Airlines want to hide the real price of your ticket. Should the government let them?

Remember what booking an airline ticket used to be like?

You’d find a $99 fare online—a real bargain!—and then select it. 

But wait, that fare didn’t include a “carrier-imposed surcharge.” And what’s this mandatory fuel surcharge? You also had to wait until the end of the booking process to see the taxes. 

By the time you clicked through to the checkout screen, your $99 flight cost $180. It was infuriating.

In 2011, the Department of Transportation adopted the full-fare rule, which says the price an airline shows you must be the price you pay—taxes and fees included. The airlines sued to kill it and lost. Travelers have shopped for flights with confidence ever since.

Now the government wants to jettison that standard. The DOT just proposed changing the full-fare requirement. Two options are on the table. One is bad, the other is worse. And the traveling public has already figured that out, judging by the comments piling up in the government’s inbox.

The bad proposal: weaken the full-fare advertising rule

Under current regulations, the total price must be the most prominent number in any airfare ad. Airlines can break out the taxes and fees, but they can’t display those components as prominently as the total, or in bigger type.

The DOT calls that “unnecessarily prescriptive.” Its proposal would let airlines display each component as prominently as the total. So under that scenario, you’d see a fare display for $99 and $180 online, which could be confusing. It would also erase nine guidance documents that explain how the rule works in practice, including one that stops carriers from labeling their own surcharges as taxes.

That may sound like a typography debate, but it’s not. Once every number can have the same prominence as the true price, airlines will have a license to make the low base fare the star of the ad. The total still technically appears, but they’ll find a way of burying the real cost.

The worse proposal: eliminate the rule entirely

Buried deeper in the proposal, the DOT says it’s also considering repealing the full-fare rule “in whole.” That would mean airlines could once again advertise a fare that excludes taxes and fees altogether.

Want to know what that world looks like? Jason Rabinowitz, an aviation data journalist, showed the DOT in his comment. 

He priced a JetBlue flight from New York to London and found a $314 fare. The base fare was just $31. The rest was $33 in government taxes and a $250 “carrier-imposed fee” — the airline’s own invention. Without the full-fare rule, JetBlue could dangle something close to $31 in front of you. Rabinowitz warned that airlines could set base fares as low as a penny and shift the real cost into fees. 

A one-cent flight to London? Now that’s a deal—until you try to buy it.

You can’t fool the public

The comment period runs through July 31, and the early returns are about what you’d expect. Virtually every person opposes the change.

“Showing a price that you cannot purchase is deceptive,” wrote Eric Berman of Woodinville, Wash., who called the proposal “profoundly anti-consumer.”

Cheryl Voigt of Des Moines, asked one of the most important questions in the discussion: Who benefits? 

“It certainly would not be airline customers,” she wrote.

Kelly Harris of Trinity, Fla., called the proposal “a disgusting and incompetent use of government power.” Andrew Lambert of Phoenix needed just four words: “What a dumb change.”

And Andrea Gadomski-Riker of Ohio explained the real stakes: “For those of us who do not travel regularly, and have limited funds, knowing a flight’s total cost up front is vital.”

She’s right. Frequent fliers can avoid the checkout trickery. But a family that flies once a year will get ambushed by fees. 

The rest of the world is watching

The DOT proposal comes at an interesting time. On July 13, the European Union gave final approval to stronger air passenger rights, including a requirement that airlines display fares with a carry-on allowance included before booking even starts. 

Europe is forcing airlines to show more of the true cost upfront. The United States wants to let them show less.

The DOT argues the prominence rule may clash with the First Amendment, and that a 1970 tax law already covers how taxes get displayed. Maybe there’s a lawyer’s argument in there somewhere, but a regulation that lets you know what a flight costs before you buy it isn’t government overreach. It’s a thoughtful, consumer-friendly rule that prevents airlines from misrepresenting their ticket prices.

“The proposed rule presents a false choice,” says Bonnie Patten, executive director for Truth In Advertising, a nonprofit organization that advocates for clear pricing. “This is not about whether airlines may market and discuss every cost of an airline ticket. They plainly may. It’s about whether airlines may emphasize portions of the purchase price in ways that increase the likelihood consumers will be deceived regarding the total cost of transportation.”

Add your voice by July 31

There’s some good news. This isn’t a done deal yet. The DOT must consider your feedback, and there’s still time to put an end to this foolish idea. Anyone can file a comment at the Regulations.gov site (the docket number is DOT-OST-2025-0831). 

The airlines are counting on you to stay quiet, to click “book” the next time you have to buy a ticket and obediently accept its fees. Prove them wrong. The comment box is open for one more week.