At the start of April the Department of Transport issued an enforcement notice that airlines (emphasis mine):
‘remain obligated to provide a prompt refund to passengers for flights to, within, or from the United States when the carrier cancels the passenger’s scheduled flight or makes a significant schedule change and the passenger chooses not to accept the alternative offered by the carrier.  The obligation of airlines to provide refunds, including the ticket price and any optional fee charged for services a passenger is unable to use, does not cease when the flight disruptions are outside of the carrier’s control (e.g., a result of government restrictions).’
This was due to some airlines trying to offer vouchers in place of a refund. The DoT has now issued a second enforcement notice. In March & April DoT has received more than 25,000 complaints and apparently airlines and travel agents have also asked the DoT for additional clarity. One particularly interesting section is regarding changes airlines have made to cancellation policies after a ticket has been purchased:
May airlines and ticket agents retroactively apply new refund policies?
The Department interprets the statutory prohibition against unfair or deceptive practices to cover actions
by airlines and ticket agents applying changes retroactively to their refund policies that affect consumers
negatively. The refund policy in place at the time the passenger purchased the ticket is the policy that is
applicable to that ticket. The Aviation Enforcement Office would consider the denial of refunds in
contravention of the policies that were in effect at the time of the ticket purchase to be an unfair and
deceptive practice.
United has changed its cancellation policy and tried to enforce it retroactively so many times I’ve lost count. The latest attempt was to try and redefine what cancellation actually means. Another interesting note from the enforcement notice is that airlines have 7 business days to provide a refund if payment was made by credit card or 20 business days if made by cash or check.
The idea behind these enforcement notices is to get the airlines to do the right thing without having to do an enforcement action (e.g fining the airlines for failure to follow the rules). This is now the second enforcement notice we’ve seen, if airlines continue to break these rules it will be interesting to see if the DoT actually starts issuing enforcement actions. If you’re in a situation where an airline is not following these rules, I highly recommend that you file a complaint with the DoT.
