Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar told Cheddar on Tuesday that Americans need cash from canceled flights to provide immediate relief, but airline executives have not responded to the call.
In a letter to 11 major airlines, nine Democratic senators, including Klobuchar, wrote "we believe your company has a moral responsibility to provide real refunds, not travel vouchers, to consumers, and to support State Department efforts to repatriate any American citizens trying to come home."
"We're waiting to hear back from them," Sen. Klobuchar said. "Obviously many of them have canceled fees and other things. Or they have proposed to give customers the ability to use it to buy another ticket in the future."
But with Congressional help, those senators think money should go back into the pockets of customers.
Klobuchar said "we think it is much more important to get the cash to the customer knowing that they're going to fly again when this is over" than to provide credits for travelers.
Last week, Congress passed a $2.2 trillion stimulus package that includes $25 billion in cash grants and $25 billion in loans to the airlines.
Her Democratic colleague Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote on Twitter "the airline industry got $25 billion to keep workers on payroll — but they're not the only ones hurting for money right now."
American Airlines said in a response that the "comprehensive travel waivers we've put in place are designed to meet the full range of our customers' needs."
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
