Transportation Department requires airlines to immediately refund customers for canceled flights
A new Department of Transportation rule requires airline companies to refund customers for canceled flights as soon as possible.
The DOT’s final federal rule went into effect Monday and requires airlines to immediately process customer refunds after their flight has been canceled or significantly altered. The refunds cannot be in the form of vouchers and must be issued after a customer declines an altered flight or alternative form of payment.
However, the rule gives airlines seven days to process the refunds if the customer used a credit card and 20 days if the customer used a different payment method.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg proposed the rule in April, arguing that airlines need to accurately inform customers when they are entitled to a refund and make it easier for them to receive it.
“It’s imperfect,” said University of South Carolina law professor Bryant Walker Smith, whose work focuses on AVs. “Crash responders have remarked that to communicate with a vehicle on a crash scene that’s blocking a car in an emergency, they’ve had to stick their head in the window and yell because there was no way that they could hear or speak with that assistant from outside the vehicle.”
The beginning of the process is expected to look similar to how drivers navigate crashes with other humans, even if there is no other human. After a crash with an AV, a human driver would exit their vehicle, contact law enforcement and inform their insurance company of the collision. If the AV is at fault, the driver’s insurance company would contact the AV manufacturer or developer to determine a settlement.