Frontier, 5 other airlines to refund more than $600 million

By DAVID KOENIG
AP Airlines Writer

Frontier Airlines and five foreign carriers are paying more than $600 million in refunds to consumers whose flights were canceled or significantly delayed since the start of the pandemic. That’s according to federal officials on Monday. The U.S. Department of Transportation says it has also fined those same airlines more than $7 million for delaying refunds so long that they violated consumer-protection rules. The government says Frontier will refund $222 million to travelers and pay a $2.2 million fine. No other U.S. is getting fined, even though United Airlines was the subject of the largest number of complaints about refunds in 2020, the first year of the pandemic in the U.S.