“We all know what it’s like when airlines drag their feet on refunds or surprise us with junk fees,” Biden said in the video posted on social media.
But when a major bipartisan airline bill was released on Capitol Hill five days later, it was Senator Elizabeth Warren who was surprised.
A refund provision on page 429 of the nearly 1,100-page legislation said passengers would have to apply to get their money back from the airlines. Warren, who said she had been “over the moon” about the administration’s automatic refund announcement, now had crashed back down to Earth.
“The bill said that the airlines can set up a mechanism by which people can request getting their money back and that means they can put up as many traps and speed bumps and hoops to jump through as they want,” Warren said. “And I think that was just plain wrong. So I jumped in on the fight and said, ‘no.’ “
Warren launched a quest to fix the problem as the complex and meticulously negotiated bipartisan bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration for the next five years headed for quick Senate passage before the agency’s existing authority expired.
The Massachusetts Democrat highlighted the discrepancy on social media, teamed up on a bipartisan remedy with an unlikely ally, Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, and then worked with White House officials, Senate Democratic leaders, and fellow Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey to get the bill’s wording changed to align with the administration’s rule.
The bill easily passed the Senate last week and sailed through the House on Wednesday. Biden is expected to sign it this week, locking the provision into law, making the refund rule different from other changes the Biden administration has enacted administratively to address a variety of junk fees. Those rules, such as one to cap late fees for credit card payments, could be changed or rescinded by another president and more easily challenged in court by businesses.
“Thanks to the partnership of Senator Warren and a bipartisan coalition of senators, the president’s pro-consumer policies on automatic refunds has been written into law,” Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff who worked with Warren on the change, said in a statement. “The president will continue using every lever available to him to hold airlines accountable and save Americans their hard-earned money.”
The refund language Warren helped get into the law is “a huge win” for consumers and airline passengers, said Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy for the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonpartisan consumer advocacy organization.
“Having Senator Warren and Senator Hawley put that pressure on the committee to prioritize making this change . . . was critical and absolutely essential to protect consumers and passengers for this automatic refund,” Harper said.
The Transportation Department rule requires an automatic refund for a canceled or significantly changed flight, paid out in whatever form the customer used to purchase the tickets: cash, credit card, or airline miles. Airlines aren’t allowed to substitute other forms of compensation, such as vouchers or travel credits, unless the passenger chooses to accept them.
But the FAA legislation unveiled on April 29, negotiated by bipartisan leaders of the Senate Commerce and House Transportation committees, said refunds would be provided “upon written or electronic request of the passenger.” Hawley said he also noticed the language didn’t align with the administration’s rule, which he supported, so he joined with Warren to push for the change in the legislation.
Senator Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat who chairs the Senate commerce committee, said negotiations on the bill were essentially finished before the rule came out and the preliminary version of the rule, in the works since 2022, hadn’t used the word “automatic.”
Airline lobbyists had opposed the automatic refund rule. The trade group Airlines for America said the 11 largest US airlines provided $43 billion in customer refunds from January 2020 to December 2023, in addition to other types of compensation.
Warren and Hawley filed an amendment to insert the automatic language into the law. Warren also worked with Markey, a member of the commerce committee who had been pushing for automatic refunds since 2019. The Transportation Department rule provided the momentum to finally get the wording into the FAA bill, Markey said.
“Senator Warren and I partnered to get it over the finish line,” he said. “She was lobbying hard on her contacts and I was lobbying hard on my contacts.”
At the same time, Zients and Steve Ricchetti, a counselor to the president, worked with Buttigieg to push from their end, according to congressional and White House officials. Warren said their help was crucial.
“The president and his team deserve an enormous amount of credit for first introducing the automatic [refund] rule and then for helping get that rule over the finish line into statutory law,” Warren said.
Buttigieg described it as a team effort.
“Senator Warren fought successfully to make sure that our work on automatic airline refunds was not just protected but fortified in this law, making sure that it would not be vulnerable to future administrations or airline industry lobbyists,” he said in a statement. “We’re grateful for Senator Warren, Senator Markey, and the bipartisan coalition of senators who acted to ensure that the FAA reauthorization bill included this landmark consumer protection.”
Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.