Hard For Right Of Innocent Airlines Not To Have To Refund You!

And Maria Cantwell? We are disappoint!

Photo sources: C-SPAN, Picryl, Creative commons license 1.0

Last week, the Biden administration rolled out new rules requiring airlines to disclose the full price of tickets before people buy, and also requiring that passengers be issued a full automatic refund when flights are canceled or significantly changed. Just one more bit of regulatory reform aimed at making life a bit less vexing, and part of Joe Biden’s war on “junk fees” that create aggravations for consumers. Yay!

---

A REFRESHER!

Pete Buttigieg: What's The Deal With Airlines' Hidden Fees? Nobody Likes Those!

---

The problem is that airlines make a lot more money when they they don’t have to bother with things like good service, or even the very basic concept that if you don’t deliver a service someone has paid for, you need to give them their money back. And by a complete coincidence, the legislation authorizing the Federal Aviation Administration expires on May 10.

Big surprise: As The Lever reports, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Podcasting) and three other members of Congress who get lots of support from the airline industry have added a provision to the must-pass reauthorization bill that would partly negate the new instant-refund regulation. Instead, the legislation would require customers to file a “written or electronic request” with the airline to get a refund for canceled or significantly delayed flights. (And then wrangle with the airline over the inevitable disputes, though what else is new?)

Keep in mind that when the Department of Transportation announced the new rule, its press release underlined that the whole point was making the refund process automatic, uniform for all airlines, and convenient, so already-inconvenienced passengers wouldn’t have to

navigate a patchwork of cumbersome processes to request and receive a refund, searching through airline websites to figure out how make the request, filling out extra “digital paperwork,” or at times waiting for hours on the phone. 

In addition to Cruz, the other three legislators pushing the provision are Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and Reps. Sam Graves (R-Missouri) and Rick Larsen (D-Washington). The four are among the six top recipients of campaign donations from the airline industry, according to the transparency nonprofit Open Secrets.

Maria Cantwell, we are disappointed in you. Rick Larsen, we don’t know who you are.

But wait, it gets stupider: Now that there’s a pending bill to negate the automatic refund rule, airline lobbyists are pointing at the legislation and saying they shouldn’t have to comply with the new rule at all.

In a statement, the International Air Transport Association, the trade group that represents some 300 airlines, explained to The Lever that the “ticket refund provision in the FAA Bill requiring customers to request a refund confirms that it is the Congress’s intent to not require automatic refunds,” so how dare the administration try to subvert the Will Of the People’s Elected Representatives, harrumph?

Not surprisingly, consumer advocates are calling on people to let their congresscritters know that they prefer Joe and Mayor Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s approach here, thank you very much.

Teresa Murray, director of the Consumer Watchdog group at the Public Interest Research Group, explained that the provision in the FAA authorization bill “just puts us back to where we were,” adding that the likely result of the legislation would be that airline customers may find themselves “waiting weeks or months or years or never to get their refund that they are entitled to by law — and that’s very worrisome.”

Well hey, maybe if you’re not an airline. Rolling Stone adds that the provision comes after an unsuccessful bid by Cruz to pass a separate measure to provide members of Congress with security escorts at airports, probably because you never know when some terrorist or journalist will get footage of you flying to Cancun during a deadly freezing spell.

More seriously, the magazine notes, the provision would strip away an important new protection for consumers at a time when

airlines have routinely sold tickets on flights they do not have the capacity to operate. “There are a number of airlines who cannot fly their schedules,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said last year. “The customers are paying the price. They’re canceling a lot of flights. But they simply can’t fly the schedules today.”

Oh, yes, it would be bad if airlines had to pay people back for cancellations the airlines’ own booking practices caused, we understand now.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren took to Twitter Monday to call attention to the attempted ratfuck of the new rules, arguing that

The latest deal in Congress could mean that travelers are still bearing the burden of airlines’ mishaps. Instead of automatically getting their money back, they would be forced to manually request refunds, wasting time and energy.

This would be a gift to the airlines, who know many travelers won’t have the time or resources to navigate the bureaucratic process they designed. Congress should protect travelers’ rights, not pad airline executives’ pockets.

And then while many replies said it was a disgusting sellout to the airlines, blue checkmark people said that sending a written request was no big deal, why won’t you do something useful and close the border, why do you care about rich people who can afford to fly and not ordinary people whose eggs cost $12 a dozen, and WOO-WOO POCAHONTAS!

On the whole, we’d go with the “call your representatives and senators” approach instead, which is more likely to stop that crap.

[Rolling Stone / The Lever (free signup required) / Photo credits: C-SPAN and Picryl, Creative Commons License 1.0]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please subscribe, or if a one-time donation works better for you, here is the button to do that. We promise not to lose your luggage!