Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, United Airlines, and trade body Airlines for America (A4A) have requested a full appeals court review of a January ruling that stated the US Department of Transportation (DOT) has the authority to mandate airline fee disclosure rules, the news agency Reuters reported.
In January, a three-judge panel at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the DOT’s 2024 rule requiring airlines to disclose their service fees upfront. The panel noted that the DOT had the authority to write rules on unfair or deceptive practices by airlines, but that the agency had not complied with procedural rules and should have allowed airlines an opportunity to comment on a study reviewing the impact of the fee disclosure rules.
The judges sent the regulation back to the DOT, allowing it to address the procedural error, Reuters reported.
However, the major carriers and A4A said that the ruling would “upend the way airlines interact with their customers, at great cost, and with no demonstrated benefit.”
What the DOT intended was to ensure passengers have access to fee information for transporting baggage and changing or cancelling a flight before ticket purchase, thus forcing carriers and ticket agents to clearly disclose passenger-specific or itinerary-specific fees for these services to consumers. The department announced its final regulations on April 24, 2024. The airlines sued in May to block the ruling, with the appeals court blocking it temporarily in July.
The DOT was not immediately available for comment.
A November 2024 US Senate report stated that the growth of ancillary fees had made booking a flight a more complicated experience and recommended Congress to require airlines to provide "more granular fee data to the DOT and strengthen fee disclosure requirements", while investigating potential abuses and prohibiting unfair and deceptive practices.
