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When Congress deregulated airline prices, routes, and schedules in 1978, Congress preserved the DOT’s responsibility to ensure that international prices and fees remained “reasonable.” This little-known provision of U.S. law means that the FAA should strike down any change fees that are unreasonable and have no relation to cost. See 49 U.S.C. § 41501, DOT-OST-2015-0031 at regulations.gov.

FlyersRights.org has filed a notice of appeal against the US Department of Transportation (DOT) in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals over its refusal to regulate international change fees – Flyers Rights Education Fund v. U.S. Department of Transportation (CADC).

Passengers are helpless when it comes these exorbitant change fees that can range up to $500 or more. Domestic consolidation and international alliances in the airline industry have combined to give passengers fewer options when travelling. As airline profits soar, the airlines continue to increase change fees by hundreds of dollars while publicly declaring that these fees are a major profit generator.

In 2015, FlyersRights.org filed a rulemaking petition demanding that the DOT enforce the Reasonableness Law for change fees on international flights. On February 1, 2019, the DOT denied this petition. In refusing to regulate despite the Reasonableness Law, the DOT said it relied on “market forces” to handle all air travel pricing and policy. See DOT-OST-2015-0031-0035. FlyersRights.org is represented in the court appeal by Joseph Sandler, Esq. of Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock P.C. of Washington, D.C.

Paul Hudson, President of FlyersRights.org, reflected on the past few years, “The DOT has demonstrated a tremendous ability to allow the airlines and airplane manufacturers to dictate enforcement policies. The DOT has ignored the law by failing to guarantee that international change fees are reasonable and related to cost. At a time when flights are routinely filled to capacity, airlines extort passengers into paying hundreds of dollars to change flights so that the airline can go back and sell the same ticket, usually at a higher price. The airlines reach into passengers’ checkbooks because the DOT refuses to follow the law.”

FlyersRights.org most recently took the FAA to federal court over the denial of its 2015 seat size rulemaking petition. The seat litigation has increased scrutiny on the FAA’s relationship with Boeing and other airplane manufacturers, has led to Congressional mandates to establish seat size standards and to review certification procedures, and has prompted a DOT Inspector General Investigation into the FAA’s oversight of emergency evacuation testing and certification.

Paul Hudson, member of the FAA Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee since 1993, noted “The DOT and FAA keep proving, time and time again, that they will allow Boeing and the airlines to dictate policy both in the safety and consumer protection realms. From ignoring concerns over the Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 787 Dreamliner, to rubber stamping manufacturers’ emergency evacuation testing, to decreasing enforcement of consumer protections to historical lows, the DOT has surrendered its duty to ensure safe air travel and reasonable protections for passengers.”

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Former chief of flight operations for Delta Air Lines was appointed by President Trump to run the Federal Aviation Administration, currently under scrutiny for allowing the troubled Boeing 737 MAX 8 to carry passengers.

Steve Dickson, who spent 27 years with Delta before retiring in October as senior vice president of flight ops, is joining the agency in the midst of its most turbulent period in recent history, with Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao having requested an audit of its certification of the aircraft, two of which have been involved in horrific crashes over the past five months.

While Dickson’s name had reportedly been under consideration since November, Trump allowed the FAA to go without an official head for over a year following the end of Obama-era agency chief Michael Huerta’s term. Daniel Elwell, who led the FAA under George W. Bush, has been running the agency in an interim capacity without being confirmed by the Senate.

The man from Delta will be the first FAA head in three decades to have come directly to the job from a senior airline position – something of a pattern for Trump, who has recruited a number of cabinet members from the ranks of corporate America to staff the agencies tasked with regulating their former employers. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who previously worked for Boeing, is just one such appointment.

The FAA is under fire for allowing Boeing to conduct crucial parts of its own safety testing and certification process. A group of current and former engineers from both the regulator and the aircraft manufacturer claims the FAA merely took Boeing’s word that their new plane was safe – an oversight that other countries then allegedly magnified by conducting only minimal testing of their own, assuming the US watchdog wouldn’t have certified an unsafe aircraft. Boeing is also accused of “cutting corners” to quickly certify the plane in order to compete with the new Airbus A320 Neo – between them, Airbus and Boeing comprise the lion’s share of all passenger airliners – and of failing to properly train pilots to work with the onboard systems.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed earlier this month shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board after diving unexpectedly into a field. It was the second Boeing 737 Max 8 to meet such a fate in under six months, and investigators have pointed to “clear similarities” between this crash and the Lion Air Flight 610 disaster in October, which killed 189 people.

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