New regulation threatens to turn flight booking into a nightmare

Buying a flight ticket online may soon become a much more confusing task. A new proposal by the Donald Trump administration and the US Department of Transportation seeks to change the rules by which airlines present flight prices to the public, as reported on Friday by CBS.

Until now, the law required airlines to present consumers with the final and full price of a flight ticket in advance — that is, the price already including all taxes, fees, and surcharges. The goal was simple: to prevent a situation where a passenger sees a low price, selects it, and only at the last moment — just before clicking the purchase button — discovers that the price has jumped due to additional payments that were not prominently displayed.

The new proposal allows companies to present only the base price first, excluding taxes, provided that the full price appears somewhere, and removes the strict restrictions that were previously in place regarding how prices are presented.

Aviation experts, as well as some airlines, are deeply concerned about this change. The main fear is that companies will exploit this loophole to attract customers with an extremely low "bait price" that will increase significantly only at the payment stage.

On the other hand, the Department of Transportation claims that the move is intended to provide more flexibility to businesses and that the full price will still be presented to consumers. The public comment period on the proposal is open until August 21, after which a decision will be made on whether to approve the change definitively.