The Department of Transportation just handed down a final rule that forces the airline industry to strip away the legalese and boil their compensation policies down into a single, user-friendly document.
Following years of severe operational meltdowns, catastrophic holiday scheduling failures, and an escalating regulatory war on junk fees, the DOT is aggressively weaponizing consumer transparency to force operational reliability.
No more burying the refund rules in page forty of a digital contract.
Airlines must draft and submit a one-page summary to the DOT detailing exactly what a passenger is owed when things go sideways.
Once that document is submitted, the airline has a 90-day window to plaster the exact same summary in a "prominent location" on its public website.
"A Passenger Rights Summary that fulfills this expectation is typically a single-page document—or a digital equivalent such as a one-page PDF—presented in a clear and legible font."
By forcing legacy carriers to publicly commoditize their service failures, the agency is establishing a rigid liability baseline that will immediately be exploited by third-party claim aggregators and consumer litigation firms.
The feds aren't letting carriers pick and choose what to highlight, either. The DOT is demanding crystal-clear guidelines in specific scenarios, including:
1.) The exact compensation frameworks (specifically rebooking options, refunds, meals, and lodging) for flight delays, diversions, and outright cancellations.
2.) The payout rules for mishandled, delayed, damaged, pilfered, or lost bags.
3.) What passengers are owed if they willingly give up a ticketed seat due to overbooking.
4.) The rules for forced removal and involuntary denial of boarding, including removals for safety and security reasons.
This applies to all "covered air carriers." Legally, that translates to any citizen of the United States, or any foreign entity, providing domestic or foreign air transportation.
There are no carve-outs or exemptions for smaller regional operations. Furthermore, because the Airline Deregulation Act legally preempts state law in this arena, local state governments have zero authority to interfere or tack on their own versions of this rule.
While the effective date is late May 2026, the compliance clock hasn't actually started ticking.
Thanks to the Paperwork Reduction Act, the DOT first needs approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) before it can legally force the airlines to hand over the paperwork.
Carriers don't have to submit a thing, or update their websites, until the DOT secures that OMB sign-off and drops a follow-up notice in the Federal Register.
