The holidays are upon us, and as most of us know, that leads to airports jammed with bustling, over-anxious crowds hurrying to get home to their families. Add to that the fun of being packed like sardines and long layovers, and you have the recipe for a lot of exhausted people trying to enjoy what little time they have to spend with their loved ones.
I am no stranger to this. Believe me. I live in Central America and coming to visit my sister in California meant I had to spend more than 12 hours in a freezing airport in El Salvador. Fun, it was not.
But no matter how unenjoyable your flight may have been, count yourself lucky. Because if President-elect Donald Trump has his way, he’s going to make it worse. Much worse, Mother Jones reports.
According to the lobbying group Airlines for America, a record 31 million people will hop a jet to visit family and friends for the holiday, and the group reports this is as good as things are going to get for years to come. Trump and his minions plan to trash commercial airline regulations completely.
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During his time as Secretary of the Federal Department of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg prioritized tackling some of the biggest challenges Americans faced regarding air travel. The DOT extracted nearly $4 billion in reimbursements and refunds owed to airline customers. The Biden administration has cracked down on airline malfeasance, forcing Southwest Airlines to refund more than $600 million to more than 2 million passengers who were stranded after it canceled a whopping 60 percent in a two-day period during the December holidays in 2022. The icing on the cake here is that the DOT also fined the airline $140 million for a cavalcade of operational failures and consumer protection violations.
It’s bad enough to deal with huge airports, massive crowds, and long layovers (which are, for me, the worst part) but the DOT has forced most of the major airlines to guarantee free rebooking, meals, and even hotel accommodations when they cause a major delay. And it’s walloped airlines with at least $225 million in penalties against airlines for violating consumer protection laws, and this, in fact, is a record. In October, for instance, the DOT fined American Airlines $50 million for abusing disabled passengers by doing things like breaking or losing thousands of wheelchairs.
Apparently, airlines have habitually trashed wheelchairs for a long time. The Obama administration tried to solve this problem by levying new regulations to force airlines to track how often wheelchairs and mobility scooters were lost or broken. That changed when Trump took office. His administration swelled with lobbyists from the industry, delaying the implementation of this rule almost as soon as he took office. Nearly two years passed and it was only after Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a combat veteran and double amputee, lost her wheelchair thanks to an airline. This led her to secure an amendment in Congress that forced the DOT to take action.
Lastly, the Biden DOT has proposed rules that mandate disclosure of airline junk fees, Mother Jones reports. Earlier this spring, it issued a rule that requires airlines to grant automatic cash refunds to customers when airlines cancel or cause significant flight delays. This rule went into effect last month, and it relieves passengers of unending fights with airline fat cats while trying to get their money back. In August, the DOT proposed a rule to ban airlines from charging families extra fees so that their kids can sit with them. This proposal could save a family of four $200 on a round trip.
Trump will almost certainly take a wrecking ball to this and the airlines surely won’t mind. Undoubtedly some of the airline fat cats miss canceling flights and keeping the money, or maybe forcing you to fork over an extra $50 so your toddler doesn’t have to sit next to a stranger on the plane.
And this is music to Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, who said earlier this month that Trump has promised “to take a fresh look at the regulatory environment, the bureaucracy that exists in government, the level of overreach that we have seen over the last four years within our industry. I think that will be a breath of fresh air.”
And no, that “fresh air” won’t benefit us, the consumers. Of course not. Trump will likely be ushering in Project 2025, much to the delight of its authors, who wrote “another problematic area is aviation consumer protection.”
You can be certain this isn’t going to go in our favor.
And he hopes to appoint former Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy as his DOT Secretary. Duffy is a former reality TV Star and a Fox News host. He’s a former lobbyist for the airline industry, and he fought Biden’s consumer measures tooth and nail, with lawsuits and floods of lobbying money.
Duffy will be in charge of ensuring all of the plans laid out in this project, including moving parts of the air traffic control system out of Washington, to encourage much of the staff to leave. Project 2025 calls for fewer controllers and fewer control towers and advocates axing funding for research and development and will almost certainly lead to the closure of additional smaller airports since their subsidies will also dry up. Oh, but for rich folks, air taxis will be high priority.
If you’re still thinking about leaving the country after Trump gets in, you may want to hurry. Because if all of this comes to pass you can be sure flying will be considerably more risky.
Just sayin.’
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
