DOT Puts the Hammer Down on F9, AA, DL

The U.S. Department of Transportation means business when it comes to holding airlines accountable for violating passenger rights.Three U.S. carriers — Frontier, American and Delta — have been fined a combined $850,000 for infractions of the federal agency’s airline consumer protections rules, the agency announced.

In South Florida, all three carriers maintain a year-round and/or seasonal presence at the three international airports in Fort Lauderdale, Miami and West Palm Beach.


Frontier, the low cost Denver-based carrier that just announced a service expansion in Miami, was slapped with the largest fine of $400,000 for violating overbooking and disability rules.


The DOT said the carrier failed to ask volunteers to relinquish confirmed seats before involuntarily denying passengers from boarding flights. It also failed to provide the affected bumped passengers the required written notice outlining their rights, and failed to properly compensate them in a timely manner.
The DOT said its findings resulted from on-site inspections of Frontier’s bumping procedures in September 2016. During an earlier compliance inspection at its Denver headquarters, enforcement officers reviewed about 200 complaints filed against the carrier in 2015 and 2014.
Additionally, Frontier was fined because it failed to provide disabled passengers with adequate wheelchair assistance when they boarded or exited aircraft. It did not sufficiently respond to complaints filed by affected passengers, the Department said in its consent orders.
The majority of the disability violations occurred at Frontier’s hub in Denver, the DOT said.
In its response, Frontier said it had made several customer service enhancements following the DOT’s initial audit and invested in improvements in its customer complaint handling, wheelchair handling, denied boarding procedures, and overall customer care.
American, based in Fort Worth, Texas, received a civil penalty of $250,000 for failing to make timely passenger refunds. The fine stemmed from a DOT investigation into its refund practices in 2016.

In its response, American said its merger with US Airways and subsequent combination of the airlines’ refunds and customer relations systems contributed to the untimely refunds. American said it hired contractors and added system enhancements to reduce the processing time.

Delta, which is headquartered Atlanta, was charged $200,000 for filing inaccurate baggage reports, which was the result of a “problematic internal policy” and reporting system, the DOT said. The underreporting led Delta to receive a better ranking in its Air Travel Consumer Report, the agency. said.

Although Delta said the impact of the reporting failures was limited, it said it plans to develop a $1.2 million mobile application to improve its lost-bag recovery process and minimize passenger inconvenience. The app would allow passengers to file missing bag reports and track their recovery using a smart phone instead of having to spend time lines at baggage recovery offices.