This Act establishes a strict 7-day deadline for ticket agents to issue flight refunds to consumers after receiving the funds from the airline for cancelled or significantly changed flights.
Maria Salazar
Representative
FL-27
The Flight Refund Fairness Act establishes clear, strict deadlines for ticket agents to issue refunds to consumers after a flight cancellation or significant delay. Specifically, ticket agents must now return the refund money to the customer within seven days of receiving the funds from the airline. This legislation replaces vague "promptly" requirements with a concrete timeline to ensure passengers receive their money back faster.
Flight Refund Fairness Act: Ticket Agents Must Refund You Within 7 Days of Airline Payment
The newly proposed Flight Refund Fairness Act is zeroing in on one of the most frustrating parts of modern air travel: waiting for your money back after a flight gets canceled or significantly delayed. This bill doesn’t change if you get a refund—that’s already required—but it radically changes how fast you get it from the ticket agent who sold you the flight.
The 7-Day Clock Starts Ticking
Section 2 of this Act replaces a notoriously vague requirement with a concrete deadline. Currently, when an airline owes a customer a refund because of a cancellation or major schedule change, the ticket agent (think Expedia, Priceline, or your local travel agency) is only required to issue that refund "promptly" once they receive the funds from the airline. As anyone who’s waited months for a travel refund knows, "promptly" can mean almost anything.
Under this new proposal, the ticket agent must now issue your refund within 7 days after they receive the funds from the airline. This is a huge win for clarity. If you booked a $600 flight through an online portal and the airline cancels it, once the airline sends that $600 back to the portal, the portal has exactly one week to get the money back into your account. This eliminates the bureaucratic black hole where your money often sits for weeks while the agent decides what "promptly" means for their internal accounting.
Why This Matters to Your Wallet
For regular folks, especially those who rely on credit cards for travel or who need that cash back quickly to rebook, this change is all about certainty. Imagine you’re a contractor who had to cancel a flight for a job across the country. That ticket refund isn’t discretionary income; it’s money you need to pay bills or book the next flight. Tying the refund process to a specific, short deadline means less time spent chasing customer service and more predictability in your finances.
While the 7-day clock is a major improvement, it’s important to note the fine print: the clock only starts once the ticket agent receives the money from the airline. If the airline itself is slow in processing the initial payment to the agent, you still have to wait for the airline's pace. However, this Act puts the pressure squarely on the ticket agents to speed up their end of the transaction, ensuring that once the money is in their hands, it doesn’t sit idle.
For the ticket agents—the travel agencies and booking platforms—this means a tighter operational window. They lose the flexibility that the old "promptly" standard allowed. They will need to streamline their internal accounting and payment systems to meet this new, non-negotiable 7-day requirement, which ultimately translates into faster service for the consumer.