This Official Flight Cancellation Dashboard Tells You What Airlines Owe You

If you’ve ever traveled by plane in (or out) of the United States, then you probably already know how much of a hassle it is — especially if your flight gets delayed or canceled. Thankfully, the Biden administration has announced some new ground rules for airlines, to ensure customers are treated better when things don’t go as planned. This new airline cancellation policy dashboard is such a serious game-changer, and you’ll definitely want to keep it handy the next time your flight gets delayed.

Debuted on Sept. 1 by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the dashboard ensures travelers have “easy access to information about services that U.S. airlines provide to mitigate passenger inconveniences when the cause of a cancellation or delay was due to circumstances within the airline’s control,” according to the DOTs site. So if your flight gets delayed or canceled under certain circumstances, you’ll immediately be able to see how that airline is working to fix things, either by rebooking passengers at no additional cost, adding complimentary hotel accommodations for overnight delays, or more. Now, that definitely sounds better than waiting out an overnight delay in an airport.

How to use the dashboard:

To view the DOTs dashboard, you can access a downloadable PDF version here to keep handy on your phone whenever you’re traveling. It includes a table of 10 of the United States’ most popular airlines, like Delta, Spirit, Southwest, JetBlue, and more, as well as their regional operating partners. The table shows actions these airlines have committed to taking on behalf of customers when flights get delayed or canceled. To see how your travel plans may be affected, all you need to do is find your airline on the dashboard, and see what actions they’ve committed to taking for your circumstances.

There are ten actions in total, ranging from adding meal vouchers for delayed flights, to free rebooking services and ground transportation, to free hotel accommodations for prolonged overnight delays. All you need to do is know what happened to you, and what to ask for. The one big caveat? The actions only apply to cancellations or delays that were “within the airline’s control” — so if your flight got snowed out, you may still be out of luck.

Not all airlines are created equal, however, and some are committed to taking more action than others. To point, while Delta has pledged to take every possible action to help customers across the dashboard, Allegiant has pledged to take, well, none. So even before you’ve booked your flights, you may want to take a peek at this handy little dashboard to see what how your potential airline may handle the situation when things go wrong.