Congress Kills Biden's Airline Cash Refund Bill

The Biden administration last week announced a new rule promising that when airlines cancel or significantly delay flights, passengers will automatically be given their money back without having to “navigate a patchwork of cumbersome processes to request and receive a refund, searching through airline websites to figure out how make the request, filling out extra ‘digital paperwork,’ or at times waiting for hours on the phone.”

But just days after that announcement generated celebratory headlines, four congressional lawmakers overseeing aviation policy began advancing legislation that includes a provision potentially reimposing those cumbersome processes on passengers, despite pleas from federal regulators that they refrain from doing so.

Airline lobbyists are now citing the legislation's language as a rationale for ignoring or challenging the Biden administration’s new rule.

The lawmakers are four of the six largest congressional recipients of campaign cash from the airline industry in the current election cycle, according to data from the government transparency group OpenSecrets.

On Monday, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and Rep Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) unveiled a version of the bill which creates a right to a refund for airline passengers with a nonrefundable ticket, but requires refunds only “upon written or electronic request of the passenger” — an explicit rejection of the Biden administration’s rule.

Lobbying groups for the industry are already using the bill as a tool to invalidate the automatic refund rule.