By William J. McGee, Sr. Fellow for Aviation and Travel
Airline travel is about to get much worse – and that’s thanks to a systematic dismantling of Department of Transportation’s consumer protection statutes by DOT Secretary Sean Duffy – a man who remains strangely obsessed with highlighting how passengers’ footwear impacts the flying experience instead of the corporate misbehavior of airline monopolies.
Or perhaps Duffy’s obsession with how people dress to get on an airline is not so odd, but a calculated strategy to distract from his terrible record as head of the DOT. After just 11 months, Duffy has shown he’s unwilling to protect the safety, rights, and interests of airline passengers, instead carrying water for aviation lobbyists -- especially those who donated to President Trump’s inauguration.
Not that this is a total surprise. While to the general public, Duffy was best known for starring on The Real World and as a commentator on Fox News, he’s also a former lobbyist for American, Delta, and United, the nation’s three largest carriers. The industry, in turn, was exhilarated by his nomination, with trade group Airlines for America (A4) pronouncing themselves “thrilled” he took over at DOT.
Their faith has been amply rewarded.
Duffy is taking a sledgehammer to the protections the Biden administration was attempting to implement, redefining the terms “captured agency” and “pay to play” by repeatedly weakening DOT’s own rules to deliver gimme after gimme to the airline industry.
A bit of background is in order: Biden-era DOT head Pete Buttigieg started out in a bad place, and, in the first two years of his tenure, AELP and others were critical of him for not cracking down on airlines as delays and cancellations mounted. But in 2023 – after Southwest set a record by stranding more than 2 million passengers during the December 2022 holiday meltdown -- Buttigieg turned it around to emerge as the strongest protector of passenger rights and competition in the department’s history.
Buttigieg became the first DOT Secretary to oppose an airline merger when he came out against JetBlue-Spirit. And he followed this up by introducing a flurry of new rulemakings concerning cash refunds, fee transparency, family seating, disruption compensation, and disability protections. (I was proud to introduce him when he made these announcements.)
Now Duffy is methodically unraveling Buttigieg’s legacy of getting tough with airlines. Earlier this month, he absolved Southwest of its final $11 million payment on a record $140 million fine.
A highlights reel of Duffy’s first year in office would also include:
Duffy supported DOGE cuts at the Federal Aviation Administration, replying “Give me a break” when asked about the cutting of 352 jobs that the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union termed “essential.”
A May lamentation to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that he didn’t know why military helicopters were still flying into commercial airspace near Washington’s DCA Airport after a midair collision had killed 67 people. Ingraham, astonished, replied, “You’re the Transportation Secretary, how do you not know?”
In June, the Justice Department cut what AELP termed a “sweetheart deal” with Boeing for a non-prosecution agreement after Boeing breached its deferred prosecution deal following two fatal 737 MAX crashes that took 346 lives; Duffy failed to publicly respond.
In July, Duffy approved the anti-competitive United-JetBlue “Blue Sky Collaboration.”
In September, Duffy’s DOT published a unified agenda calling for abolishing dozens of DOT protections, one that AELP said appeared to be copied from an A4A wish-list.
During the recent government shutdown, Duffy threatened to “take action” against unpaid, overworked air traffic controllers who took sick time during the shutdown and took no responsibility for the fact that during that period, controller retirements rose from “about four” per day to “15 to 20.”
In November, Duffy killed a Buttigieg rulemaking requiring cash compensation for flight disruptions, with the DOT expressing concerns about “imposing significant costs on airlines.”
In December, Duffy scrapped an $11.9 million fine against American for violating disability rules and mishandling thousands of wheelchairs.
Undoubtedly, DOT’s unified agenda will bring more bad news soon, with Duffy hinting at rewriting or abandoning rules on cash refunds, fee transparency, and family seating policies.
Little wonder that Forbes recently summed up the industry’s year by writing, “Airlines are flying high thanks to Trump Administration deregulation.”
To be clear, I and many others have long declared the airline industry broken, due to consolidation and deteriorations in customer service, airfare transparency, and labor relations. But Duffy’s recent campaign to return “civility” to flying offers no solution.
First, there’s nothing – dare I say civilized — about the videos Duffy is highlighting of the age of Pan Am Constellations and DeSoto taxis, with a narrator referring to the well-dressed — and white — 1950s passengers as “a bastion of civility” before quick-cutting to recent images of a more diverse set of travelers fist-fighting in terminals and cabins.
But Duffy also doesn’t contemplate that in the 1950s, airline passengers were treated well. They weren’t forced to pay for seats that were too tight, or separated from their children, or left stranded when flights were disrupted. Flying is uncivil today not because of passengers’ wardrobes or manners but because our consolidated airline industry has been steadily downgrading their products and service for everyone other than those who can shell out the big bucks.
With airlines treating the vast majority of their customers so poorly, there should be more than enough work to keep any DOT Secretary quite busy. But clearly Sean Duffy would rather be the industry’s lapdog than act as a watchdog. Don’t let Duffy’s social media time-travel to another century distract you from his disturbing legacy of making the skies more friendly for the airlines at the expense of their passengers.