Travelers have long faced problems with delayed or canceled flights and have often had to fight airlines to obtain compensation they believe they are owed.

But not anymore.

The US Department of Transportation has new rules going into effect on October 28 that require airlines to provide a refund to passengers when the companies “cancel or significantly change their flights, significantly delay their checked bags, or fail to provide the additional services they purchased. .” The regulation was developed under the administration of President Joe Biden. and announced in April.

Many consumer advocates have welcomed the initiative.

“This should have been done a long time ago,” Cleveland-based consumer attorney Danny Karon told MarketWatch. “Some of these new airline refund rules are not the most revolutionary, but they are certainly all passenger-friendly and passengers needed a little encouragement in terms of how to deal with the airlines.”

What should you know about the new rules? Keep reading…

The key thing to understand is that the rules require airlines to automatically provide refunds when problems arise; In other words, passengers don’t have to “explicitly request them or jump through hoops,” according to the DOT. This is provided that passengers do not accept alternative transportation or travel credit from the airlines.

Certainly, flight cancellations qualify. But so do significant changes to a flight. The DOT details those changes as follows: departure or arrival times that are delayed more than three hours domestically and six hours internationally; departures or arrivals from a different airport; increases in the number of connections; cases where passengers are downgraded to a lower class of service; or connections at different airports or flights on different planes that are less accessible or adapted to a person with a disability.

The story continues