FAIR Fees Act of 2026

Regulatory or Legal Changes Top 1

Airline Fee Proportionality Regulations

Requires the Department of Transportation to set rules limiting airline fees — for baggage, seat selection, changes, cancellations, priority boarding, and other charges — to amounts reasonable and proportional to actual airline costs. Requires new airline seat-fee rules to ensure that passengers traveling with children age 13 or younger can sit with those children at no extra charge, protecting family seating as part of fee regulation.

• Population Scope High Virtually all U.S. air travelers — well over 25% of the population — are directly affected by fee constraints on baggage, seat selection, changes, cancellations, and family seating.
• Budgetary Magnitude Low No funds are authorized or appropriated; the bill imposes a rulemaking mandate on the Department of Transportation (DOT) without any associated spending obligation.
• Legal / Regulatory Depth High Creates a new statutory prohibition — binding across all certificated air carriers — that airline ancillary fees must not exceed costs, a substantive constraint on private commercial conduct that did not previously exist in federal law.
• Degree of Discretion Granted Medium The Secretary of Transportation must act ('shall') within 270 days and update standards every three years, but retains broad latitude in defining what counts as 'reasonable and proportional' and in selecting cost-assessment methodologies.
• Implementation & Enforcement Burden Medium DOT must stand up a new recurring rulemaking regime — including initial standards, periodic triennial updates, and ongoing case-by-case fee assessment — but the bill creates no new penalty structure or independent enforcement infrastructure beyond existing DOT authority.
• Temporal Commitment High Binds the Secretary of Transportation indefinitely with no expiry date, and the triennial update requirement ensures the regime actively continues until Congress affirmatively repeals it.