Data / Federal rules / 2025-22140

Airline Refunds and Other Consumer Protections

The Transportation Department published this final rule in the Federal Register on December 5, 2025.

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What the agency says

Under the U.S. Department of Transportation's (Department or DOT) refund regulations in 14 CFR parts 260 and 399, a flight that is given a different flight number than was assigned when the consumer purchased the ticket is considered a new flight and the original flight is considered a cancelled flight for which the consumer is eligible for a refund. This document announces that the Department is exercising its discretion to not enforce the requirements in 14 CFR 260.6, 260.9 and 14 CFR 399.80(l) regarding refunds and other consumer protections for a cancelled flight when a flight is renumbered so long as the passenger is rebooked on the flight under the new number and the flight is operated without any "significant change or delay" as defined in 14 CFR 260.2 and 14 CFR 399.80(l). The Department is taking this interim step of pausing enforcement of its refund requirements under these specific limited circumstances while it engages in a new rulemaking to consider whether to modify the definition of cancelled flight through rulemaking.

Key facts

Document number

2025-22140

Type

Final rule

Action

Notification of enforcement discretion

Agency

Transportation Department

Published

December 5, 2025

Dates

As of December 5, 2025, the Department is pausing until June 30, 2026 the enforcement of airline refunds requirements regarding cancelled flights under 14 CFR parts 260 and 399 for flights that are operated under a different flight number than was held out to consumers at the time of ticket purchases so long as the flights impose no significant change or delay to consumers' itineraries.

Docket

Docket No. DOT-OST-2022-0089, DOT-OST-2025-2285

Regulation ID (RIN)

2105-AF04; 2105-AF36

Code of Federal Regulations

14 CFR 260; 14 CFR 399

Significant

Yes, under Executive Order 12866

Pages

2

The document on federalregister.gov PDF

Other documents from the Transportation Department

Everything from the Transportation Department · Published in December 2025

Read from the Federal Register API, last updated 2026-10-23. The document on federalregister.gov is the official record; dates and dockets can change through later corrections. Free to reuse with credit to SpecStream under CC BY 4.0.