Airlines now required to provide automatic refunds for canceled, significantly delayed flights

U.S. airlines are now required to give passengers an automatic refund for canceled or significantly delayed flights and for services that were paid for but not provided, such as Wi-Fi or entertainment.

“Passengers deserve to get their money back when an airline owes them—without headaches or haggling. Today, our automatic refund rule goes into full effect. Airlines are required to provide prompt cash refunds without passengers having to ask,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrote Monday in a post on the social platform X.

The Transportation Department proposed the rule in April. Previously, airlines could decide how long a delay could last before giving refunds. Under the rule, a significant delay is defined as lasting at least three hours for domestic flights and six hours for international ones.

The Transportation Department said passengers must be refunded within seven business days if they bought a ticket on a credit card and 20 calendar days if they used a different payment method.

The regulation also allows passengers to get refunds for checked bag fees if the bag is lost and not delivered within 12 hours of a domestic flight’s gate arrival, while international flights will have 15-30 hours to return a lost bag, depending on the flight’s length, Bloomberg reported.

CNN reported that the industry lobby Airlines for America said in a statement, “we support the automatic refund rule and are happy to accommodate customers with a refund when they choose not to be rebooked.”

Buttigieg had sent letters in July to CEOs of the 10 largest airlines in the wake of the global technology outage that caused significant disruptions, warning them that the Transportation Department expects them to give passengers cash refunds.

Updated at 10:55 a.m. EDT