Tuesday 15 November 2022 06:23 PM US slaps Frontier Airlines and five foreign carriers with $7.25 million in fines trends now
The US Department of Transportation says it forced six airlines to refund passengers $622million for canceled or delayed flights and fined them $7.25million not doing so within the time frame required by US law.
The recent action against Frontier, Air India, TAP Portugal, Aeromexico, El Al Israel Airlines and Avianca is part of ongoing work to ensure Americans receive refunds they are owed by airlines, the DOT said on Monday.
The department told DailyMail.com that the full $622million in refunds has already been paid out to consumers and that its actions 'induced' airlines to 'pay those refunds faster'.
Frontier Airlines was required to pay $222million in refunds and will pay a $2.2 million penalty
When the pandemic began the Frontier policy was to treat any flight more than three hours late as 'significantly delayed' but they changed the definition to avoid refunding consumers properly, the DOT claimed
In addition to the refunds mass fines have been issued in the wake of delays and cancelations that affected flights during the pandemic and saw many travelers wait months or even years for refunds - or not paid at all.
The department said it received 'a flood of complaints' since the pandemic began.
The DOT has enforced that the various airlines make payments to those that complained and said that those airlines have now 'collectively paid more than half a billion dollars to people who were owed a refund.'
It has also said that the $7.25million in fines, which will be collected in increments, should be paid directly to the US Treasury.
In its orders to the various, mostly international, airlines, the DOT outlines how some avoided paying the required refunds.
Budget airline Frontier - which was penalized most severely - was accused by the department of engaging in an 'unfair and deceptive practice' to avoid paying out.
It was criticized of having a website that was down for 15 days in 2020, preventing passengers from applying for refunds.
It was also said in the department's order that the airline attempted to retroactively redefine what counts as 'significantly delayed' to minimize having to give out refunds.
'When a flight gets canceled, passengers seeking refunds should be paid back promptly,' said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
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