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The United States Department of Transportation has concluded a multi-year review into data privacy practices at major US airlines, saying that it had “identified no violations of applicable laws or departmental policies.” This will see the airlines in question avoid financial penalties, despite more than 700 million passenger travel records having been sold to federal agencies in the US in recent years.
The conclusion of the review, which Reuters notes was brought about back in March of 2024 by the Biden Administration’s then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, has left some senators frustrated, arguing that the DOT’s findings fall short. Passenger data privacy has become a hot topic in the aviation sector in the US in recent years, particularly due to concerns around surveillance pricing.
No Penalties Issued
US lawmakers arguing in favor of penalties for the airlines in the review (the ten largest carriers in the US) asserted that safeguarding standards fell short and that these operators misused passenger information. The alleged misuse in question pertains to the sale of passenger data by US airlines to federal agencies such as Customs and Border Protection via the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC).
The ARC is a third-party broker that handles countless passenger data records due to its role in processing transactions between airlines and travel agencies. These sales reportedly amount to some $100 billion a year, and it is jointly owned by major US carriers such as Alaska Airlines, American, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and United. Its data misuse has drawn criticism from Senator Ron Wyden:
“The DOT claims that merely having a privacy policy and training is good enough, despite clear evidence of privacy abuses.”
722 Million Passenger Records Sold
Previous coverage of the matter by Reuters noted that the Airlines Reporting Corporation had ultimately sold a database containing some 722 million passenger travel records to various federal agencies in the United States of America. As previously noted, Customs and Border Protection was one, with others being the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Crucially, these records were passed on without any court oversight or warrants, with senators also raising concerns that “travel data held by airlines and travel agencies may be of interest to foreign adversaries.” As well as passengers’ names and itineraries, it is thought that even payment details were among the data passed on before the Airlines Reporting Corporation shut its Travel Intelligence Program down.
It did so back in November of 2025 amid pressure from external groups such as data privacy advocates and lawmakers in the US. Now, just under a year later, the Department of Transportation’s 2.5-year review into the practice has come to an end, with major US airlines escaping financial penalties. This is despite what lawmakers have called “corporate exploitation, warrantless government surveillance, and warrantless seizure of money and other property.”
Surveillance Pricing Concerns
In our increasingly online and interconnected world, data privacy is becoming more and more of a concern, not just in the commercial aviation sector but, indeed, in life as a whole. Against this backdrop, recent times have seen worries about the use of passenger data for the purposes of dynamic or surveillance pricing come to the fore in the US, with AI being used to price tickets differently for different flyers.
This personal analysis weighs up what passengers are willing to pay based on factors that extend beyond things like the route, date, and time, with Delta Air Lines having started testing these methods in late 2024. However, earlier this year, JetBlue found itself in hot water amid a federal lawsuit concerning the practice, which accused the carrier of raising fares based on customer data. This came about after a social media user was told by JetBlue to clear their browser cookies to get cheaper fares.
