AIR PASSENGER RIGHTS

Black and white cartoon of a puzzled traveler with a question mark overhead watching two airplanes fly away in opposite directions.

America and Europe just went opposite ways on airline fees. Who’s right?

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How much of an airline ticket’s price do you deserve to see when you shop for a flight? The United States and Europe just answered that question within days of each other, and came to opposite conclusions. In America, a rule that would have required airlines and booking sites to show you the cost of a checked bag or a ticket change the first time a fare appeared never survived. A federal appeals court blocked it before any airline had to comply, then threw it out entirely, faulting the government for skipping a step rather than finding fee transparency unlawful. Instead of redoing the rule, regulators made the defeat official and restored the older standard: airlines note that fees may apply and point you toward the fine print. Europe went the other way, approving its first overhaul of air passenger rights in more than two decades, with fares that must include the cost of a standard carry-on from the outset. Airlines argue that unbundling lets travelers who skip the extras pay less, and that every mandatory fee is disclosed before you buy. Consumer advocates counter that a fare hiding the bag charge is not really a price at all.

Black and white cartoon of a small couple with suitcases standing on a dark horizon, watching a paper airplane folded from a banknote fly up and away into a vast cloudy sky.

Air travelers deserve stronger consumer protections—in Europe and the U.S.

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Mila Schoun knew what his downgrade was worth, but his airline pretended it did not. Schoun and his wife had paid Swiss International Air Lines for premium economy on a flight from Prague to Miami, and then the airline changed aircraft and put them in regular economy for the 10-hour crossing. He asked for the difference back. Swiss refused. What Schoun had on his side, even if he had never heard of it, was EC 261, a 21-year-old European regulation that makes airlines pay when they cancel, bump, strand, or downgrade you, and that quietly protects millions of Americans on any flight leaving an EU airport. Europe just spent the spring fighting over whether to gut that law, with the airline lobby pushing to raise the delay threshold and erase most claims. Passengers appear to have dodged the worst of it. But there is a quieter problem that no one in Brussels lobbied for and no one fought against, one that has been draining the value out of this protection for two decades while everyone argued about something else.