The U.S. Government Just Gave Airlines a Bunch More Reasons to Deny You Meals and Hotel Rooms for Flight Disruptions

A rule change made by the U.S. Department of Transportation could mean airline passengers would be entitled to even less in the way of meals and hotel accommodations following significant flight delays, starting next month.

You guys, we're beginning to think we won't get that "golden age of travel," after all.

Trump's DOT claims to be working on bringing that about, most recently by allowing certain TSA PreCheck members without boarding passes to go through airport security checkpoints.

Some idealists might assume a golden age should also include, say, guaranteeing that airlines can't strand you at the terminal without so much as a meal voucher to use at the airport Chili's.

But Trump's administration ditched a Biden-era rule that would have required carriers to compensate passengers for significant flight delays caused by the airline. That would have brought the United States closer to what's guaranteed to passengers in Europe.

Instead, about all the U.S. federal government will commit to is to "hold airlines accountable" if they fail to "adhere to the promises that they make in their customer service plan, including commitments to care for customers in the event of controllable delays or cancellations," as explained at the DOT's Airline Cancellation and Delay Dashboard.

The nine major U.S. airlines have all committed to providing meals or vouchers for customers who have to wait 3 hours or more due to a delayed or canceled flight when it's the airline's fault, and all of them except Frontier Airlines will provide complimentary hotel accommodations for an overnight cancellation that is the airline's fault.

Now the DOT has issued a new rule that clarifies and expands the list of events that are considered not the airline's fault, thereby giving carriers more reasons to deny compensation to stranded passengers.

10 delay-causing issues now considered outside of airlines' control

Up to now, as explained by law firm Crowell & Moring, issues considered under the airline's control have been pretty broadly defined: "maintenance issues, crew scheduling, aircraft cleaning," and so on.

But according to the amended regulation, which goes into effect Oct. 19, a list of 10 delay-causing issues have been specifically classified as uncontrollable.

Some of them, such as damage caused by extreme weather, are holdovers from before. Others relate to stuff like aircraft maintenance and system outages for which airlines can now place blame elsewhere so they won't be held responsible in the event of delays.

Here's the full list of 10 issues that the DOT now considers beyond an airline's control:

1. aircraft cleaning necessitated by the death of a passenger
2. aircraft damage caused by extreme weather, foreign object debris, or sabotage
3. a baggage or cargo loading delay caused by an outage of a bag system not controlled by a carrier or its contractor
4. cybersecurity attacks (provided that the air carrier is in compliance with applicable cybersecurity regulations)
5. a shutdown or system failure of government systems that directly affects the ability of an air carrier to conduct flights safely and is unexpected
6. overheated brakes due to a safety incident resulting in the use of emergency procedures
7. unscheduled maintenance, including in response to an airworthiness directive, manifesting outside a scheduled maintenance program that cannot be deferred or must be addressed before flight
8. an emergency that required medical attention through no fault of the carrier
9. the removal of an unruly passenger
10. an airport closure due to the presence of volcanic ash, wind, or wind shear

As of Oct. 19, airline commitments to compensate customers for flight disruptions don't count if the extended delay or cancellation was caused by one of those 10 things.

Industry group claims "market forces" will take care of everything

As TheStreet points out, "It’s possible some airlines will continue or even expand" the commitments they've made regarding flight disruptions, in spite of the new rule.

After all, carriers are already under no legal obligation to provide compensation for delays and cancellations, but most have volunteered to do so anyway—albeit in a limited capacity.

The federal government has pledged to hold the companies "accountable" for those promises made to customers, but is now giving those companies so much leeway that the airlines are essentially left to police themselves.

Their trade organization, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), thinks that's just grand.

"Regulation that requires airlines alone to pay compensation or provide care and assistance as a result of delays does not address the fundamental problem of why delays occur," IATA argues, presumably with a straight face. "[Such regulation] ignores that market forces at play will compel airlines to offer solutions in order to keep their customers."

Right, because up to now, airlines left to their own devices wouldn't dare to inconvenience customers.