Can government regulations, aggressively enforced by bureaucrats, make the nation's skies friendly again? It looks like we're about to find out.

With surprisingly little fanfare, the Department of Transportation in the last three months has suddenly become the consumer advocate again. After a decade of somnambulance, especially during the George W. Bush years, the Obama Administration's DOT has suddenly come alive with righteous indignation, and it's wielding its regulatory cudgel with gusto. Needless to say, the nation's airlines are less than thrilled with Transportation’s attention to the letter (and especially the broader spirit) of the nation's consumer-protection infrastructure.

Although it was buried by other news and then immediately forgotten in the run-up to Thanksgiving, the DOT last week hammered the three airlines involved with last August's aircraft diversion in Rochester, Minnesota, when 47 passengers were stranded overnight on the tarmac in a regional jet. A total of $175,000 in fines was handed out to Continental Airlines (the carrier that marketed the flight as a commuter connection), ExpressJet (the airline that actually operated the aircraft), and Mesaba (the only airline with staff at Rochester's airport at the time).

The unprecedented size of the fine—the equivalent of a whopping $3,700 a passenger—was an unambiguous, if overdue, message to airlines that it cannot treat passengers like prisoners. It has also sent the carriers scrambling to revisit procedures for "irregular operations" such as flight diversions and on-the-ground delays. After all, a $3,700-a-head fine is much more costly than the toothless procedures proposed in the "passenger's bill of rights," which has been stalled in Congress for two years.

"I hope that this sends a signal to the rest of the airline industry that we expect airlines to respect the rights of air travelers," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former Republican Congressman from Illinois, an Obama confidant, and the Democratic president's major nod to a bipartisan cabinet.

LaHood's pro forma pronouncement of the bureaucratic righteousness would be predictable and easy to dismiss if it weren't for the Transportation Department's renewed vigilance in the months just before last week's thunderbolt. Among the DOT's pro-consumer moves:

• It fined Spirit Airlines, a carrier best known for repugnant customer service and smarmy, cringe-inducing promotions like MILF fares, a total of $375,000 for a panoply of infractions of the agency's rules on fare advertisements, baggage liability, the handling of disabled passengers, and the disposition of passenger complaints.
• It fined UltimateFares.com $600,000 for advertising and promoting lowball airfares that did not include mandatory government taxes and fees and a battery of extra charges imposed by the site. It even fined the site's owner, Roni Herskovitz, $30,000 and barred him from any involvement in the online travel agency business for a year. Don’t go looking for the site. It’s disappeared from the Net.
• It issued an official notice demanding that airlines remove wording from internal guidance to employees and their "contracts of carriage"—you agree to the contract whenever you buy a ticket—that would limit the federal liability on lost, damaged, or delayed luggage. DOT regulations require that airlines accept liability of at least $3,300 a passenger for checked baggage.
• It issued an official notice demanding that airlines involved in code-sharing operations on international flights align their luggage rules with internationally accepted norms. Airlines had been denying responsibility for certain costly items (such as laptop computers) they accepted in checked bags on international flights.
• On Monday, it required British Airways to fully reimburse passengers who had purchased a lowball fare from the United States to India that BA had mistakenly posted on its website. More than 2,220 passengers bought a $40 fare listed on BA's site, although about $520 in taxes and fees increased the price to within a few dollars of the airline's actual price to India. When it discovered its error, BA unilaterally cancelled the bookings. The DOT noted that BA offered the flyers a $300 voucher for future travel, but insisted that the airline also cover any related cancellation fees that passengers might have incurred from hotels or connecting airlines.