Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that “for the first time in U.S. history,” the proposed new rules would “require airlines to compensate passengers and cover expenses such as meals, hotels and rebooking in cases where the airline has caused a cancellation or significant delay.” DOT noted that one airline’s existing policy guarantees passenger compensation with frequent flyer miles, while two carriers promise reimbursement in travel credits or vouchers. But “no airline guarantees cash compensation when an airline issue causes the significant delay or compensation.” The proposed new rules would “ensure that passengers experiencing controllable delays and cancellations are better protected from financial losses than is the case today.” It said the rules will also create definitions of what constitutes a controllable cancellation or delay. 

The aviation website Simple Flying noted that if the proposed rules are adopted, they would bring U.S. passenger protections close to those that already exist in the European Union. It called the DOT announcement “a welcome and much-needed step,” since U.S. travelers currently “are left on the receiving end of unreliable air transport practices.” But Gary Leff at View From the Wing saw political motives at work. Since DOT announced the plan before it has written the rulemaking proposal, “that is timed for political effect,” he said, “and again they’ll have a news cycle later in the year actually releasing a proposed rule.” He said the timing also means there’s “a strong likelihood we do not see this rule happen unless President Biden is re-elected because promulgation of a final rule would quite likely not occur prior to the end of the president’s first term.”

If the planned rules are eventually adopted, a key to their effectiveness will be the definitions of what constitutes a cancellation or delay that is “controllable” by the airline (i.e., it’s the airline’s fault) and who makes that determination and enforces the compensation rules. Airlines often blame schedule disruptions on the weather and on the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control (ATC) system, and the industry’s reaction to the DOT announcement was no exception. Airlines for America (A4A), the leading industry trade group, said that in 2023, “the majority of flight cancellations have been because of severe weather in addition to ATC outages and staffing shortages.”  

But a study of DOT data from January 2018 through April 2022 — issued last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office — found that “factors within the airlines’ control (e.g., aircraft maintenance or lack of crew) were the leading cause of cancellations from October through December 2021 as well as in April 2022 and airline-caused delays increased for nearly all airlines in the last half of 2021.” 

Early in the pandemic, passenger satisfaction with the air travel experience rose significantly because airports and flights were less crowded and less expensive. But in the past two years, that has been reversed, according to J.D. Power’s 2023 North America Airline Satisfaction Study, released this week. What changed? “Planes are crowded, tickets are expensive and flight availability is constrained,” said Michael Taylor, J.D. Power’s travel intelligence lead. “While these drawbacks have not yet put a dent in leisure travel demand, if this trend continues, travelers will reach a breaking point and some airline brands may be damaged.”

The company’s 1,000-point passenger satisfaction scale showed a decline of 22 points in last year’s study and a drop of another seven points this year (to a total of 791). “The biggest factor driving this year’s decline in satisfaction is cost and fees, which has fallen 17 points from 2022,” the company said. Bucking the overall trend, customer scores in the front cabins (first and business class) rose nine points this year, which the company attributes to the restoration of food and beverage services as the pandemic waned. 

Despite its operational meltdown the week after Christmas, Southwest Airlines posted the highest satisfaction score among economy class travelers for the second year in a row, with a score of 827, followed by Delta (801) and JetBlue (800). Among premium cabin flyers, JetBlue ranked No. 1 at 893, followed by Delta (865) and United (848). Carriers with the lowest customer satisfaction scores for economy travel were Frontier (705), Spirit (727) and American (764). The study is based on a survey of 7,774 passengers and was conducted from March 2022 through March 2023.

In international route news, Air India is due to introduce a premium economy seating option next week on select routes from the U.S., including San Francisco-Bengaluru, San Francisco-Mumbai and New York-Mumbai, and it plans to expand the service to more routes “in the next few months.” The airline said its premium economy section will provide passengers with greater legroom, “premium” meals, noise-canceling headphones, more menu choices, hot towels and welcome drinks, and an amenities kit. United’s delayed plans to increase service to Hong Kong are now due to begin in August, according to Simple Flying. The carrier’s daily San Francisco-Hong Kong schedule is set to grow to 12 flights a week in August and then increase again to twice-daily departures Oct. 25. 

Elsewhere, United launched daily seasonal service this week from its Chicago O’Hare hub to Reykjavik, Iceland, although it dropped plans to add Newark-Reykjavik flights as well. Delta continued adding Europe routes this week, starting daily flights from its Atlanta hub to Nice, France. On May 16, Ethiopian Airlines is set to add its sixth North American gateway when it introduces service four days a week from Atlanta to Addis Ababa.

In code-sharing news, Alaska Airlines started putting its AS code on Oneworld partner Japan Airlines’ flights to Tokyo Narita from San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle; from SFO and LAX to Tokyo Haneda; and from LAX to Osaka Kansai. Across the Atlantic, when United Airlines resumes Newark-Stockholm Arlanda service on May 27, customers will be able to book United-coded connecting service beyond Stockholm to Oslo, Norway, and to Gothenburg, Lulea, and Umea, Sweden, operated by its Star Alliance partner carrier SAS.  

Last year, Air New Zealand raised some eyebrows when it said it planned to start offering beds — which it calls “sleep pods” — in the economy cabin of select long-haul flights, and now it has released more details. The pods will be introduced in September 2024 on 787s flying between Auckland-New York and Auckland-Chicago, with six of them available in a new “Skynest” section between economy and premium economy. The pods can be booked for four-hour sessions. And the cost (above the regular fare, of course)? It’s not definite yet, but “At this stage [we] are looking at around $400 to $600 for the four-hour period,” an airline official said. Each customer will be limited to one four-hour session, although families traveling on the same ticket might be able to book a session for each member, depending on availability. 

On the domestic side, last week we mentioned that Spirit Airlines started flying from Oakland to Dallas-Fort Worth and Philadelphia, but it also added another route out of OAK: Newark. Spirit flies the Newark route seven days a week, with a red-eye departure from OAK at 8:40 p.m., arriving in EWR at 5:01 a.m. The westbound flight leaves Newark at 4:35 p.m., arriving at 6:35 p.m. At Los Angeles International, low-cost Breeze Airways plans a May 17 start for twice-weekly nonstop flights to Providence, Rhode Island, a route that never had nonstop service; Breeze will also operate one-stop LAX-Providence service another three days a week.

Low-cost Avelo Airlines on May 17 is due to introduce twice-weekly flights from Hollywood Burbank Airport to Brownsville South Padre Island Airport in Texas. On July 8, Delta will begin nonstop service from its Salt Lake City hub to New York — not to JFK but to LaGuardia Airport. According to The Points Guy, the SLC-LGA service — which continues through Sept. 2 with an Airbus A220-100 — will be the longest route out of LaGuardia. Last week, we noted that Frontier Airlines added several new routes to Puerto Rico, and now Spirit Airlines has done the same. Spirit launched daily service to San Juan from Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Detroit and Chicago O’Hare, and it boosted its Orlando-San Juan schedule to five daily flights.

Alaska Airlines this week overhauled its in-flight menus with new offerings. The carrier said it has doubled the number of preorder meal options in the main cabin and now offers first-class customers a choice of up to five entrees. For family travelers, Alaska introduced a new twist on the kids’ favorite peanut butter and jelly sandwich: one with no peanut butter. Instead, the sandwich features “toasted cashew and oat butter and a homemade strawberry compote on a sweet croissant bread, paired with fresh fruit and a slice of Tillamook cheese,” the airline said. The main cabin breakfast menu now includes bagel sandwiches with smoked salmon or with turkey, bacon and tomato. New lunch/dinner selections include two salads (Stand Bahn Mi and Strawberry Fields for Chevre) and a pair of new wraps (Mediterranean chicken shawarma and chicken mango). The airline has also resumed hot food service on Hawaii flights, starting with the Tillamook cheeseburger, with more options to come later.

A year ago this week, Southwest Airlines announced plans for a $2 billion project to improve the “customer experience” on its aircraft by adding power ports, larger overhead bins and faster Wi-Fi. And now the first power ports have appeared on a renovated Boeing 737 MAX 8, according to The Points Guy. The aircraft now has USB-A and USB-C power ports at every seat, and the airline plans to continue those installations on all of its 737 MAX aircraft, The Points Guy said — but not on its non-MAX 737s, which account for the majority of its fleet. That should put power ports on 250 Southwest planes by year’s end.