M. Spencer Green/AP Photo
Under pressure from the Biden administration, United Airlines announced last week that it would no longer charge parents to book seats next to their children.
Successful State of the Union addresses can accomplish various things—lay out the president’s agenda, boost his or her standing in the polls by a couple of points—but one thing they don’t do is compel corporations to forgo a revenue stream from which they’ve long made money. At least, that was one thing they didn’t do until Joe Biden delivered his SOTU earlier this month.
In it, he took aim at the junk fees that businesses inflict on unsuspecting customers, calling out in particular the airlines’ practice of charging passengers extra for booking adjacent seats so their children can sit next to them during the flight. As even the richest airlines couldn’t pay a lawyer enough to mount a plausible defense of the practice, none came forward to defend separating kids from their parents unless the parents ponied up some extra bucks.
Last week, one of the big four airlines actually threw in the towel. United announced it would no longer charge parents for kid-adjacent seating. The other three—American, Delta, and Southwest—released mumblings about how they don’t really do that except in exigent circumstances, which isn’t quite the same as repudiating the practice altogether.
Biden wasn’t just speaking to the airlines, of course; he was also speaking to Congress and his own administration. Last week, some Democratic senators introduced the Families Fly Together Act, which would compel airlines to seat children 13 and under with an accompanying adult free of charge. For its part, the Department of Transportation began suggesting back in July that airlines should do just that, but Pete Buttigieg’s suggestions haven’t seemed to carry much weight with the companies that convey Americans and freight across the land.
That Biden’s proposal, and his larger war on junk fees, won’t encounter any serious opposition from any quadrant of the public is no guarantee that Congress will turn it into law. House Republicans, if sufficiently motivated by discreet promises of airline largesse, could quietly dispose of such legislation in committee. If they do, of course, they hand the Democrats one more issue to beat them over the head with, but they can always counter that charge by upping their attacks on transgender drag queens.
It’s this back-and-forth that makes American politics so rewarding.
