US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

https://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/american-joins-delta-southwest-united-and-other-us-airlines-push-to-strip-away-travelers-rights-and-add-more-fees-by-rolling-back-key-protections-in-new-deregulation-move/

by duxup • 10 months ago

663 601 10 months ago

travelandtourworld.com

duxup2• 10 months ago

Original title did not fit on HN so I had to edit it, origional:

American Joins Delta, Southwest, United and Other US Airlines Push to Strip Away Travelers’ Rights and Add More Fees by Rolling Back Key Protections in New Deregulation Move

grafmax3• 10 months ago

Deregulation once again helping business at the expense of consumers.

SoftTalker4• 10 months ago

Look at what flying cost before deregulation and then decide if you want to go back.

bunnyfoofoo• 10 months ago

Get a 403 from EU. Is there a better source?

unwind• 10 months ago

Data point: it worked for me, also in the EU.

willvarfar• 10 months ago

These are the main points listed in the article:

* Automatic Refunds for Cancellations: Airlines want to remove the requirement to provide automatic refunds when flights are cancelled or significantly altered. Passengers may instead receive only vouchers or no compensation at all, leaving them without recourse in the event of a major flight disruption.

* Transparency of Fees: The airlines also aim to strip away rules that require them to disclose all fees (like baggage, seat assignments, and service charges) upfront. Instead of the clear, itemized pricing system that passengers currently rely on, airlines could hide fees until later in the booking process, making the true cost of a ticket much higher than expected.

* Family Seating Guarantees: Under current regulations, airlines must ensure that families with young children are seated together without additional charges. This would no longer be guaranteed under the new proposal, meaning families could face extra costs just to sit next to one another.

* Accessibility Protections for Disabled Passengers: The deregulation proposal also targets protections for disabled passengers, weakening their access to support and assistance during air travel.

Nasty site full of a gazillion trackers etc.

cft• 10 months ago

I am in the EU and I get 200

rancar2• 10 months ago

“The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) encourages all airlines to guarantee that young children are seated adjacent to an accompanying adult without charging any additional fee.” https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/airline-family-se...

There is not coverage beyond one adult already in the US. With an additional adult and one child, the airlines already adds in fees. It’s also non-transparent when booking that they have made sure the easy path is the charged path, especially now that airlines make you pay to guarantee being seated together prior to flight checkin 24 hours in advance of takeoff.

redwall_hp• 10 months ago

Automatic Refunds for Cancellations: Airlines want to remove the requirement to provide automatic refunds when flights are cancelled or significantly altered. Passengers may instead receive only vouchers or no compensation at all, leaving them without recourse in the event of a major flight disruption.

Basically half of flights I've ever booked have had a cancellation. Usually the airline customer service had to rebook a new itinerary for the same purpose, but once in the past year they had to issue a refund because all possible routes went through DFW and they had lightning, which they have all the time.

It's absolutely ridiculous to even suggest that you should be able to take someone's money and not render services. That's a fundamental part of commerce.

palmotea• 10 months ago

* Family Seating Guarantees: Under current regulations, airlines must ensure that families with young children are seated together without additional charges. This would no longer be guaranteed under the new proposal, meaning families could face extra costs just to sit next to one another.

Capitalist money-making idea: guarantee young children are seated as far away as possible from their parents if the fee is not paid, then offer to collect the fee from other passengers seated next to the child. Double the cost if it's a baby.

lxgr7• 10 months ago

no compensation at all, leaving them without recourse in the event of a major flight disruption

Would airlines even get away with that, given that card payments for non-provided services can usually be trivially charged back?

Presumably business travelers would not always care enough, but their company's expense management department certainly would.

pluc2• 10 months ago

https://archive.is/wWXqY

lawn• 10 months ago

Works for me.

MangoToupe3• 10 months ago

Interesting. The deregulation of airlines is already a case study of how deregulation tends to reduce competition and hurt consumers.

I suppose we’ve just given up on the concept of trying to do anything but nakedly extract profit at any cost. You’d think shareholders would be pro-competition in the end, though—I certainly would prefer that.

Edit: I mean short-term profits. As a shareholder I would prefer long-term profits via competition and diversification.

rjbwork• 10 months ago

You’d think shareholders would be pro-competition in the end, though—I certainly would prefer that.

The end game of capitalism is monopoly. Why would shareholders want competition that prevents them from extracting maximum profit?

panick21_7• 10 months ago

What are you talking about overall, deregulation of routes has not been bad for consumers. The opposite actually.

hedora16• 10 months ago

It’s been a disaster. There are fewer routes, and flying is miserable, and getting worse every year. Crashes are way up this year.

Airlines profits are basically zero per ticket. Adding $10 per trip would be some sort of fantasy land windfall for the shareholders.

Deregulation badly broke this industry.

pfdietz3• 10 months ago

The deregulation of airlines is already a case study of how deregulation tends to reduce competition and hurt consumers.

What the actual F? Deregulation of airlines was massively beneficial to consumers.

"Base ticket prices have declined steadily since deregulation.[15] The inflation-adjusted 1982 constant dollar yield for airlines has fallen from 12.3 cents in 1978 to 7.9 cents in 1997,[16] and the inflation-adjusted real price of flying fell 44.9% from 1978 to 2011.[17] Along with a rising U.S. population[18] and the increasing demand of workforce mobility, these trends were some of the catalysts for dramatic expansion in passenger miles flown, increasing from 250 million passenger miles in 1978 to 750 million passenger miles in 2005.[19]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_deregulation

hedora16• 10 months ago

How do the real price reductions compare to the rest of the world? Computers automated away a ton of airline jobs, and fuel economy has increased.

Also, are those prices apples to apples with pre-deregulation tickets?

Like, can I just walk up to the terminal, same day, pay that price, and get the equivalent of business class on the plane, and still pay 44% less than real 1978 prices?

MangoToupe3• 10 months ago

Base ticket prices doesn’t seem like a great metric, not that I have a better trivial to measure metric off the top of my head (maybe leg room?), but competition has certainly gone down since deregulation.

jdiff• 10 months ago

Monopoly by underhanded treachery offers better odds at long-term profits than a long, drawn-out competition on fair terms.

pluc2• 10 months ago

In Canada, we've already learned to always fly a European airline when possible. We have some legal protections but Canadian airlines are happy to put people on a complaint waiting list instead of doing anything - it's pretty laughable. As of August, there's 85k complaints waiting. It's a 1.5-2 years wait.

https://otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/air-travel-complaints-resolution-p...

bthrn2• 10 months ago

There is a 90 day decision timeframe starting from the time of submitting a complaint.

But note: > Due to a high volume of complaints, there will be a delay between when a complaint is submitted and waits in the queue and when the complaint process will start.

wat

FireBeyond3• 10 months ago

Like Amazon, "Two day shipping!"...

"Two days from when we actually ship it, which might be today, but might be tomorrow, or in three days from now..."

sib• 10 months ago

So... it's kinda like healthcare?

doodaddy• 10 months ago

Instead of the clear, itemized pricing system that passengers currently rely on, airlines could hide fees until later in the booking process…

They call what we have now “clear”? Where when looking at a page of flights I don’t know how much the multitude of economy/economy+/economy++/premium economy/business/business++ seats will cost until I click on each flight? Where every carrier offers slightly different variations of these seats such that I can’t cross-shop on Google Flights?

Is that the clear and transparent system the airlines are complaining about?

code_for_monkey• 10 months ago

yeah, now imagine when its even worse

Mistletoe• 10 months ago

I’ve seen the movie Brazil and I wish more people had so they would have voted better.

caycep2• 10 months ago

it was worse in the 80's-90's...I guess the past few years of enjoying refunds was not meant to last...

lotsofpulp5• 10 months ago

If each flight leg is a different price, how can the website show you the total until you select both (or all) legs?

nerdponx4• 10 months ago

That doesn't mean it's not opaque and complicated.

sjm-lbm• 10 months ago

FWIW, at least as of today, American Airlines' website attempts to show you round trip prices.

When choosing your outbound leg(s), they show a price inclusive of the cheapest return journey on the day you selected to return using the class of service on your outbound leg. So, there's all sorts of ways for it to be incorrect - maybe you want a different class of service, maybe the cheapest return has a stop but you'd like the direct, etc. - but it's still really useful for figuring out the best options for your flights.

gertlex• 10 months ago

Kayak.com does it... it's very much a UX choice of whether to show combinations of flights at a given "level" (economy/main/1st class) or instead dedicate the space to showing the prices at all levels, and only show a flight at a time.

nostrademons5• 10 months ago

They usually show you a minimum, then have you select each leg, with the price for that leg fully displayed.

lumost2• 10 months ago

Not to mention the lack of standards on leg room/entertainment packages/food quality for any of the above combinations on any airline!

SpaceNoodled• 10 months ago

I literally don't fit in certain carriers' seats because my legs are longer than their seat pitch.

ahmeneeroe-v23• 10 months ago

You want regulations on in-flight entertainment packages??

supertrope• 10 months ago

You can always buy an economy plus ticket.

FinnKuhn• 10 months ago

At least Google flights shows you an estimate for the airline

JustExAWS2• 10 months ago

Well rule #1 is never to book a flight on a third party travel portal. When things go wrong, you now have to deal with the travel portal and the airline.

trzy• 10 months ago

Google Flights isn’t a third party portal! It takes you directly to the airline web site to book. It attempts to estimate the fare price but that’s becoming increasingly difficult with variably priced seats and other “gotcha” expenses that get figured in deep into the booking flow.

jghn7• 10 months ago

Many people will do things like use Google Travel to narrow down an initial set of potential flights based on times & cost, and then go to the individual airlines from there to book things. The GPs post is still a problem in this scenario.

ahmeneeroe-v23• 10 months ago

This is a pro level feature set. I don't think most flyers feel bilked that they can't do this. Absolute price sensitivity (meaning bottom line, not "cheapest business class") is the factor for most people and that is easy to see on any of the flight search engines.

bluGill5• 10 months ago

For most perhaps, but I want to know what I'll really pay. I already know I'm going to check luggage (or not, but now that I have kids and am going for longer vacations checked bags is not something I'll do without), so I want to see the price with checked bags. Likewise I know I'm willing to pay for the legroom of economy plus (the rest of my family doesn't care, though my kids are soon hit their final growth and soon will). I've just added $1000 to my actually price, but all I see is the per person ticket price with no options...

There is a reason I took Amtrak last vacation. Too bad they doen't go do where my next vacation will be.

BeetleB• 10 months ago

What airlines are you searching on?

Whenever I search (admittedly mostly on Southwest), I get everything up front.

kindatrue• 10 months ago

Those are all optional fees.

What they want is a return to the old pre-Obama days where all the taxes and mandatory fees (government and stuff they made up) were only displayed at check out. Kind of like resort fees on hotels.

eadmund3• 10 months ago

[Elimination of] Automatic Refunds for Cancellations

Does this mean when the passenger cancels or when the airline cancels? If it’s when the passenger chooses to cancel, this seems fine and fair: he paid for a flight; he chose not to take it. If it’s the latter, then it seems very unfair.

Transparency of Fees

This seems patently unfair. Folks should know what they’re going to be paying ahead of time.

Family Seating Guarantees

On the one hand, this seems fair. If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege. It doesn’t make sense to tax every other passenger for it. OTOH, families are a net benefit to society, so maybe it’s right for everyone else to pitch in a bit. Also, nothing is worse than the folks who didn’t pay up ahead of time who bug one, ‘may we switch seats so we can sit together?’ So perhaps free family seating makes life easier for everyone.

[Elimination of] Accessibility Protections for Disabled Passengers

I wonder what that actually means. It could be fair (for example, folks too large for one seat purchasing two) or unfair.

cdrini5• 10 months ago

[Elimination of] Automatic Refunds for Cancellations

Airline cancellations. Seeing as they're talking about making a change, I assume it's airline cancellations, since no airline will currently refund you for a passenger cancellation.

tarentel• 10 months ago

Some will, you just have to pay an extra fee when you buy the ticket. It is ridiculous.

hedora16• 10 months ago

Southwest used to for all tickets, for free.

They’re eliminating it because the new CEO is trying to speed-run them out of business.

accrual• 10 months ago

Delta at least supplies a 24 hour grace period to cancel in case one made a mistake. I noticed they don't even charge cards until after this period

itopaloglu834• 10 months ago

They want to benefit from passengers who don’t know their rights, because they won’t request a refund.

Similar things happened to family members multiple times where their initial flight (overseas) was delayed by 6 hours, they had many issues, and nobody provided information about their rights. I told them about what to ask for and voila, $1100 refund.

cyral• 10 months ago

If the flight is delayed by 3 hours, you will get a refund if you cancel. This is great if the delay is long and there is a flight on a competing airline that would let you get out sooner.

DangitBobby4• 10 months ago

If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege.

Agreed. I think they leave too much money on the table. Use of window shades and lavatories could be behind a subscription service as well, with Sky Comfort+ affording you the privilege of multiple lavatory visits for those who have chosen the luxury IBS lifestyle. I'll let you know if I think of anything else those pesky airline passengers take for granted.

dillydogg2• 10 months ago

I think paying for water is a great opportunity. Maybe even the precious Biscoff. Especially for those cross country flights.

az226• 10 months ago

$99 recline your seat fee

masklinn2• 10 months ago

Are you a consultant for ryanair? If not, you should apply.

They tried to straight up remove the window shades, but that’s currently required by Ireland so no dice. A toilet charge has been floated but is apparently difficult both legally and technically. However given Ryanair’s usual treatment of passengers with disabilities I have no doubt a passenger with IBS would have an experience.

Bhilai• 10 months ago

Agreed. There should be a fee for speaking too. Some passengers are really chatty. In today's world where free speech is already being curbed, Airlines should charge a free-speech fee for passengers who plan to converse.

Separately there should be a fee for opening/closing the AC vent and using the overhead lights.

granitepail• 10 months ago

If ya made it through all three of the sentences they wrote, you'd see the comment you replied to came around to it being reasonable to give families a break on group seating.

SoftTalker4• 10 months ago

You may not remember the coin-operated public toilets that used to be fairly common, especially in places like airports.

gpderetta2• 10 months ago

What about seats? You can fly standing perfectly fine. Sitting is a privilege (definitely ryanair does not propose this form time to time).

On the one hand, this seems fair. If you want to sit together [with your family], pay for that privilege

This seems shortsighted. Airlines could get much more money if they added a fee to guarantee not to be seated beside a kid!

devoutsalsa• 10 months ago

I'm waiting for airlines to offer a budget First Class called Number Two Class. You get exclusive use the lavatory for the entirety of the flight.

burkaman• 10 months ago

Automatic Refunds for Cancellations is referring to when the airline cancels. This is related to a Biden administration rule abandoned by the Trump administration: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/business/flight-delays-ca....

chinathrow• 10 months ago

Wow that sounds like pure grift.

kortilla4• 10 months ago

That Biden rule never rolled out according to the article. So what would be changing?

cls59• 10 months ago

It doesn’t make sense to tax every other passenger for it.

I'd rather pay a monetary tax on my ticket to keep families organized together instead of the discomfort tax of sharing a row with parent+child that has been unexpectedly split up from their partner and is now trying to manage the child's behavior for the duration of the flight without the benefit of teamwork.

hedora16• 10 months ago

They don’t guarantee both parents are with the kid. They only guarantee that at least one parent is next to each (very young) child.

This presumably would mean you’d be feeding a random kid a bottle on long flights. God knows how they’d accommodate breastfeeding.

8organicbits5• 10 months ago

Agreed. Flying with my own kids, I'm constantly helping them. They struggle with headphones, opening food, fastening seat belts, being reminded to use the bathroom. Worse: they spill food, have potty training accidents, kick seats, yell, cry, and get scared. It gets easier as they get older, thankfully.

With an infant, having two caregivers within reach is huge. When flying with infant in arms there's nowhere to put the kid down, you don't have a free hand. An extra set of hands to wipe up spit-up, help adjust clothing for breastfeeding, collect the diaper bag, etc is a huge help.

The idea that parents need to pay more to help their children is cruel. I would expect people seated next to a child to end up swapping, to help the parent and to escape the noisy child. But that slows down boarding as people shuffle seats and adds anxiety that we're perfectly able to resolve.

spartas• 10 months ago

Also, nothing is worse than the folks who didn’t pay up ahead of time who bug one, ‘may we switch seats so we can sit together?’

Some of us parents ask that question for your benefit, not ours. Do you want to sit next to my three-year-old?

philipwhiuk2• 10 months ago

Some of us think you're just being cheap.

eadmund3• 10 months ago

Do you want to sit next to my three-year-old?

Not particularly, no. What I want is for you to purchase the seats your family needs ahead of time, not ask me for them for free.

I know that travelling with kids is really tough. I sincerely sympathize! But it’s not a surprise that a kid needs a seat next to his parents. They know when they bought the ticket that he’ll be coming along, because they’re buying the ticket. They should select the necessary seats then.

Sure, if the airline had to move flights around then 1) they should attempt to preserve group cohesion 2) in extremis folks should negotiate. But for awhile I was getting requests from late-boarders every single time I flew. That’s not an accident: they are flying on cheap tickets and trying to get extra value. I sympathize with that too! But I pay for the value I get, and I don’t appreciate social pressure to give it away.

vincnetas• 10 months ago

:) tables have turned. Do you want to switch seats for a "small" fee :)

No, ok never mind, enjoy your flight.

hedora16• 10 months ago

Family seating guarantees are pretty crucial.

Many airlines have punitive seating algorithms (looking at you, Alaska), or pull crap like moving your seats around and separating you after you select them unless you have status (United used to, at least, since they had a practice of selling non-existing flights, then bin packing planes the day before) so without this you can end up having a breast feeding infant sitting across the plane from its family.

In essentially all cases, the kid can be put next to the parent without splitting up another parrty.

tastyfreeze• 10 months ago

A breast feeding infant doesn't require a seat. Children under 2 can sit on a parent's lap.

jjcob5• 10 months ago

If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege

This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another. It's seems like Mafia-tactic to seat people apart from another unless they pony up another $500 in upgrades.

I refuse to fly with United. I understand that there may not be 10 adjacent seats when flying with a big group, but spreading out a family on purpose just so you are more likely to buy an upgrade is evil.

I understand paying for checked luggage because luggage handling costs money. But purposely making the experience worse just so you can charge money for upgrades is evil.

hedora16• 10 months ago

Checked luggage charges are mostly about price discrimination and not cost savings.

They also free up the cargo hold so they can transport mail. Speaking of which, did you know the TSA screening area is a farce?

eadmund3• 10 months ago

> If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege
This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another.

Bin-packing is tough (look at Kubernetes!). Economically, giving folks willing to sit in a random seat an extra $10 and charging folks who want to sit together $10 is a wash.

Evil is, you know, torture and genocide, not efficient allocation of limited space.

kortilla4• 10 months ago

Some seats are worth more than others (aisle/window vs middle). Putting families together means giving “preferred seats” away for no premium.

AtlanticThird7• 10 months ago

What do you mean there is no cost? Aisle and window seats are more valuable and can be sold for more, and this would force airlines to sell them to families without any up charge they would've received from other customers

JackFr• 10 months ago

As a parent who once flew with a baby with an ear infection, I'll admit there were times I desperately wanted to be seated apart from her.

NoLinkToMe5• 10 months ago

This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another. It's seems like Mafia-tactic to seat people apart from another unless they pony up another $500 in upgrades.

The idea is that an airplane needs a certain revenue to run. Suppose it's 10k, and there are 100 passengers. Each passenger thereby pays $100.

However, some passengers (A) wish to sit in a big seat and are willing to pay for it, and others (B) don't care about seat size and are willing to give-up space for a cheaper ticket.

As such, 1 Passenger A may want to pay $250 instead to get a 30% bigger seat, while 3 passengers B give up 10% of their seat size and pay a $50 ticket. The airplane still collects $400 from 4 passengers as before, but the passengers are happier now. They have traded their individual desires, for something less valuable. A desired a bigger seat and thought $150 extra was less valuable than this bigger seat. B desired a $50 cheaper ticket and thought the smaller seat was less valuable. They traded and became happier.

You may say but nah, airlines will simply charge for bigger seats and keep the smaller seats the same price. But they don't, because they must compete with other airlines that don't. If they could do this they would've already.

For seat picking it's the same thing. A prefers to pay to sit close to a friend or partner. B doesn't care and prefers a cheaper ticket. Thus A pays a bit more, B pays a bit less.

I've always had to pay for seating as long as I can remember, I never cared enough (except long international flights), so I enjoy slightly cheaper prices than a world where there was no choice. It's not as evil as it may seem at first glance.

robofanatic• 10 months ago

If it’s when the passenger chooses to cancel, this seems fine and fair: he paid for a flight; he chose not to take it.

It’s fair only if he does it at the last minute OR the seat goes unsold.

devilbunny• 10 months ago

I ask to switch sometimes, but I always offer them the better seat and aisle-for-aisle or window-for-window. You’re sitting next to a stranger either way and I assure you that you don’t want to be sitting next to my wife when I’m the one carrying much of the gear. I’ll be passing her stuff constantly.

jghn7• 10 months ago

I know way too many parents who take the stance of not bothering to pay for assigned seating, on the assumption that people will move around to accommodate them.

As someone who pays for an assigned seat so I can sit where I want, this annoys the crap out of me as now they expect people like me to move.

When I point this out, their response is "why should I pay for that?"

I agree with the airlines here but if it makes life overall less stressful for all to put families together due to the bad behavior of those parents, I'm fine with it.

Larrikin2• 10 months ago

You don't have to engage or justify staying in your seat, just say no thank you and end the conversation

vonneumannstan• 10 months ago

On the one hand, this seems fair. If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege. It doesn’t make sense to tax every other passenger for it. OTOH, families are a net benefit to society, so maybe it’s right for everyone else to pitch in a bit. Also, nothing is worse than the folks who didn’t pay up ahead of time who bug one, ‘may we switch seats so we can sit together?’ So perhaps free family seating makes life easier for everyone.

I don't understand, are people buying random tickets and hoping to be put together once on the plane? I've literally only bought assigned seats on flights except on Southwest.

kortilla4• 10 months ago

Yes, exactly. They want to avoid the upcharge for seat selection so they roll the dice and hope.

jvvw• 10 months ago

If you're travelling with young children being seated together isn't a luxury, so it's basically a tax on travelling with children, and a fairly expensive one ($100 easily for a return flight perhaps for four seats?) when you've paid it for all the seats for your family.

Though when we had young children, we seriously considered not paying and enjoying having somebody else looking after our four or five year old for the flight :-)

Given it is a necessity, I feel it should either be a compulsory extra cost if you have children below a certain age or it should (ideally) be free to be seated together, so that people who do pay for particular seats know that there won't be an unsupervised child allocated to the seat next to them.

msluyter• 10 months ago

Random family seating anecdote. A couple of years ago, we were on vacation and my wife had to go home early to tend for a sick pet. My daughter and I also re-arranged our flight to get home early, and ended up in like the D boarding group (on Southwest). So we're getting on the plane and we're almost dead last, and there are very few seats left together anywhere. My 6 yr old daughter was not really emotionally equipped to sit alone at that point.

We get about 2/3 of the down and there's now nothing, so I say -- with some desperation -- "If someone would be willing to switch seats so my daughter and I can sit together I'll give you $20." A guy says "I don't want the money but I'll switch."

Which sort of shows that if you're not a jerk, and you ask nicely, often people will go out of their way to help you.

Families who seem to expect other passengers to move, especially when there's assigned seating, are another story, and deserve the condemnation they get, IMHO.

_heimdall• 10 months ago

[Elimination of] Automatic Refunds for Cancellations

I believe this is referring to when the airline cancels or meaningfully changes the flight. They already don't guarantee refunds if you cancel.

lxgr7• 10 months ago

If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege.

What privilege? Assigning seats next to each other costs airlines next to nothing (assuming they assign seats in the first place, which almost all of them do).

kumarsw2• 10 months ago

Paying for a group to sit together is really just a roundabout way of charging extra for the middle seat that solo travelers don't want. There's something gross about it, creating a market price for a nonexistent good.

FireBeyond3• 10 months ago

Also, nothing is worse than the folks who didn’t pay up ahead of time who bug one, ‘may we switch seats so we can sit together?’ So perhaps free family seating makes life easier for everyone.

This is my absolute pet hate. Most of the airlines I fly frequently with specifically throw up a dialog box making you acknowledge "I have no seat selection options with this fare", yet every flight, I'll see people doing this stupid seat dance. No, I chose the seat I wanted for a reason.

camillomiller2• 10 months ago

[flagged]

handwarmers2• 10 months ago

You should try your REGULATION trick with Lufthansa's customer support.

cccbbbaaa• 10 months ago

I did. It worked without issues on my end.

camillomiller2• 10 months ago

Did many times. It has to work and they have to pay.

panick21_7• 10 months ago

Ironically in Europe we have some decent regulation for airlines, but the public train operating companies refuse to do the same for trains. We need to have some of those same protection and transparency requirements for train companies as well.

But the governments of the big operating companies have vetoed this so far. Sometimes deregulation actually makes it easier to implement regulation.

hannasanarion• 10 months ago

Train operators aren't as strictly regulated because they can't do as much harm, both in terms of the inherent catastraophic consequences of air travel disasters for passengers and bystanders, and in terms of the financial risk that passengers take on by purchasing a ticket. A no-refunds-for-cancellations policy on a $100 intercity train ticket that rarely ever cancels hits different from a $400 flight itinerary that cancels multiple times a week because of normal weather.

jen202• 10 months ago

Have you compared the cost of a train to a flight in Europe? Often the flight is _substantially_ cheaper, especially in the UK.

panick21_7• 10 months ago

I don't think that's true. If you book a connection that involves multiple high speed trains across multiple country you can easily pay 1000s of $. Its actually more then many direct flights in Europe.

And for example if you take TGV from Paris to the German border, and you have to get on an ICE. If the TGV is late, you miss the connection to the ICE, and have to sleep in the border town, TGV doesn't have to pay.

And missing connection is quite common, specially because Germany is ... not very German.

In terms of safety, a train accident can kill 100s of people. They just don't happen very often.

eterm2• 10 months ago

One of the best things to happen lately in the UK is "Delay Repay": https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/help-and-assistance/compensat...

Made it much easier to get compensation for delayed and canceled trains. ( Of which there are many ).

It's not a significant amount for minor delays, but it makes traveling on trains just that little bit less miserable.

hedora16• 10 months ago

Your trains are at least 10x better than US airlines from a passenger perspective.

lxgr7• 10 months ago

the public train operating companies refuse to do the same for trains. We need to have some of those same protection and transparency requirements for train companies as well.

Huh? We do!

There are very similar EU regulations for train travel: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...

On a completely unrelated note, I recently noticed that Deutsche Bahn seems to have some of their train schedules staggered by 58 minutes instead of one hour – which means that the 25% refund for a delayed arrival due to a missed connection that didn't wait will usually not kick in :)

panick21_7• 10 months ago

I didn't say there was no regulation what so ever. But there were multiple efforts of increasing it that was blocked. And what I specifically noted that the rights are weaker then for airlines.

If your airline is delayed and you miss a connection, you will get a hotel for the night. In a train, you can get that.

Airlines are forced to compete on price and have to publicly list prices and make that accessible to 3rd parties. Train companies do everything in their power to silo as much as they can to force costumers into booking threw their app.

hiphipjorge• 10 months ago

I honestly think it's pretty amazing how cheap air travel already is in the USA and Europe. It explains why we're seeing all time highs for air travel.

The air industry seems like a good example of just the right level of regulation: There's tons of competition, different pricing tiers with their corresponding levels of quality, and a lot of dynamism combined with a good set of consumer base regulations (24 hour cancellation period, for example).

handwarmers2• 10 months ago

This might be the case if all your travel boils down to off season direct flights between major airports.

In my experience, it has been rapidly going up in price and down in quality since the end of the pandemic. You have very few protections as a passenger, and while you may have some rights on paper, they have been made excruciatingly difficult to pursue with the way support lines work with airlines.

To add insult to the injury, look up the history of bailouts airlines have received.

ragazzina• 10 months ago

while you may have some rights on paper, they have been made excruciatingly difficult to pursue

Are you in the US? In the EU there are many websites that help you get a cancellation/delay refund, they require little more than your boarding pass, and they work very well for a small (sometimes none) fee. The fee is taken from your refund so if you don't get one, you don't have to pay anything.

charrondev• 10 months ago

Is it just me or is this an awful “article”? It mention deregulation but doesn’t point to what specific regulations have been removed. I took a Delta flight 2 weeks ago (one that supposedly had implemented all of these draconian rollbacks) and had the same experience I’ve had for the past 10 years:

- price of the ticket was as advertised - a checked bag was an option at the same price it has always been. - I was able to assign a seat next to my husband without additional fees.

Now while this flight was not cancelled, I’ve had to reschedule some flights with Delta due to illness previously and they just gave me a 100% credit for the cost of the flight that was easy to use.

The only contrast for cancellation I know is the nightmare of Air Canada. In the past I’ve had flights get cancelled and only got “vouchers” that could only be used by calling a specific number that took 1 hour+ and were not applicable for taxes (you know half the cost of a Canadian Airline Ticket), and would be lost of not fully used in one purchases

whatsupdog• 10 months ago

Air Canada vouchers also expire in one year. I had the misfortune of having a flight cancelled at the beginning of COVID. They never refunded me, because apparently you had to go fill a form to apply for a refund within a few days of cancellation. Air Canada is the worst.

bsimpson2• 10 months ago

I'd be curious to see how the all-in price of airline tickets has evolved in recent decades. It feels like it's now commonplace to have hundreds of dollars in additional fees for things like legroom. That means a cheap ticket is a midrange ticket and a midrange ticket can end up being quite expensive unless you fall for the "we get to strap you behind the bathroom with only the clothes on your back" Saver ticket.

It also means that you're often still out actual money if you use award miles.

izacus• 10 months ago

Hundreds of dollars for legroom? Are you... sure? For what kind of flights?

ghaff12• 10 months ago

I'm most familiar with United. Economy Plus (which is mostly about a bit more legroom) does have a modest premium absent sufficient status that gets you it for free. But Premium Economy that gives you somewhat wider seats as well as legroom gets into the hundreds of dollars. International business has lots of benefits including legroom and lie flat seating but that usually gets into the thousands.

runako• 10 months ago

In a search just now, Delta Main r/t from ATL-LAX is $337. Delta Comfort on the same flight is $727. (Yes, it's more than 2x the price.) Obviously Comfort boards earlier, but it's not unreasonable to attribute most of the fare differential to the legroom.

Checked bags are also extra for either seat.

tclancy• 10 months ago

US flights (99% of what I have experienced) definitely can get into three figures for anything other than "middle seat, way back". They know there's at least a built-in audience of taller people who will spring for legroom on any flight over an hour. And now that I am old and tall, an aisle seat and legroom are incredibly valuable to me (don't tell 'em, ok?).

arrozconcosas• 10 months ago

One example: Chicago to New York on United, direct flight that is ~2.5 hours. $209 for economy and $381 for Economy Plus. This is a $172 difference.

joshstrange• 10 months ago

Yes, as a 6' 2" person, I can assure you that a single leg of a flight will be less that $100 but round trip and multiple legs moves it to $200+ very easily.

onionisafruit2• 10 months ago

The point of the comment is it’s hard to be sure because the pricing is anything but clear.

mkipper3• 10 months ago

I'm 6'6" and I basically treat an exit row upgrade as non-negotiable. It's just a fundamental cost of long haul travel for me if I can't swing premium economy or business class.

To get some extra legroom, I paid (round trip, in CAD) $250 for a trip to Dublin this year and $320 for a trip to Hong Kong in 2023. That's a lot of money, but it was <50% of the cost to upgrade to premium economy and <20% of the cost to upgrade to business class.

This used to be much cheaper. I remember paying ~$100 for similar upgrades a decade ago, but airlines got wise to this at some point and jacked the prices way up.

hopelite4• 10 months ago

Related to that; I am curious in what airlines think they will get or what motivates them to prioritize being deceptive, sneaky, dishonest, manipulative, lying, con-artists, i.e., just abusive all around? If everyone is required to provide "all in pricing" then there is no competitive advantage in being a bigger, better fraud; so must it be concluded that they think they have a competitive advantage at being the better scheming, fraudulent, manipulative con artist?

The airline market is so constricted and basically well across the line of a cartel, but I guess they think they get something out of it or do they just like the getting one over on people? "ha, you thought you were going to have a good time with your family or see your grandmother's funeral for X price, but we squeezed another $200 out of you, Sucker! *board room high fives all around*"

Or maybe is it a kind of momentum of the people and organizational structure that was built up over many years, aimed at facilitating the con and fraud perpetrated on the public that still has power to manipulate the airline enterprises themselves? The people who used to do that are after all, as I assume adept and oriented towards being deceptive, manipulative, scheming.

It's all a bit odd to me and I would love if someone could spill the beans on what motivates the airlines on being so adamant about cheating, lying, abusing, scamming, conning and generally being really awful to people and society.

nemomarx3• 10 months ago

First principle is that customers will choose whoever has the cheapest flights in general, and airlines that try to market on having an inclusive price without surprise fees suffer anyway because the real cost is closer to fees.

The second is price discrimination - think current McDonald's prices. Soaking people who can afford it and letting people who are very frugal navigate your confusing system and membership etc is worth a good amount of money

Spooky235• 10 months ago

It’s really easy: it’s all about revenue maximization.

Honestly, people fly too much. I’m 6’5 with a 24” shoulder - flying economy is painful for me and the poor soul stuck next to me.

I don’t need to fly for business and am fortunate to have a lot of PTO. So, I fly first class, business class, or not at all. If the cost is too much, i drive. There’s virtually no east coast trip that is more unpleasant to me via car. I’m young enough that I can do NY to Georgia or Chicago overnight with no ill effect. There’s so much wasted time around the airport many flights don’t even save time.

I’m going on a trip to Asia in the early spring with my kid. I could save like $4000 flying in the back… but why? If that amount of money is breaking the bank, I cannot afford two weeks there anyway.

EE84M3i• 10 months ago

To add to this - is there some kind of general rule for what specific industries will devolve into the pattern of having these sorts of anti-consumer practices? Off the top of my mind I can think of cable companies, gyms, cellphone providers, airlines, live events. Is it market capture and/or the high cost of switching providers that prevents meaningful competition?

myrmidon• 10 months ago

I think the main motivation is simply that reduced transparency enables better price discrimination: As a company, you want every individual to pay as much as they are willing/capable. You explicitly don't want to sell the same service for the same price to everyone.

hoistbypetard2• 10 months ago

The Behind the Bastards podcast episodes covering Frank Lorenzo might be right down your alley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bmGff5f-Ug

(They are available from all the usual podcast places, but it just happens that the youtube mirror is the easiest way I know to link a specific episode.)

pixl97• 10 months ago

board room high fives all around"

Things like bonuses tend to be driven by short term gains. Who gives a hell about a few years from now when you can get an extra $xxxxxxx in your paycheck now.

philjackson• 10 months ago

Trump really has enabled grifting en mass. Any semblance of corporate responsibility out of the window.

tehjoker• 10 months ago

Don't forget that it was Delta airlines that lobbied the Biden administration that got CDC to reduce isolation duration. Both administrations are deadly liars. When it comes to the airlines, the last administration's deregulation killed people, a lot of them. Not that if Trump was in power he would have done anything different.

clcaev• 10 months ago

As more legislators (and supreme court judges) use their donors' private airplanes, how much will they think about the typical flight experience?

WaitWaitWha• 10 months ago

I echo what some already stated. I think this topic if real needs to be known. Problem is that I cannot find any reference where this information is coming from.

Give me a link, document, reference, or something to back up the claims. Otherwise it comes across as FUD.

egonschiele2• 10 months ago

Family Seating Guarantees: Under current regulations, airlines must ensure that families with young children are seated together without additional charges. This would no longer be guaranteed under the new proposal, meaning families could face extra costs just to sit next to one another.

This one is wild. You want to sit next to somebody's crying 2 year old? Go nuts. Change their diaper while you're at it.

AtlanticThird7• 10 months ago

I don't think that's what anyone wants. I think they just want families with young children to pay to sit together, like everyone else has to

rimunroe14• 10 months ago

Flying with babies (and other young children) presents challenges which "everyone else" doesn't have to deal with. Babies and children need much more attention. Babies are much more likely to throw tantrums, to feel pain from pressure changes, to be sick, etc. They often need a LOT of soothing. Many also need to be breast fed (some babies don't take bottles), which depending on the baby's length and the side they're nursing on may involve their legs sticking into the aisle or their neighbor's space. They also like to fling solid foods, spit up or vomit with no warning, and are generally fantastic at making messes.

My spouse and I just finished our first two flights with our 11 month old this weekend which were about 3.5 and 4 hours apiece. Even with an extra seat reserved for them and an overall extremely well tempered baby, I cannot imagine how much harder the flight would have been if the gate agent hadn't been able to rearrange our seats so all three of us were sitting together. If that hadn't been guaranteed, we would have had to ask one of the neighbors to swap seats with us. They'd have been highly motivated to do so, but it wouldn't have been a sure thing. They may have their own needs. Impromptu swaps during boarding seems not great for making the process go smoothly.

Having to get an extra seat to fit a car seat for an infant isn't required, but flying with the infant in a car seat is strongly recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Having somewhere to put the baby or their various toys/bottles temporarily helps a whole lot over a four hour flight. This already added $500 onto the price of our trip.

The cost of raising children is already very high in the US, so it will really suck if flying becomes yet more expensive and stressful. In my opinion, this (and many others) are a cost which we should spread out if we actually want people to have kids.

mcaravey• 10 months ago

I think that part of the problem is a want versus a need. I don't particularly care if me and my wife don't sit together. We see each other all the time. But I don't want to have my four-year-old sitting in between two strangers, six rows in front of me where I can't see him. That's not fair to the two strangers, but also I don't trust strangers.

I get the idea of paying for the privilege, but at the same time, it's not like they roll out the red carpet for someone who flies with their kids. Pretty much every time that I can remember them ever rearranging seats to get us together, we always wind up sitting in the rows at the very back of the plane close to the bathroom, which is fine with me. If I wanted red carpet treatment, I'd pay for first class for everyone. But I'm not about to do that.

All I do know is that if they were to stop rearranging seats, it would make the frequency of our flying go down quite a bit. At a minimum, if they went that route, I would want there to be a guaranteed payment to be able to get everyone to sit together. That way I can at least plan for the extra cost. Knowing airlines they would probably use a sliding scale based on age or something.

sweetheart• 10 months ago

I think the point remains, though, that making it harder to ensure a young child is sitting next to their guardian benefits _no one_. Having learned over the last year what flying with a 2 year old is like, an increase in the amount of toddlers who fly without sitting next to their parents is just going to be a nightmare for the kids, the parents, the other passengers, and the crew. No one should want this, in my opinion. Besides, the parents have the leverage in this situation I think, in the form of feral toddlers hell bent on maximizing chaos (and I mean that lovingly and empathetically, but still vaguely as a threat lol)

floatrock• 10 months ago

What the airlines want is to have people pay more to sit together.

What they're gonna get is same thing that happened when luggage fees became standard: enshittification because people find ways to pay less. In the case of luggage fees, suddenly everyone's like "yeah, okay, I guess I can fit things into a carry on" and turns out there's not enough overhead space for the entire plane so the plebs in Group 4+ have mandatory gate checks. Is the labor of always gate checking bags really any cheaper than having it flow through the airport luggage infrastructure? Apparently it is slightly, but it's definitely a shittier experience.

What's gonna happen here is parent is gonna book two separate cheap middle seats and ask you when you sit down if you could trade your premium aisle/window seat for a middle seat so mom and child can be together. Because otherwise you're separating momma from baby and therefore a terrible human.

And then we all get upset at each other for trying to cost-hack instead of seeing the real enemy in the room: the pathological MBA's picking up pennies in front of the enshittification steamroller.

wat100003• 10 months ago

There's a basic requirement in commerce that products sold must be fit for purpose. That is, they need to actually do what they're supposed to do in some form. I can't sell you a flight to New York and then give you a pair of plastic wings and say that the rest is on you. I have to actually get you there like any reasonable person would assume I would given what I sold you.

Selling tickets to a small child and their caregiver and then seating them far apart is plainly not fit for purpose. They can't actually fly like that, so you've sold them something they can't use, and that you know they can't use.

If they want to charge extra to sit together, fine, but that needs to be bundled into the basic price when one of the tickets is for a small child, not presented as an optional add-on at an additional cost.

afavour4• 10 months ago

They are meaningfully different scenarios, though.

If you and your partner board the plane, sit separately, and one of you sits next to me that's not a negative for me. You'll sit, you'll watch a movie, read a book, whatever. You're self-contained.

If you and your five year old child board the plane, sit separately, and your child sits next to me that's a clear negative for me. Your child needs attention and assistance. It's bad for you, it's bad for the child, it's bad for me. Probably also bad for whoever sits next to the parent because they’ll be standing up and sitting down constantly to go and attend to their child.

I get that it isn't "fair" in a very straightforward examination of the scenario but take a step back and it's just making every passenger's experience more miserable in an attempt to gain more airline profits. If it happens just watch, the airlines will introduce a "guarantee not sat next to a solo child" add-on fee for you to pay.

doktrin• 10 months ago

I think they just want families with young children to pay to sit together, like everyone else has to

Oh great so now I have to sit next to someone’s unattended child in the name of fairness? Am I gonna get the option to subsidise the family’s seat grouping instead of being saddled with that noise? Talk about creating problems for no good reason.

itopaloglu834• 10 months ago

Asking families if their teenager could be seated separately is one thing, but knowing the airlines, they might as well start seating the toddlers in the overhead luggage compartments.

bthrn2• 10 months ago

The most profitable way to fill a plane would be to knock everybody out and just pile them up in the fuselage.

markovs_gun• 10 months ago

People think I'm crazy for saying this but the only thing stopping big corporations from hiring hitmen to just actually murder people to be more profitable is that it's illegal to do so. If it were legal for them to make you put your baby in overhead luggage you bet your ass they'd be doing it if it were profitable.

Spooky235• 10 months ago

That was an option in the 1950s for infants. They attached a little cot to the overhead — sort of like the changing shelf on a pack and play!

topkai222• 10 months ago

The current rule only applies to children under 14 years of age. They don't have to ask for teenagers.

proggy• 10 months ago

This rule only applies to a single adult + child pair, and not the entire traveling party. For instance, if you have a party of 1 child and 2 adults, the airline is well within its rights to charge seat selection fees to the second adult. It’s incredibly frustrating that I have to pay an extra $40-$50, per journey, to United to sit next to my wife and child. And that’s with the current “consumer friendly” rules in place.

nostrademons5• 10 months ago

I usually filter out all Basic Economy fares from my search and only look at the next tier up, where you can get seat selection at time of booking. I just figure it's a product that doesn't work for my family.

scarface_743• 10 months ago

Think of the inverse, someone who doesn’t care about where they sit save money.

On the other hand, I never understood this obsession with grown people acting like it’s the end of the world if they don’t sit together. My wife and I fly a lot together - over a dozen trips this year - and she flies more frequently by herself. We both prefer window seats. We hardly ever sit together unless we can get 2 seats next to us by ourselves like on larger planes with a 3-2-3 combination or exit row seats in main.

terminalshort5• 10 months ago

I have to pay more to select the exact seats I want on a plane, so why shouldn't you?

duxup2• 10 months ago

It drives me crazy that airlines are allowed to book tickets for families who have to sit together ... but then they have to sort it out at the gate.

It's just a big pain for everyone.

LightBug1• 10 months ago

One of my biggest regrets is not travelling the length and breadth of the US two decades ago when I had an opportunity.

What with orange two-chins in charge, MAGA, ICE, deregulation across the board, and the general shit-housery that seems to be going on over there, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to attempt it again in my lifetime ... it's not the actual travel that is the issue, it would be the non-stop gag-reflex on landing ...

RIP USA ...

bikemike026• 10 months ago

A large chunk of the population voted for this. Good going losers.

clarkmoody• 10 months ago

I would pay more for an announcement-free flight. I watch the safety briefing ahead of time, and nobody speaks over the insanely-loud PA system the entire time I'm on the airplane.

lunias2• 10 months ago

Flying has become such a terrible experience that I avoid it all costs. I'd love to take more trips, but the service is so poor that I can't justify supporting it more than absolutely necessary. I doubt anything will change though, the majority of other people seem to not really care.

ghaff12• 10 months ago

Either it's a business necessity or it's a "tax" on recreational vacations once or twice a year. In semi-retirement I've told many people my goal is to keep traveling but arrange things so I spend less time in airports and planes. Of course, I can spend more money to make longer flights less onerous.

xoxxala• 10 months ago

I'm with you. If I can't drive there, I don't go. Between the TSA, cramped seats, fees, unhelpful staff, angry passengers, angry staff, turbulence, the lousy food and dealing with carry-ons/luggage -- it's not worth it (for me, personally). My last flight was 2019 and I don't miss it at all.

We take fewer, but longer, vacations, and use the extra time to drive to our destination. We try to avoid freeways as much as possible so we can see smaller places. We make vague plans and stop when we get tired or hungry.

I know it won't work for everybody, but it works for us and I love it.

asdff4• 10 months ago

As annoying as it is to be nickel and dimed I really can't complain when thinking about what is actually on offer. If I told my ancestors I was unhappy about traveling 2000 miles in 5 hours for $250 they'd rightfully slap me over the head. What a historically unprecedented capability for our species to end up on the opposite side of the planet in about a half a day.

octo8885• 10 months ago

What a historically unprecedented capability for our species to end up on the opposite side of the planet in about a half a day.

For a mere 40 hours of unskilled labour! Compared to months to years of labour, travelling on ships, 1-3 centuries ago

lunias2• 10 months ago

You're right, but for me it's less a comparison between present day and before airplanes existed and more a comparison between present day and when air travel became common (sometime around the 60s). Of course we've made progress in the last 1000 years, but we've lost progress in the last 60 years. It's not a great trend.

bilekas3• 10 months ago

These two in particular :

Automatic Refunds for Cancellations
Transparency of Fees

How does a lawmaker justify this being in the publics interest ? I'm not even joking, I know "well lobbyist going to lobby", but this is a legitimate question. How does a regulatory body say "Yup, that's okay with us to remove" ?

lxgr7• 10 months ago

Playing devil's advocate for a moment: I could imagine airlines wanting to not allow for a full refund if passengers can be booked on a "reasonably similar" connection. (I've done this myself in the past, as far as I remember; changes of a few minutes in either direction often make an entire booking refundable.)

The problem here of course would be the definition of "reasonably similar". Arriving a few hours later can be entirely fine or completely ruin a trip, depending on the circumstances.

bilekas3• 10 months ago

Okay, I can see some benefits to the airline that are not too egregious for point 1, maybe automatic can be updated to manual intervention. Not the worst.

But price transparency ?

A4A opposes the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) rules requiring airlines to disclose ancillary fees upfront, arguing that these rules exceed the DOT’s authority and don’t provide any clear benefits to consumers.
don’t provide any clear benefits to consumers

As a customer I like to know where my money is going and how much.

Tadpole9181• 10 months ago

Airlines caused automatic refunds by systematically screwing customers for a decade, doing every single thing in their power to avoid giving any refunds. This policy exists because they proved to everyone they can't be trusted.

NoLinkToMe5• 10 months ago

I don't follow the point. Suppose we live in a perfect world where exactly similar alternative flights are always available the moment yours gets cancelled. You still have to pay for it. And you do that by using the refund money.

Cancelling a flight without refunding it, just means profiting at the expense of the customer.

Businesses are able to insure their limited cost of cancellations, and price their tickets to absord these insurance costs (which are ultimately born by the ticket-payer).

Deregulating this point just puts all the risk and burden with millions of individual customers, some of whom cannot easily carry the cost of unexpected events, and aren't professional parties that can and routinely do enter into properly-negotiated insurance products to mitigate their risk.

've done this myself in the past, as far as I remember; changes of a few minutes in either direction often make an entire booking refundable.)

My understanding is that refunds eligibility starts at a >3 hour change, meaning an alternative timetable of 2 hours doesn't trigger an automatic refund right now. Further, even in the case of a significant change (>3h), the refund isn't automatic, it is only paid once the customer refuses an alternative booking or compensation. For international flights it's even 6 hours instead of 3.

Arriving a few hours later can be entirely fine or completely ruin a trip, depending on the circumstances.

I do agree on this point, context really matters. And I think in theory it makes sense to offer price-differentation based on the context. i.e. if I am slow-travelling for 4 months, I'd be happy taking a 10% cheaper ticket (no-insurance), and have no recourse if there is an 8 hour delay.

Whereas earlier this month when travelling overseas for a wedding the day prior, I'd have paid a 10% extra fee to insure my travel time, to ensure I have recourse to travel with a limited (<2h) delay no matter what or be significantly compensated.

But that's still all theory, at some point differentiation on everything leads to complex and difficult decision making for customers. Fun in a Sim computer game, not so fun when booking a flight is a 20-step process with 200 pages of T&C that I have to assess against my personal situation.

yibg• 10 months ago

Give me that choice (refund or rebook me) and let me choose. Problem is if the airlines don't have to give a refund I now no longer have a choice.

fzeroracer• 10 months ago

Dream: 'This will lower prices for consumers by reducing administrative overhead and allowing for people to select what protections and plans they want for their trip.'

Reality: Tickets all cost exactly the same (because no company is going to willingly take less money) except now you get to pay more for less benefits.

tavavex4• 10 months ago

It will be some variation of the well-treaded argument of "us making more money just so happens to be in the public interest". Companies have become experts at arguing this in many different ways. You can see some examples in the article. More competition, purely hypothetically lower prices, etc.

cosmicgadget9• 10 months ago

Easy. "The public voted up and down the ballot for the platform that promised to gut regulations and consumer protection." Who is a single representative to deny the will of the people?

nobody99992• 10 months ago

You mean this platform[0]? Not sure where it says they're going to "gut regulations and consumer protection." Perhaps you could point that part out to me?

I understood that to actually be the case, even though that wasn't actually included in the platform. Which is one of reasons I didn't vote for the current administration.

That said, I imagine that among those who did so, some folks are fine with it, some folks didn't care one way or another and some folks were unaware that this would happen.

As such, I think you're painting folks with far too broad a brush. Which is, I imagine, quite satisfying. I hope you got what you wanted out of that.

[0] https://rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/

mrguyorama3• 10 months ago

Are you not able to observe the current administration? There's no need to "justify" anything being in the public's interest.

The admin is no longer counting how many people cannot afford food for crying out loud.

The public voted against their interest.

HumblyTossed• 10 months ago

Probably the thinking is: “The market will sort itself out. If a person doesn’t like this, they can pick an airline that has these features.”

Conveniently leaving out the thought that NONE of the other airlines will do this if it goes away.

geff82• 10 months ago

Book trips from European websites in the future. Prices here need to include everything upfront. Which might lead to situations where you reserve a hotel room in the USA for 1500, but then only pay 1200 at checkout because the remaining 300 are the "resort fee" that will be paid at the hotel. Or take car rental: the cheaper, more complete packages for the USA are often booked in the EU at at better price.

lxgr7• 10 months ago

+1 for hotels, but I'd be careful with car rentals. Often, these bookings are tied to the country of residence of the driver, which could at least theoretically have insurance implications.

octo8885• 10 months ago

Prices here need to include everything upfront

How are you defining "everything" and "upfront"? Upfront as in the first page shown after searching?

Because many, many airlines/car rental sites have a complex muti-step process of different fares, extras etc until you get to the final stage

hn87262• 10 months ago

Can you give an example? I just checked a random rental website for France and I got a very clear `From $xx` price and I could — in one step — go to checkout with that exact price by simply not selecting any other options.

Sure you will have upsells but if a price for a service is presented, that should be a final price. You can't tack on "resort fees", the price presented must be inclusive of all the required charges. For example as much as I dislike Booking.com, the price they show for a room includes everything — tax, mandatory cleaning fee and city tax if applicable.

alberth• 10 months ago

I'm surprised the world isn't moving more towards "Nutrition" labels for pricing.

Beestie• 10 months ago

TLDR version: The Airlines are turning into TicketMaster.

hahajk• 10 months ago

Man, I hate headlines like this. It may be true that what they're doing is evil but I feel like I'm not allowed to have my own opinion.

Zak2• 10 months ago

I've had four overnight delays on three transatlantic trips this year. Fortunately, EU passenger compensation rules applied to three of them; the airline must pay each delayed passenger 600€ or convince them to take a more compelling non-cash offer.

I'm not for heavily regulating non-safety details of how most industries do business, but I do think it's fair to demand the true price up front and compensation when the airline doesn't provide the service it sold for reasons within its control.

tialaramex• 10 months ago

Right, I've had train companies put me in a taxi, and just eat the price of a taxi to wherever because if you want to sell tickets to travel to X, and then oops you can't get me to X well, I didn't buy your "regret" that you can't do that - I bought travel to X, so if that's still possible you'd better make it happen and too bad if that's not profitable.

Yeul3• 10 months ago

I got an email from the train company that according to their records I had a delay and they put a link in it to a online form to get my money back.

I was positively surprised at their proactive communication. The money was on my account within the week!

baby4• 10 months ago

There was a year I made more money from flying than I spent, because I kept flying ryanair or easyjet and I kept getting massive delays (one was a 20h delay, in which I spent the night at the airport squatting some of the couches in a cafe in the terminal, because small delays kept being slowly pushed on us, and we also spent 2h waiting in the final plane for it to take off, no A/C and they refused to give us water threatening to call the cops on us if we did get water bottles ourselves, great experience!)

dzhiurgis• 10 months ago

Ryanair is the most punctual airline tho

sjs7007• 10 months ago

Could you share more context on the water bottle thing? That makes no sense to me.

BobbyTables2• 10 months ago

I do believe such regulation is merited as airlines have a strong financial incentive to misbehave.

Too many times I’ve seen flights, closer to empty than full, mysteriously cancelled due to “mechanical issues”.

Yes things happen on their own. But others are motivated by profit.

Braxton19802• 10 months ago

I'm not for heavily regulating non-safety details of how most industries do business, but I do think it's fair to demand the true price up front and compensation when the airline doesn't provide the service it sold for reasons within its control.

Why the exception for this then? There are many situations where regulations could protect consumers and I don't understand why you have the general view against non-safety regulations.

Zak2• 10 months ago

There are several factors that make this situation especially suitable for regulation.

The most important is that airlines have the ability and motivation to force passengers to accept unfavorable terms, and passengers have no ability to negotiate more favorable terms. Many routes are only served by one airline, so there isn't even competitive pressure in those cases. There's also a financial incentive for airlines to mistreat customers, e.g. by overbooking flights, canceling underbooked flights, and delaying non-mandatory maintenance until the cheapest or most convenient time.

JustExAWS2• 10 months ago

I fly a lot and let me put in context one of the “protections” as far as parents being seated with children or at least how it works on Delta.

If you buy their lowest fare - which they try their best to steer you away from and they say prominently in big bold type avive where you order your ticket that you will not be able to choose your seat - you cannot in fact choose your seat. Then parents complain and people who did pay to choose their seat are forced to move so kids can sit with their parents.

The rest of the items that the airline wants to roll back are foot guns for infrequent travelers.

kumarsw2• 10 months ago

I was hoping that the pendulum would swing the other way with the scandal over too many passengers bringing out their bags on a recent AA evacuation caused by a burning tire. The push to eliminate checked bags has created a chaotic cabin environment that probably exacerbated the situation. There's no sign of it getting better either. The overcrowding of overhead bins creates a prisoners dilemma where flight attendants pressure passengers to put smaller bags under their seats, disincentivizing bringing anything but a big roller bag.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l2n-di3hJE

ghaff12• 10 months ago

As someone who has traveled for a long time, I find two things to be true:

1. People like business travelers or those with even minimal levels of status/benefits (who don't pay for checked luggage) don't usually preferentially check bags because luggage gets delayed, it's harder to switch flights when there's a weather etc. problem, and they have to wait at the luggage carousel.

2. Hard and hard-ish roll-aboards are a menace. Especially in a world of generally more casual dress, soft-side luggage would make overheads a lot more manageable--understanding that some people really can't use shoulder bags or backpacks.

raw_anon_111114• 10 months ago

My wife and I are both Delta Platinum and it’s half and half. Since we always get upgraded to C+ with dedicated overhead and we board early, for non stop flights, we won’t check our bags for short getaways.

We hate lugging luggage around the airport for layovers and now that we don’t live in ATL any more, we almost always have layovers.

terminalshort5• 10 months ago

For me it's not having to wait at the carousel at the end, it's having to wait in that enormous line at the beginning. I really don't understand why they make it so much work just to drop off your checked bag before the flight.

unregistereddev• 10 months ago

I agree with both these points, though I'm much more willing to check a bag when traveling on vacation than when traveling on business. If I were to lose a bag on vacation there wouldn't be the same consequences.

On vacation I don't have my work laptop, so it's easier to toss toiletries and an emergency change of clothes in a small under-seat carry-on bag. Besides, tourists aren't expected to smell nice and look put-together, and are more likely to have a flexible schedule that would let them go shopping if the bag doesn't turn up.

Only once has the airline lost my bag while on vacation. It was only slightly annoying and they found the bag and got it to me eventually. I've seen a coworker whose bag was lost on a business trip to India. He was stuck wearing the same clothes - a tshirt and jeans - for multiple days. This included time in the office (which had a dress code) and at least one business dinner.

vhcr• 10 months ago

I don't want to check my luggage, I had them damaged or lost more than once.

WorldMaker2• 10 months ago

Plus all the additional time wasted in planing/deplaning the cabin in general as you wait for 90%+ of passengers in rows ahead of you to grab roller bags from overhead bins. Including the time wasting bottlenecks of "overhead bins full, everyone else must now gate check" guaranteed to slow the last passengers from planing and then on deplaning the crowds stuck in the jet bridge waiting for gate checked bags.

(Then there's the factor of how much time and space all that also wastes at security checkpoints.)

Checked baggage has the efficiencies of forklifts and trucks and conveyor belts. Just as airlines fixed most of the problems with those systems and got them to be efficient beasts they decided to disincentivize actually using them by charging extra for what is the cheaper cargo space. I wish an airline would have the courage to reverse the fees structure and charge for overhead bin space instead. (But then I also travel with IBS issues and my patience in deplaning has been severely tested enough that I know not everyone shares quite my annoyance at deplaning issues in particular.)

raw_anon_111114• 10 months ago

I have never had a gate checked bag where you don’t pick up your bag at baggage claim except for regional flights on small planes where even standard carry ons won’t fit in the overhead.

And for the pedantic really small planes like Sansa in Costs Rica for their 30 minute flights between San Jose and other cities.

starky• 10 months ago

I was just on a flight with an Asia based airline where even the most basic fare had 2 free checked bags and some pretty limiting carry on restrictions. It was amazing how much smoother boarding was because most people only had a backpack.

perfectstorm• 10 months ago

i wonder if they could create a central locking mechanism where if a plane makes an emergency landing, it automatically locks all the overhead bins so passengers don't waste time trying to pick their baggage out. the only remaining thing would be smaller bags underneath the seats which i don't tihnk would delay anyone or at least not significantly as the overhead bins.

o_1• 10 months ago

The airlines and the FAA have been reducing seat size and weight for "safety reasons". 21" width minimum required in 1995 only 18" width in 2025. These seat requirements directly corrolate to fuel cost savings, and passenger density. Simple statistical manipulation with the increase in passengers shrinks the fatality and accident rate because the sample is larger. The airlines are to the FAA as what wall street is to the SEC.

swasheck• 10 months ago

i’m hard-pressed to think of an industry whose financial principles i’m more skeptical of than the airline industry. post-9/11 the industry cratered and they said they needed to add fees to keep from going bankrupt. united created ted, their own low-cost no-frills carrier which was actually decent. once air travel recovered, they (airlines, in general) kept the fees and have been turning record profits ever since. united dumped ted so that they could return to focus on squeezing customers there.

i love travel but i hate dealing with airlines. their executives rank up there with health insurance as some of my least favorite personalities.

and one last thing, other than (eventually) telecom way back in the 80s, has there ever been an industry whose deregulation has been a net win for consumers? i’m genuinely curious and not asking sarcastically

chrisbolt2• 10 months ago

Looking at the numbers, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines#Business_trend...

United had their highest revenue in 2024, and their profit margin was... 5.5%. Would reducing your ticket price by 5.5% make any difference?

lurking_swe3• 10 months ago

also, don’t forget (well known fact) that passengers paying for premium economy and business class seats are the most profitable for the airlines - by far. Aside from profits from credit card rewards programs.

so the profit margin on economy tickets is likely even smaller than 5.5%!

DrNosferatu• 10 months ago

Pleasant prospect indeed!

bradley13• 10 months ago

I agree that transparency is important. All charges known up front.

That said, I think a fundamental problem is that sir travel is too cheap. That's the motivation behind all the nutty fees.

Surely there would be a market for an airline (or a class of seating) where you get a decent seat, with no gimmicks and up-charges? And not for triple the price like business class?

ahmeneeroe-v23• 10 months ago

Isn't this just regular seating (of any class) on one of the non-discount airlines?

I fly a couple times a month with Alaska or Delta, economy tickets only, and this is always my experience. No weird fees, price known up front, the seat is fine, etc.

havaloc• 10 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwest_Airlines

"For many years, all flights featured 2-by-2 leather seating (in aircraft usually fitted with 3-2 seating), ample legroom, complimentary gourmet meals, and warm chocolate chip cookies. This made the airline popular with business travelers. In addition, Midwest Express operated a sizable executive charter operation with a specially configured DC-9."

dangus• 10 months ago

I think the airlines don’t realize that all the rules in place now make flying more tolerable and even enjoyable.

If the airlines jerk me around I’m more likely to just not buy a ticket and stay home. If they make it a great experience it’s something I’m going to look forward to.

Lio• 10 months ago

Airlines want to remove the requirement to provide automatic refunds when flights are cancelled or significantly altered.

This is wild. Are they really asking to be able to take money for a flight, then cacel it and keep the money? That's crazy.

toomuchtodo• 10 months ago

The purpose is economic extraction of the customer base. They really are asking, because they can, and that aligns with this administration's low regulation and anti consumer stance.

Edit: Comment of comment value removed. Updated to increase value. Thanks indoordin0saur, I am occasionally in the wrong gear until the psychotropics kick in.

indoordin0saur• 10 months ago

If you know it's a low value post then don't post it.

wahnfrieden• 10 months ago

Why not celebrate the acceleration achieved by deregulation instead?

realusername• 10 months ago

I mean, why even bother to run flights at all in this scenario?

They could cancel 80% of flights and keep the rest to pretend they are still an airline.

Cancelations would be more profitable than the flights themselves.

delfinom• 10 months ago

I imagine the class action lawsuits at that point would bankrupt them

tavavex4• 10 months ago

80% would be way too much, the consumers would catch on and probably not buy tickets anymore. But don't worry, the airlines' best MBAs will be hard at work calculating the exact percentage of flights they have to fly before it starts hurting the bottom line. And once all airlines start doing it, they could bring that percentage down - what are the consumers gonna do if that's the only way to get to the destination?

bluGill5• 10 months ago

They still have to offer replacement flights, and if the replacement flight isn't reasonable they have to refund. They can't just keep your money.

Don't forget that a lot of flights are business flights. Fortune 500 companies will negotiate deals with the airlines, and they will ensure that getting there matters. Sure the CEO flys the company jet, but the next level down rarely does, but they talk to the CEO and will ensure that the chosen airline will get their people there by contract (wherever there is), if the airlines start failing to get people there on time these contracts will change since the large companies have enough money to matter. Those who fly a lot (again likely for business, even small businesses sometimes have someone flying several times a week) again are people the airlines need to make happy as they will go to different airline if there are problems.

Which is to say they can screw the "common man" who rarely flies, but most of the business is people who have enough power to to to airlines that treat them well and at that point it normally isn't worth screwing anyone.

rpcope1• 10 months ago

Airlines are basically as stupid and greedy as telcos. If it were up to them, GA aircraft, UAVs, model aircraft and basically anything that wasn't military or an airliner would be banned. It has strong analogs in telcos swallowing up large amounts of spectrum "cause muh 5 gee" and just squatting on it. I'm sure safety would be in the shitter too if the FAA was less watchful (not to say it's sufficiently aggressive on the big players today).

sokoloff4• 10 months ago

Every one of their pilots learned to fly in a GA or military aircraft, with the vast majority being GA.

cosmicgadget9• 10 months ago

I don't think that is going to happen. Before this new-ish regulation, the airline had discretion over how to rebook you or compensate you. Now if the delay is over 3h (iirc) they have to refund you.

I think even an arbitration court would have them reimburse you if they simply canceled a flight and kept your money.

dghlsakjg• 10 months ago

Yes, But no one wants to have to go to court or arbitration to get a refund on a service that the service provider cancelled.

If AA cancels my flight, I want my money back without having to ask for it. I don't want to have to submit an application to receive AA credits that expire in 6 months, and then have to initiate legal action to get my actual cash back. Or having them say that they rebooked me on a flight three days later so they are off the hook.

The current rules make it so that the customer has the power. I can still give AA the option of rebooking me or refunding me, but it is MY choice.

itopaloglu834• 10 months ago

And what percentage of people will take them to court just to get them to refund their ticket?

Airlines have full time lawyers with nothing to do but push paper around.

Why are we making it harder for the consumer to resolve an issue when the flight is clearly cancelled?

They just want to force you into weird store-credit style refunds so that you cannot go to a competitor or choose not to travel.

charcircuit• 10 months ago

This is wild.

Keep in mind this rule has only been in affect for a little over a year. Airlines weren't being "wild" last year before the change.

jacobgkau5• 10 months ago

They were being pretty annoying, which is why the regulation went into place. The "wildness" is that they're openly trying to make it annoying again.

advisedwang• 10 months ago

In practice, they're not likely to just refuse any kind of recompense. More likely:

* Giving a credit instead of a refund.

* Offer a take-it-or-leave-it alternative flight.

* Only giving out credit/refund on request (so people that don't realize or do it in time loose their money).

heathrow83829• 10 months ago

a credit instead of a refund is almost the same thing as not offering a refund. you're going to have a hard time using that refund in a manner that benefits you (not taking a flight for no reason)

root_axis2• 10 months ago

My worry is that this incentivizes airlines to overlook safety concerns because grounding a risky flight or taking extra time to deal with unscheduled maintenance downtime will cost them money. It's a guaranteed certainty that some people will die because of it. I'd rather risk 300 bucks than my life.

0xffff24• 10 months ago

Airline travel is safer than it has ever been in its entire history. What is your evidence for this hypothesis?

gr1zzlybe4r• 10 months ago

The airline industry is a good example of an "open" market that is really anything but. It is effectively an state-supported oligopoly. Airlines have split up every major market, usually with very little competition amongst themselves, and then have a government bailout backstop if things go wrong (this include things like favorable bankruptcy laws that let them get out of wage commitments). This is without even getting into the unholy public-private airport situation.

The answer is actual competition with some reasonable passenger protections.

Let foreign carriers compete here (9th freedom rights). No bailouts for failed operations or even unusual circumstances like covid.

nerdponx4• 10 months ago

The bailouts for unusual circumstances are a really interesting case. The "unusual circumstances" tend to be perfect for industry consolidation, which is normally (and rightly) viewed with at least some skepticism, but tends to get a pass during unusual circumstances as a matter of survival. In no small part this is driven by the desire not to cause thousands of people to be laid off with no equivalent pay opportunities in sight.

The PPP program turned out to be a widely abused transfer of wealth from taxpayers to capitalists, yes. But I actually think in general that bailouts, especially for smaller industry players, are an important tool for preventing industry consolidation, which causes generational-scale harm that is difficult to reverse or even remediate.

I think what need to happen is that it should be much easier to pierce the corporate veil in cases of obvious negligence in planning that leads to being unprepared for a predictable event. And of course putting an end to PE-style "corporate raiding" behavior that really just amounts to embezzlement. Imagine an economy in which the owners, directors, and chief executives of corporation are, as individuals, required to uphold some level of fiduciary duty to their customers. The economy might look very different in that case.

intalentive• 10 months ago

The answer is actual competition

It's hard to see how that can happen when politicians take money from the rent-seekers who benefit from the status quo. "Competition is for losers", says Peter Thiel, so buy yourself a state-sanctioned monopoly (like Palantir).

cogman103• 10 months ago

The answer is actual competition with some reasonable passenger protections.

This is physically impossible. Airplanes require airports and airports only have so much space they can dedicate to flights.

An extreme example of this is the Ronald Reagan airport. How could you possibly get more competition there when it cannot grow and it's surrounded by the urban area?

That's like saying the solution to your water company monopoly is more competition. You can't bury more water lines for different companies. Someone has to own the existing lines.

johnnyanmac• 10 months ago

To be pedantic, I'm sure you "can", but the effort and political sway to do so for what may not even be profitable is humongous.

That was pretty much Google fiber in a nutshell last decade. They existing cable lines eventually pushed Google out of it.

ThunderSizzle• 10 months ago

Fiber optics is getting multiple providers in several markets, if not many. They do bury/lift multiple lines, even in more rural areas.

I think the biggest issue with airlines is they act as only an airline. The first company to realize they are a transportation company and can get you door to door will be great.

E.g. an airline that can seamlessly get you to/from the airport via a local premium/private transit line that can get you to your home or destination.

hamonrye• 10 months ago

the pink elephant is whether a triple-bogey on a par-five hole acctounts for the disappearance of the airport terminus pass.

onlypassingthru3• 10 months ago

It seems like the smart play here is a three step process:

1) Deregulate claiming that competition will lower costs

2) Further consolidate carriers so that there is even less competition

3) Profit!

With the corporate buyout of government, it won't be long until we see the announcement for the new AmDelTed.

terminalshort5• 10 months ago

This has worked so far, though. Prices are down ~50% after inflation since the airlines were deregulated.

cosmicgadget9• 10 months ago

There might be other factors to consider, such as seat density and maintenance costs. Plus that deregulation was a massive change compared to whether or not they can use the AirBnB price quote model.

mrguyorama3• 10 months ago

No, service is down 50% after inflation. Regulated tickets included things like sufficient leg room and snacks and luggage. Now all that costs extra.

octo8885• 10 months ago

Prices are down ~50% after inflation since the airlines were deregulated

On a like-for-like basis? Seat pitch, seat comfort, customer service, meals, drinks, included baggage, ticket flexibility/conditions etc?

EDIT: found some example historical fares from Flyertalk:

1. A 1972 BA flight to JFK in economy. I imagine economy in 1972 was more like Premium Economy today. It was ~£80 then (£944 in 2025), whereas a Premium Economy ticket sells for more like ~£800 today, which is cheaper (but still not 100% like-for-like if you consider BA is a very different company now). Also that's an extremely competitive route and an unusually cheap PE fare. A less competitive route, LHR-SFO, you're looking at £1,700-£3,000 for PE !

2. BA, LHR-BRU, economy, non-refundable fare, £40 in 1976, which is £268 now. I'd wager BA european business class is similar to economy back then, and that usually sells for £200-400 on that route (~£600 last minute...), so taking an average, we're not close to it being 50% cheaper

jmull2• 10 months ago

Making flying even crappier doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

Regulations that put a floor on how crappy airlines can be should be pretty neutral on competition since all the airlines would have the same rules.

That's not to say all rules are a good idea, even rules that raise quality -- raising the floor raises prices, and if the floor is raised higher than necessary, prices are higher than necessary too, making flying less affordable. Set the floor too low and people fly less because it's too crappy. Set the floor too high and people fly less because it's too expensive. You're looking for the balance point.

IMO, the floor is too low right now. I think it's a mistake to try to lower it.

cosmicgadget9• 10 months ago

That is the beauty of the floor, everyone stands on it so it becomes acceptable even if it shouldn't be.

Deregulation and disassembly of consumer protections is what Americans voted for.

pavel_lishin2• 10 months ago

Making flying even crappier doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

Ah, but do you own an airline?

Ajedi322• 10 months ago

Set the floor too low and people fly less because it's too crappy.

Seems like a great opportunity for an airline to be less crappy and make a lot of money selling tickets to all those people who are "flying less" on other airlines, no?

So the question then becomes why hasn't someone done that already, if the floor really is "too low"?

smcg• 10 months ago

High barrier to entry, consolidation, and collusion. Look at how many airline mergers have happened over the past decades.

missinglugnut• 10 months ago

The last flight I was on was American Airlines. We waited in the plane while they tried to figure out to start it because the auxiliary power unit was out, and the generator American uses to start planes with no APU was also broken, so they had to borrow one from another airline. And no APU also meant no air conditioning until the plane is started.

It was only a 30 minute delay but the heat made it miserable.

I paid for a name brand airline, paid to choose a decent seat, could have paid for more upgrades, but no amount of money short could prevent me from waiting out a delay in a hot cabin because the airline failed to maintain their equipment. The folks in first class faced the same miserable heat.

It's a market for lemons. Paying more doesn't assure quality, it just means you spent more money to get screwed. So people aren't willing to pay.

michaelt• 10 months ago

Many airlines offer different fare classes. For a return ticket half way around the world, I can pay $1100 for Economy, $2800 for Premium Economy, $3900 for Business Class and $6900 for First Class.

It seems you have to charge a big, big premium to deliver a less crappy experience.

And even then, the experience is only better in some dimensions - your checked luggage receives the same handling no matter what ticket you buy.

jmull2• 10 months ago

no?

No. Because people don't know how crappy it will be when they book.

They're just juggling prices and scheduled times.

People who aren't flying very frequently and don't have a trustworthy source of knowledgeable recommendations -- that is, a substantial majority of people -- will never take enough flights to know which airlines are worth $X more. If they even have many options for their route and time.

karmelapple• 10 months ago

Funny enough, different airlines play by different rules [1]

1. https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/airline-cancellat...

type0• 10 months ago

good summary on where air travel is headed: The Horrifying Evolution of Air Travel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnGgAyQhP7Q

thrance• 10 months ago

Making flying even crappier doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

It does, from a purely ecological point of view. What was the number again? 4 longhaul flights for life per person if we want to achieve sustainability?

penguin_booze• 10 months ago

Let what happens in America, stay in America. All of it.

exabrial• 10 months ago

Under current regulations, airlines must ensure that families with young children are seated together without additional charges.

I'm against rolling back all of the other ones mentioned, but this one, I don't have a problem with charging a fee to be seated together. Most airlines let you pay to pick seats anyway.

altspace• 10 months ago

Opportunity for AI agents to deep dive into all the options and provide user friendly view?

OhMeadhbh4• 10 months ago

This is part of the reason I don't fly so much anymore. In the last 10 flights I flew, only 2 arrived on time. For one flight I was delayed in D/FW for 72 hours. I haven't had a flight on United that wasn't canceled or rescheduled or I was bumped in about 10 years. And the behaviour of the airlines has been getting MUCH worse over time. The Alaska flight from DFW to SEA that was delayed 72 hours... They originally weren't going to refund me for canceling it. I had to get a lawyer involved. I should not have to get a lawyer and a local TV news crew involved to reschedule a canceled flight.

I drive a lot more these days and if Amtrak was better I would take the train more often. I get to catch up on podcasts while driving and usually do it over the weekend so I can stop and see out-of-the-way roadside attractions. Before driving I-80 between Reno and Salt Lake, I never realized how empty some sections of the country are.

I'd be curious to hear if this is happening in Europe or Asia.

jermaustin15• 10 months ago

I flew a LOT pre-covid, and still more than average post-covid (2-4 times a year), and primarily via United (thanks to racked-up miles from the Continental days) out of Houston/NYC/London, and I have never had any issues with delays or cancellations - In 2009, a Continental flight did have me circling IAH for 2 hours while they troubleshot a landing gear malfunction before landing again and switching planes, though, but that is the only issue I remember, and I was flying 2-5 flights/week at that point between HOU/NYC/LAX/DEN.

The handful of times I've flown Southwest have been slightly less than perfect, but some of that was user error not understanding how Southwest worked compared to normal carriers.

I don't want to discount yours, or the thousands upon thousands of reports about United or Southwest, but in my experience, it has been pretty solid on both counts.

OhMeadhbh4• 10 months ago

I'm flying out of the west and have to go through SLC or DEN when flying United. It's ALWAYS a PITA. Now that I think about it... I had a segment a couple years ago on United from JAX to ORD that was delayed only 5 minutes and wound up arriving 5 minutes early, so maybe east of the Rockies things are better. And my brother tells me international flights on Untied through SFO to Asia are generally pretty stable.

I bet if I looked at where flights originated, United is doing a East to West pattern and there are just fewer opportunities for cascading delays to impact people getting on the plane in the east. Comparing with Alaska, which has other problems, but hasn't canceled too many flights on me, I bet most of the flights I take originate out of SEA going south or east, so you don't have that same pattern.

Also... Southwest... I remember when it was a good airline. Just another example of what hedge funds can do to you. FWIW, they have a train at DFW now that will take you to either downtown Ft. Worth or downtown Dallas (or even Las Colinas. Or DENTON. I took a train from DFW to "downtown" DENTON once!!! The wonders never cease.) I would love to see LUV field step up it's mass trans game.

hereme888• 10 months ago

The entire industry generates money by means of dark patterns. Per my interactions with people, almost 100% of consumers are constantly pissed off at the unending deception. Given this is their modus operandi, I don't trust a word the industry tells me.

I'm in favor of stronger regulation, actually.

JKCalhoun• 10 months ago

High speed rail can't come soon enough.

throwmeaway222• 10 months ago

I haven't flown anywhere since 2013ish, maybe more people should stop supporting it. Convert airports into space for housing.

darkamaul• 10 months ago

While US airlines are lobbying to roll back passenger protections and add fees, the EU is moving the opposite way - now pushing rules to standardize free carry-on and checked baggage sizes across all airlines[0]

[0] https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250627-the-big-change-a...

nitwit005• 10 months ago

The fees will only bring in extra revenue if they're a surprise, or some sort of impulse buy. I'm not sure that'll keep happening.

We're already at the point where people don't trust the listed price of flights and hotel bookings (Vegas has made hotel resort fees globally famous). It just seems the long term result is everyone will use some app to calculate the real cost of their trip, and what those apps display will be the real list price.

imchillyb• 10 months ago

US airlines discovered, during and after covid, that shipping prices were astronomical for some materials and some destinations. The airlines began taking on more packages, and less people. Now the airlines are allowing passengers to compete with these new package-pound-per-dollar rates. It's not unexpected. Now the safety measures are getting in the way of the package-pound-per-dollar and the airlines are seeking a way to scurry out from under these safety measures.

This is undesirable behavior, but how can a meat-package compete with a rare-metals, rare-earths, or even small aluminum shipment? The cost of shipping goods has risen astronomically since covid. Meat-packages now must compete. We're losing the competition.

fuckinpuppers• 10 months ago

Just a few short months ago we had an administration that pushed and got some fair rules created. It is crazy to me that people can’t see how transparently anti-consumer the current administration is.

jaybrendansmith• 10 months ago

Europe is looking better and better every day.

gitpusher• 10 months ago

I don't know much about running an airline. But whenever an industry lobbies to de-regulate itself, you know it will be bad for consumers.

US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

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