The next time you search for a flight to San José or Liberia on a US airline, you’ll see a base fare and not much else. The exact price for your first checked bag, a second bag, a carry-on, or a change fee no longer has to sit next to that fare. To find those numbers, you’ll have to click through to each airline’s fee page and add them up yourself.
That’s the result of a rule change that took effect on July 2. The US Department of Transportation restored the fee-disclosure standards that were in place before 2024, undoing a tighter rule that would have forced airlines and booking sites to show the real cost of the extras the moment your search results loaded.
You still get a warning. Airlines and the ticket agents that sell their seats still have to tell you, on that first fare screen, that extra baggage fees may apply, and point you to where you can find them. They also still have to list every ancillary fee in one central place on their website. What they’ve dropped is the requirement to show the specific dollar amount right beside the fare, and to share those numbers with sites like Google Flights so you can compare across carriers at a glance.
For a trip to Costa Rica, that extra step adds up fast. A large share of the traffic on these routes is leisure and family travel, exactly the kind of booking where a checked bag, a couple of seat assignments, and a possible change fee can swing which airline is actually cheapest. If you’re weighing a legacy carrier like United, American, or Delta against a low-cost option like Spirit or Frontier, you now have to open each airline’s fee page separately instead of seeing the totals side by side. The advertised fare and the real cost of your trip can be two very different numbers.
The rule covers any airline or ticket agent selling to US consumers, and it applies to flights to and from the United States, not only domestic hops. So US carriers flying between the States and Costa Rica fall under the same restored standard. Booking the international leg of your trip through a US airline or a US-facing travel site is where you’ll feel this. Purely local Costa Rican flights, booked on platforms that aren’t marketed to US travelers, sit outside the rule’s reach.
The rule that just disappeared was finalized in April 2024 and never actually took effect. Airlines for America, along with American, Delta, United, JetBlue, and Alaska, sued to stop it, arguing the Department of Transportation overstepped its authority and skipped a required public-comment step on a pricing study it relied on. On February 3, 2026, the full Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed on the procedural point and threw the rule out. The department’s July filing simply makes that official, stripping the 2024 mandates out of the federal code and bringing back the 2011 rules.
Two protections survive. Airlines still can’t raise your price after you’ve paid, for a bag or a seat you’ve already bought, and the department says it will revisit that protection in a separate rule later. Consumer groups including US PIRG and Travelers United opposed the reversal, arguing it makes comparison shopping harder and rewards carriers that bury the true cost of a ticket. The airlines, which spent roughly two years in court to get here, welcomed it.
So before you book a flight to Costa Rica, budget the extras yourself. Check each airline’s baggage page for your first and second bag and carry-on allowances, factor in seat fees if you want to pick your seat, and add a change fee to the math if your dates might move. The cheapest fare on the results page isn’t always the cheapest trip.
