Flight check-in kiosks at Orlando airport have been covered in protective plastic at a deserted United Airlines check-in counter ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Milton. (Photo by Paul Hennessy)
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Allegations of airline price gouging during Hurricane Milton evacuation efforts have gone viral on social media, but carriers say they have capped fares before the Category-3 storm slams into Florida.
On Monday, a user shared a post on X with side-by-side screenshots pricing out an economy flight on United Airlines from Tampa to St. Louis at an eye-popping $2,150. The airfare for a flight from Fort Lauderdale to Houston was displaying as $1,174.
Since then, the post has racked up nearly 808,000 views.
“The Department takes all allegations of airline price-gouging seriously,” tweeted Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg the same day. “We are keeping a close eye on flights in and out of areas affected by Hurricane Milton to make sure airlines are not charging excessively increasing fares.”
But United says the viral tweet showed an invalid itinerary as the Tampa airport had already announced it would be shutting down.
“United capped Florida fares on Sunday,” the carrier told Forbes via email. “Since then, the average price for a one way, economy class ticket to our hubs from affected Florida markets was below $500.”
United says it added 18 extra Florida flights and larger aircraft on four additional flights on Monday and Tuesday, booking 25,000 passengers on those flights, including 2,750 on extra flights. “All United flights out of Tampa, Orlando, Fort Myers and Sarasota are full for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday,” the airline said.
On Sunday, Delta Air Lines also began capping fares for new bookings out of a dozen Florida airports in Milton’s forecast path and was trying to use larger aircraft whenever possible.
American Airlines also said it placed a cap on airfares for flights departing from its affected airports and announced that it had added additional flights with more than 2,000 seats departing from Orlando International Airport to allow more people to evacuate by air to multiple destinations, including Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas. Miami, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.
All the major airlines have issued change waivers for passengers scheduled to fly from impacted airports to cancel or change flights without a fee.
“Unfortunately, we’ve seen airline price gouging before during other disasters,” tweeted William McGee, passenger rights advocate for the American Economic Liberties Project. “It will be important for DOT to monitor this over the next days. And for consumers to publicly share examples like this one.”
As Hurricane Milton readies to slam into Florida as a category-3 storm overnight, U.S. flight cancellations have been racking up quickly: more than 700 on Tuesday, and a combined 4,000 canceled flights on Wednesday and Thursday, according to data from FlightAware.
On Wednesday, three Florida airports accounted for more than 700 flight cancellations. with a handful of others in the Sunshine State racking up double-digit cancellations.
As of Wednesday evening, the tally of cancellations out of Florida on Thursday already topped 1,000 flights, per FlightAware data.
