The deadline to comment on scrapping the rule that puts taxes inside an advertised airfare was Friday, and it is now 21 August

Southwest Airlines does not want the rule repealed.

The Department of Transportation proposed on 1 July to loosen how air fares may be advertised, and allowed 30 days for the public to respond. That window was due to shut on Friday. In a notice filed at 8:45 a.m. on Thursday and published in the Federal Register on Friday, the Department moved the closing date to 21 August.

Three parties had asked. Airlines for America filed on 20 July for 21 more days, arguing that the proposal raises questions of constitutional law and of where the Department's authority ends and another agency's begins, and that the Department's regulatory impact analysis was not in the docket to read. Southwest Airlines filed on 22 July for the same 21 days. The Travel Technology Association filed on 28 July and asked for 30, saying the Department had raised a novel question about the bearing of the Internal Revenue Code on fare advertising. Nobody filed against an extension.

What the proposal would do

The 1 July notice, at 91 FR 39932, would permit the total fare including taxes and fees to be displayed with the same prominence as any individual component, and would delete the existing bar on presenting a component of a fare in the same size as, or larger than, the total price. It would rescind nine guidance documents on fare advertising, which the Department describes as outdated, unnecessary, or rules in fact issued without the notice and comment the Administrative Procedure Act requires.

Separately, it asks whether the full fare rule itself should go. That rule requires the advertised price of passenger air transportation to be the entire price the consumer pays, taxes included. The Department proposed no text for a repeal. It observed that a provision of the Internal Revenue Code already sets standards for how taxes are displayed in air transportation advertising.

Southwest told the Department that repealing the full fare rule 14 years after it took effect would be extremely disruptive, and that it preliminarily opposes rescinding the nine guidance documents while it studies what each of them does.

The analysis that arrived late

The Department acknowledged in Thursday's notice what it terms its oversight in not posting the regulatory impact analysis to the docket at the same time as the proposal. The analysis went up on 24 July, seven days before the original deadline.

A footnote settles the other argument. It records that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has deemed this rulemaking nonsignificant, and cites the departmental regulation under which a nonsignificant rule generally gets at least 30 days and a significant one typically gets 60. Airlines for America had argued the proposal belonged in the second category. The notice grants the extra 21 days without moving it there. It was signed by Gregory Zerzan, the Department's general counsel.