Honesty in pricing may be a casualty of a current bill regarding air traffic, which would allow airlines to display only the “base airfare” with the final price hidden behind a link.
An Obama-era administration rule required airlines to make the complete final price, including taxes and fees, show up when consumers search for flights. But a new proposal to the House of Representatives would massively weaken that, as part of a compromise with the Federal Aviation Administration.
The 773-page proposal cherry-picks which FAA programs will be reauthorized for the next five years. It also includes tweaking training requirements for pilots and air traffic controllers, along with many other changes.
The FAA has been struggling the past few years, with staff shortages, tech failures, and near-disasters. Their last administrator resigned without warning halfway through his term, and the acting administrator has neither aviation experience nor a Senate confirmation. Airlines are using this time of weakness to demand more concessions from the government.
One provision of the House bill would let airlines advertise the “base airfare” — excluding taxes and fees — as long as they include a link to the all-in price or disclose it some other way. Airlines have fought to be allowed to abandon honesty in pricing in favor of the Ticketmaster approach – advertising a low price and then inflating it massively with hidden taxes and fees in the last second before purchase – for years.
The new regulations would also cut the required in-air experience for pilots by approximately 150 cockpit hours, so long as they make up the difference in a simulator. The current requirement, of 1400 hours to be actually in a plane, was put into place after a 2009 crash where a green pilot’s error killed 50 people.
But according to Representative Rick Larson (D-WA), these compromises are “something we can live with.” In return, allegedly, the public is getting better cockpit recorders so when less-trained pilots we’re paying more for mess up, we can all see it.