What Pete Buttigieg Wants Airline CEOs to Know

Pete Buttigieg might be one of the most high-profile Transportation Secretaries in recent history. During his tenure as head of the DOT, he oversaw the airline industry’s post-pandemic recovery, meltdowns, a safety and quality crisis at Boeing and two mergers, one of which was blocked.

The department under Buttigieg’s leadership also implemented a slate of consumer regulations ranging from automatic refunds to free family seating. It’s unclear how Buttigieg’s expected successor — former Fox Business host Sean Duffy — will shape the DOT under an incoming Trump administration, but many of the regulations Buttigieg has championed have received praise from Congress and criticism from airline executives. 

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said there was a “level of overreach” during the Biden administration. Airlines for America, the trade group that represents most major U.S. airlines, sued the DOT for regulatory overreach for a rule on junk fee disclosures. The trade group criticized the DOT for creating the junk fee and automatic refunds rules “without collaboration.”

In the last few weeks of the Biden administration, Skift had the chance to interview Buttigieg about his tenure at the DOT. Buttigieg discussed the department’s relationship with airline CEOs, mergers, consumer protections and junk fees. Here are five takeaways:

On industry criticism: “I do continue to wish they understood that when we have better customer service, it's going to be better for their businesses and for the sector as a whole.”  On mergers: “The approach we tried to take was really to call balls and strikes. We weren't fundamentalists about things.” On enforcing regulations: “We saw enforcement patterns where a billion-dollar abuse would be met with something on the order of a million-dollar fine, which is just not enough to change behavior. So we knew the enforcement practice needed to change, which is why we, in some cases, added a zero or two.”  On junk fees: “I just think if you were going to court to avoid having to tell people what you charge them, you're kind of telling on yourself when it comes to business practices.”  On legacy: “There's always more work to do, but I'm really encourage