FairFare

The DOT cash-refund navigator — turn a cancellation or schedule change into the cash the airline actually owes you, not a 60-day voucher.

Date: 2026-05-14 Form factor: Web app (single-page; mobile-friendly) Status: Prototype

What it is

FairFare is a single-page workspace that walks an airline passenger through the DOT Automatic Refund Rule (14 CFR §259.5) the moment their flight gets cancelled or significantly delayed. It produces a refund verdict, a side-by-side decode of the airline's voucher offer vs. the cash refund the law allows, an auto-generated demand letter addressed to the carrier's refunds inbox, and a 7-business-day deadline tracker that escalates to a DOT consumer complaint if the airline misses the clock.

The prototype demonstrates the end-to-end flow on five sample disruptions (Frontier, Delta, Spirit, United, American) covering the four most common refund-eligibility patterns: a domestic delay over the threshold, an international delay just under it, an outright cancellation routed to a Future Travel Voucher, the flight-number-only swap that's currently inside the DOT enforcement carve-out, and a multi-segment cancellation rebooked overnight.

Who it serves

Any US-departing or US-arriving traveler who just got the dreaded "your flight has been changed" email — but specifically the audiences who are most often steered into vouchers:

• Leisure travelers booked on ultra-low-cost carriers (Frontier, Spirit, Allegiant). The Feb 2026 FlyersRights audit found these carriers were still routing a majority of cancellation customers to Future Travel Vouchers by default, despite the rule. (Altitudes Magazine, 2026-04-18)
• Business travelers with non-refundable tickets purchased through an OTA. They tend to assume "non-refundable" means "I'm out of luck" — DOT's automatic-refund obligation overrides the fare class.
• Anyone with $50–$200 in ancillary fees (seat selection, bags, priority boarding) sitting on a cancelled flight. Those fees are refundable as part of the same claim and most travelers never ask.
• Travelers whose flight was "merely renumbered" in May/June 2026 — they should know the rule is paused for them until 2026-06-30 so they don't waste a complaint cycle.

The pain is concrete and recurring. Airlines have made over 12,000 schedule changes per month so far in 2026, and a CFPB analysis of consumer chargeback data showed travel-industry chargebacks rose 28% YoY after the DOT rule took effect — meaning the gap between what travelers are entitled to and what they actually receive is large enough to drive payment-rail disputes.

Why it could be profitable

Monetization is freemium with a one-time-fee Pro tier and a B2B white-label:

• Free: refund verdict + demand letter for one disruption per session. No account.
• Pro ($9 one-time per claim): chargeback-letter template, EU261/UK261 cross-jurisdictional letter, deadline reminders by email, and DOT-complaint pre-fill. Scales with the user's actual recovery — a $400 ticket recovery is a 45× return on the $9 fee.
• B2B white-label ($199/mo flat): corporate-travel desks, premium-card concierge teams (Amex Platinum, Chase Reserve), and travel agencies embed FairFare into their post-disruption flow. They already pay junior staff to chase refunds; FairFare cuts the labor.

Demand math: 862M US enplanements per year × 4–6% disruption rate × $300 avg refundable value × 30% of disrupted travelers who would actually use a tool = **$3.1B/yr in recoverable refunds passing through the funnel**. A $9 Pro conversion on 0.5% of disrupted travelers would clear $1.6M ARR before any B2B revenue.

The regulatory tailwind is unusually strong: DOT just entered full enforcement in April 2026, FlyersRights is publishing a quarterly compliance score, and the Refund III rulemaking due 2026-06-30 will expand the rule (likely closing the flight-number-change loophole). Each of those events is a free PR moment for a tool sitting on top of the rule. (DOT, 2025-12-05, Altitudes Magazine, 2026-04-18)

Form factor & scope

Single-page web app, sized for mobile and desktop. The prototype is scope-locked to the post-disruption refund workflow — it does not search, book, or rebook flights, and it is not a chargeback service. The minimum viable scope demonstrated here is:

1. Pick a disruption (sample or your own).
2. Get a verdict on cash-refund eligibility.
3. See the airline's voucher offer decoded next to what the rule actually allows.
4. Get a personalized, citation-ready demand letter addressed to the carrier's published refunds inbox.
5. Watch the 7-business-day refund deadline; if the airline misses it, escalate to DOT.

How to run it

1. Open index.html in any modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari).
2. Pick any disruption from the left rail. The verdict, voucher decoder, demand letter, and deadline tracker update together.
3. Optionally edit your name in the right-hand controls, toggle ancillary-fee inclusion, or add the chargeback escalation paragraph.
4. Copy letter copies the demand letter to the clipboard. Download .txt saves it as a file you can attach to the airline's refund webform.

No build step, no API keys, no accounts. The sample data is inlined inside index.html as a <script type="application/json"> block, so the page works directly from file://.

What's in this prototype

• Refund engine that applies the DOT thresholds (3hr domestic / 6hr international / cancellation = automatic) and identifies the active carve-out for flight-number-only changes through 2026-06-30.
• Five fully-modeled disruptions spanning ULCC, legacy, and international itineraries.
• Carrier intelligence panel with a 9-airline compliance scoreboard derived from the Feb 2026 FlyersRights audit, the carrier's published refunds inbox, and the most common voucher-trick observed for each.
• Letter generator that cites 14 CFR §259.5(b) and §259.5(c), enumerates ancillary fees, and computes the credit-card refund deadline (today + 7 business days).
• Deadline panel that shows the credit-card and other-payment refund deadlines and the DOT-complaint URL to escalate.

Roadmap

• Add EU261 / UK261 cross-jurisdictional refund logic (compensation tiers up to €600).
• Connect to credit-card chargeback APIs (Visa, Mastercard, Amex) for one-click "Reg Z dispute" filing on the 8th business day.
• Add a passive disruption monitor: paste a confirmation number and FairFare polls airline schedule data overnight, firing the workflow automatically when a "significant change" is detected.
• B2B white-label: brandable header, multi-claim dashboard, audit log for corporate compliance.
• Reciprocal-trust integration with travel-insurance carriers (Allianz, Berkshire) so the demand letter doubles as a claim-supporting document.

Sources

• DOT, Airline Refunds and Other Consumer Protections, 90 FR 96891 (2025-12-05) — text of the December 2025 enforcement update and the carve-out for flight-number-only changes through 2026-06-30.
• Altitudes Magazine, DOT Airline Refund and Fee Transparency Rules Enter Full Enforcement Phase (2026-04-18) — context for the April 2026 enforcement transition and the FlyersRights audit findings.
• DOT, Refunds (Aviation Consumer Protection) — official passenger-facing summary used to validate the in-app citations and the secure.dot.gov complaint URL.
• DOT, Final Rule Requiring Automatic Refunds of Airline Tickets and Ancillary Service Fees (2024-04-24) — the underlying 2024 rule (89 FR 32760) FairFare cites in every demand letter.