In 2022, you could use words like “total chaos,” and “an incomparable nightmare” to describe the state of American air travel, and it would barely be hyperbolic. Mass cancellations and delays were the norm — and then when travelers ended up stranded and there was no incentive for airlines to provide any sort of compensation. By that time, Secretary Pete Buttigieg had been heading up the Department of Transportation (DOT) for nearly two years, and was just starting to put some bigger plans in motion for passenger rights. 

Then, in December 2022, everything changed. Southwest Airlines had historic levels of  cancellations over the winter holiday travel period; it was so catastrophic it was universally dubbed “the meltdown.” By that point, most American passengers had reached a point of hopeless exhaustion.

That didn’t hold true for much longer. The following year, Buttigieg’s DOT went into overdrive. Not only were there major announcements like the family seating policy, but 2023 brought forth something no one saw coming: real consequences for airline errors. The DOT filed a $140 million civil penalty against Southwest for the 2022 holiday meltdown, requiring $90 million of that to be paid back to affected customers. 

Now, after two years of some of the most dramatic expansion of airline passenger rights in US history, Sec. Buttigieg is slated to leave office in 2025. He will be replaced by President-elect Donald Trump’s appointee, former Fox News host Sean Duffy.

Travel + Leisure spoke with Sec. Buttigieg in his last weeks as head of the DOT about his record, what American airline passengers can expect to change in the coming years, and his time working in the “best job in the federal government.”

Travel+ Leisure: As you transition out of office, can Americans expect to maintain the consumer protections gained in regards to airlines and travel, as we go into this new administration? 

Sec. Buttigieg: Of course, we can’t know for sure what the next administration will do, but a few things are encouraging for me. First of all, some of what we have done is now encoded in law. So the automatic refunds principle, for example, began as a rule making, but it wound up in the FAA legislation, which means it's not something that any administration can unilaterally change. It's the law of the land.

I would also say that, beyond the ones that are specifically in statute, many of the things we've done, I think Americans expect to continue to have access to the information at FlightRights.Gov—people expect to have that kind of information, and those customer service plans stand and they're enforceable. 

Now it is true that an airline could change what's in those plans, but I think in a transparent market, there would be a lot of negative attention around an airline trying to roll back the commitments that we secured with them. We just advanced rule making notice that we initiated that would codify those so it's not just up to the airlines voluntarily, but on things like getting ground transportation, hotels, meals, that would be a rule. That would fall on the next administration to finalize that as a rule, but I think it will be a really important test of what any administration is about. 

You know, we've heard a lot of populist rhetoric. Here's a chance to make good on that. And I would add that there is a lot of bipartisan support for this work. Certainly in the FAA bill, there was bipartisan support for the passenger protections we got in there. And as recently as this week's hearing, you can see a lot of interest from both sides of the aisle. So I know that some of the airline CEOs have expressed their hopes that the next administration will be less pro passenger than we are. But I'm not so sure. 

The DOT under the Biden administration has launched very ambitious projects beyond passenger rights — the Infrastructure Bill covers everything from Amtrak expansion and improvement to the construction of new bridges and roadways. Is any of that likely to change under the next administration?

Well, we're going to keep moving dollars out the door, identifying projects and funding them until our last day. We can't be certain about what will happen after our last day, but if you just think about the life cycle of a project, there's us announcing — that it's a winner. Then there's a process that historically has taken a year or two to confirm the grant agreement. That means the money is locked down, and then you go into actually spending it. We are signing grant agreements at a pace of dozens or even hundreds every month that make it a matter of contractual certainty. If you know a city that got a grant from the federal government, that the federal government is required to follow through on that absent a breach of contract. 

So that's one way that we can create some certainty. Of course you do worry that some if some geography or some project falls out of political favor, that it might be vulnerable, but that's where I think it will be important for the public, local leadership and Congress to hold the executive branch accountable for following through, because, remember, this legislation was passed on a bipartisan basis by Congress and signed into law. So it is a matter of law that these dollars are supposed to go out to these projects, and that's something that I think remains a touchstone throughout and it will need to, because, by its very nature, much of what's being delivered or funded through the bill that was signed in 2021 might actually be scheduled for completion in 2026 or 2029. 

Looking back, can you talk a bit about your reflections on the DOT’s accomplishments?

We really believe in this work. I'm very confident that we are leaving America's transportation systems better than we found them, and that's everything from fewer flights delayed and canceled to fewer Americans dying on our roadways. There's much more work to do, but the condition of our airports, the safety of our roads, the trajectory of our transit rail systems, the experience of an airline passenger, those are things that are better, and they're better because we acted. 

In your time as DOT secretary, you’ve traveled to all 50 states and to 214 cities. Can you share what it was like to see so much of the U.S.?

Oh yeah, had a very memorable green chili cheeseburger in the vicinity of Truth or Consequences New Mexico and whale blubber in Alaska. I could probably do a dining travel show just around all the spots we stopped in on the roads that we covered. And, you know, one thing you see is just how big this country is. There have been some amazing experiences, from kicking the tires of a 747, literally in a hangar in Louisville, to being on these sites where they train the next generation of equipment operators—which is pretty much my three year old son's ultimate dream—and just being in the cab of a crane learning how they do that stuff. It's incredible.

What are some of the most interesting places you’ve done one of your press briefings?

We did one in Montana that was in the parking lot of a casino next to where we're putting in wildlife crossings, which will prevent animal vehicle collisions and likely save lives, and it was a reminder that you never know what physical space you'll be in. 

I remember being almost winding up knee deep in a stream near a culvert that we were working on with our culverts program in Washington State. In Maui, we did a press conference, and everybody was facing me, but I was facing the ocean, so I was the only one kind of distracted, almost to the point of being unable to continue by the fact that humpback whales were just breaching offshore every few seconds. And it's just the most incredible movie style. I think over there, they're just used to it. But I had a very hard time concentrating on my remarks, because it was so beautiful. 

I mean, you really see the country, and for that matter, see the world, and the world comes to you. You know, I'll never forget the midnight train to Kyiv from the border in Poland when I went to meet President Zelensky and my counterparts in Ukraine all the way through to having the Prime Minister of Mongolia in our offices as we were ironing out the Open Skies agreement. So again, you get a real appreciation for the bigness of this country and this world. But I'm looking out the window as we speak at the Frederick Douglass bridge in Washington, DC, which is one of the first sites I visited. That's, you know, a literal stone throw away from DOT headquarters. So from here to Mongolia, we're, we're doing good work.

Do you have any advice for your successor?

I called him and let him know that he's going to have the best job in the federal government, and get to work with some of the best people in public service. And you know, my advice to anybody working in this field is that safety has to always be your North Star, and that that's the fundamental reason why a department like this exists.