Abstract
Flying today is not meaningfully better for passengers than it was twenty years ago—and the airlines are largely to blame. Airlines leverage opaque pricing practices and junk fees to extract greater revenue from passengers, while the quality of air travel has deteriorated. Despite its mandate to protect the flying public and the air travel market from deceptive and anticompetitive practices, the Department of Transportation has been largely captured—adopting industry-favorable regulations and procedures while cutting commonsense consumer protections. This Essay examines the airlines’ coordinated campaign to circumvent and dismantle consumer protections, and how the industry have largely captured the federal agency designed to regulate it. We conclude that ushering in the “Golden Age of Travel” requires a rejection of the airlines’ heavy-handed deregulatory agenda and a turn towards passenger-focused consumer protections that restore fairness and accountability to the skies.
Recommended Citation
David S. Nahmias & Julian Sanghvi,
A Golden Age For Us . . . or for the Airlines? Ensuring Robust Federal Consumer Protections to Make Flying Great Again for Everyone,
2026
J. L. & MOB.
170
Available at:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/jlm/vol2026/iss1/5