WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has sent a letter to the Chief Executive Officers of the 10 largest U.S. airlines urging them to improve military travel benefits provided to active-duty service members and their families.
While appreciating that carriers currently provide active-duty service members and their families various military travel benefits, those are not consistently detailed in carriers' public-facing Customer Service Plans, resulting in many service members being unaware of them, according to Buttigieg. Also, airlines' travel benefits often do not fully address the needs of service members who may need to cancel or change personal travel plans due to military directives, he added.
To encourage improvements in military travel benefits offered by airlines and ensure that service members have easy access to this information, the U.S. Department of Transportation is creating a 'Support Our Troops' dashboard that provides service members and their families with easy-to-read, comparative information on the travel benefits that each of the large U.S. marketing carriers will guarantee for service members and their families.
The dashboard will be displayed on the Department's Aviation Consumer Protection website in May 2024. It will be based on commitments that airlines have made to service members and their families in their Customer Service Plans, such as a full refund to service members and their families who cancel travel plans due to military directives and allowances for free baggage.
The Transportation Secretary said his Department also intends to provide direct links to airlines' Customer Service Plans from its website.
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