Three foreign airlines will have to pay $2.5 million in fines after they were too slow to reimburse passengers for Covid-19-related delays, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) announced on Tuesday.
The department said that it is assessing the total of $2.5 million in civil penalties against Lufthansa, South African Airways and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines for extreme delays in providing refunds they owed to passengers due to flights cancelled or significantly changed in response to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Under the consent orders, the three airlines are required to provide timely refunds to passengers when owed and to pay a civil penalty to the US Treasury.
The fine imposed by DOT is in addition to the more than $900 million in refunds airlines have paid back to passengers.
Lufthansa will have to pay $1.1 million, KLM has been fined $1.1 million and a $300,000 penalty has been imposed on South African Airways.
The enforcement actions are part of the DOT's ongoing work to ensure passengers are treated fairly by airlines, that has already resulted in the largest airline fines in the department's history and nearly $4 billion returned to passengers in refunds and reimbursements.
"When a flight is cancelled or significantly changed, you shouldn't have to fight with the airline to get their money back, and we're holding airlines accountable when they fail to give passengers the refunds that they're owed," said US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.