Q: The chairman of the House of Representatives Transportation Committee kicked off last month's hearing on the Transparent Airfares Act by stating, "Currently, there is a U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) rule that prohibits airlines and travel agents from fully revealing the amount of government fees and taxes on commercial airfares." The act would purport to repeal that rule. However, is there really such a DOT rule? If not, why is there so much bipartisan support for the act?
A: There is no such rule. The sentence quoted above was obviously handed to the chairman by the lobbyists for Airlines 4 America (A4A), which is the slick new name for the airline trade association formerly known as the Air Transport Association. The committee chairman should be ashamed of himself for unquestioningly and ignorantly parroting A4A's propaganda.
There can be no doubt that the airline lobby is behind the chairman's statement. According to an A4A press release, the act "would end the ability for the government to bury ticket tax hikes in advertised prices by reversing the Department of Transportation's (DOT) misguided Full Fare Advertising (FFA) Rule."
Every agency owner undoubtedly knows the actual DOT rule on the subject, which became effective two years ago. It simply requires that all airfare ads and quotations start with the total airfare, including all taxes and fees, following which you are free to break it down into base fare, taxes and fees, if you wish. In print, the full fare must be more prominent than any breakdown.
What you cannot do is to lead off with the base fare before taxes, and then disclose the total price at some later point in the sale, which is what the airlines used to do before the DOT rule. Given the enormous bite that the government takes out of every ticket, it makes sense not to mislead the consumer by leading with the base fare.
The Transparent Airfares Act would allow airlines to advertise the way they used to. The propagandists call such advertising "transparent" in the sense that the consumer would be told up front what the government's share of the ticket is.
The trouble with reversing the full fare rule is that it would allow airlines and travel agencies to quote and advertise just the base fare before taxes and then list the taxes and the total at some later point during the sale. So, the act would allow airfare ads and quotes to be less transparent in any sense of the word that is not Orwellian doublespeak.
What the airlines really want is to be able to advertise air travel at lower prices than consumers must pay for them. They want to fool consumers into buying more by making them think that they are paying less than they are.
I don't know why the bill has such bipartisan support, but my guess is that the sponsors do not know that airlines and agencies are already free to list the government taxes and fees, as noted above. The sponsors probably just take the lobbyists' word for what the DOT rule says.
The bill has yet to come to the floor of the House of Representatives. I hope it will die when sharper members of Congress realize that the airlines are out to dupe both Congress and the traveling public.
Mark Pestronk is a Washington-based lawyer specializing in travel law. To submit a question for Legal Briefs, email him at [email protected].