American Airlines is being fined $4.1 million by the federal government for dozens of incidents in which customers were denied the opportunity to leave planes during protracted ground delays.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, this fine against an airline is the biggest to date since regulations governing lengthy ground delays went into place approximately ten years ago.
According to a settlement agreement that resolved the matter, American is required to pay half of the punishment within the following 30 days, while the department offered the airline credit for the other half, or slightly over $2 million, for compensation it paid to delayed passengers.
According to the department’s inquiry, American kept 43 domestic aircraft on the ground for at least three hours from 2018 through 2021 without offering passengers — a total of 5,821 — the option to disembark. However, the department claimed that none of those were factors in the flights it examined. There are some instances in which airlines are permitted to bend the regulations, notably for safety and security concerns.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg declared, “This is the latest action in our continued drive to enforce the rights of airline passengers,” and threatened to make airlines liable under consumer protection laws.
The 43 flights represented a miniscule fraction of 1% of the nearly 7.7 million flights that American and American Eagle conducted between 2018 and 2021, despite the fact that American said it intends to prevent any significant ground delays in the consent decree. The airline claimed it offered “substantial compensation” to passengers who were delayed, and it has subsequently increased managerial focus on averting delays.
The majority of the delays were at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where American is by far the most popular airline; other delays happened in San Antonio and Houston as a result of flights being diverted to DFW. Numerous were caused by thunderstorms, and American was unable to control its airport gates to allow passengers to disembark.
The airline accepted the terms of the consent agreement despite having expressed concerns about delays at Reagan Washington National Airport during a winter storm in January 2019.