A Trump plan may make it harder to compare airfares and find the best price — but you can still sound off on the proposal if you hurry

However, the Trump administration now wants to allow more flexibility in how airfare prices are advertised. While the total price would still have to be displayed, the proposal would allow airlines and agencies to give equal prominence to the tax and fee breakdown alongside the total fare, rather than requiring the total fare to be visually dominant.

“From a consumer standpoint, the rules may make it more difficult to accurately compare fares across different airlines,” Meghna Maharishi, airline reporter at Skift, told Moneywise. “When they see an airfare costing $75 … But then, at checkout, if a consumer sees $25 in taxes and fees, and the ticket actually costs $100, it gets confusing.”

What the full fare advertising rule does for travelers

Under the 2011 full fare advertising rule, when you search for a flight on a carrier site like United or Delta — or on a third-party ticketing platform like Skyscanner or Omio — the first price that pops up for that flight is the price you’ll pay at checkout. You’ll only pay more if, of course, you choose optional add-ons like checked baggage fees, reserved seats, priority boarding, in-flight Wi-Fi, preordered meals or travel protection plans.

Everything that you are required to pay — the actual base fare, all taxes and any mandatory fees, including any flight segment taxes, international departure or arrival taxes, passenger facility charges and more — is already accounted for in the total displayed price tag.

“The full fare advertising rule was intended to prevent consumer confusion or deception by advertisements of low base fares that did not reflect the total cost of air transportation,” the DOT explains.

“To assess the need and justification for this regulation, the Department must consider how changes to its regulation of airfare advertising would impact the likelihood of consumer confusion or deception, competition in the marketplace, and whether it would permit sellers of air transportation to compete freely on the value and quality of services they offer while preventing anticompetitive or predatory behaviors.”

How the proposed change could affect travelers

The Trump administration argues that the current pricing policy for airlines and ticketing agents is too strict. Under the DOT’s new proposal, carriers would be allowed to draw attention to lower base fares, so long as they still just as clearly display the total cost of the flight.

“These proposed changes would ensure greater flexibility in how air fare is displayed while ensuring information is presented clearly to consumers, and in conformity with the intent of Congress as articulated in a provision of the Internal Revenue Code establishing standards for the display of taxes in advertisements for air transportation,” the proposal reads.

Moreover, the DOT is proposing to rescind nine airfare price advertising guidance documents that interpret and enforce the full fare advertising rule, which it believes “have become outdated and unnecessary.” These documents spell out details such as how prominently total prices must be displayed, how taxes and fees can be itemized and what types of promotional fare advertising could be considered misleading.

Ultimately, the DOT wants to give airlines more flexibility while still requiring the disclosure of the total fare to travelers before they purchase flights.

A number of airlines have been on board with this change for years, arguing that the federal government shouldn’t be able to dictate how they display prices — particularly when, across other industries, consumers ultimately pay higher total prices, after taxes, than the sticker prices listed.

“As a carrier operating transatlantic services under several regulatory regimes, SATA supports pricing practices that enable customers to understand the full cost of travel in advance,” wrote Azores Airlines SATA International as the DOT solicited public comment on the proposed rule changes.

“The proposed amendments preserve this principle and, at the same time, allow airlines more room to determine how taxes, government-imposed charges and other fare elements are displayed. SATA supports the Department’s decision to remove the prescriptive rules on prominence and font size.”

Azores Airlines also argued that, because “airline distribution now takes place across numerous digital channels, devices, booking paths and retail environments,” increased flexibility in how airlines present prices “should improve communications with customers, reduce unnecessary complexity and permit continued progress in digital retailing” without sacrificing transparency.

Southwest Airlines, on the other hand, has said that, while it initially opposed all-in pricing rules 15 years ago, changing the rule now could be “extremely disruptive.”

“An entire generation of consumers have shopped and purchased air travel under this system,” Southwest wrote in a public comment. “Fourteen years have elapsed since the Rule went into effect and consumers have settled expectations that all government-imposed taxes and fees will be included in the fare in the first display.”

Peter Thornton, Senior Flight Analyst at Thrifty Traveler, agrees.

“Repealing the rule would be a consumer-unfriendly move,” Thornton told Moneywise, recalling Spirit Airlines’ “incredibly deceiving” $9 Flight Club years ago. “Those cheap ‘base fares’ often ended up costing at least five times what consumers initially saw after all the mandatory taxes and fees were added. Changing this rule would be a step backwards.”

Thornton also warns that taxes and fees are not uniform with airfare, and international flights have “wildly different taxes and fees.”