Baggage Fees for Airlines

If you’ve ever lost your mind in the vicinity of an airline baggage carousel (so, all of you), we have some potentially good news.

You know when you pay $50 to check a bag, and then the airline loses it? Drops it? Throws it out mid-air? Does something that results in you showing up at your destination sans bags and then doesn’t refund you for a service (namely, on-time delivery of your luggage) that you never received?

A new law’s gonna try to fix all that.

If your bags don’t show up within 12 hours of the scheduled arrival of a domestic flight (or 15 for international), your fees will be refunded. The bill was signed into law last month, and the U.S. Transportation Secretary is expected to put it into practice before the end of the year.

Here’s the full legalese mumbo jumbo, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Who said government never did anything for you?

Meet your guide

Diane Rommel

Diane Rommel has written for The Wall Street Journal, Outside, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Travel + Leisure, Wallpaper and Afar, as well as The Cut, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and McSweeney’s. She once drove from London to Mongolia, via Siberia.