With Hurricane Milton barreling toward Florida, claims of airline price gouging have gone viral on social media. But carriers say they’ve added flights and capped prices.
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 storm slams into Florida as a Category-3 storm.
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 hitting $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.
