Southwest and American Put $60 Million Into the Domestic Airline Antitrust Settlement. More Than Seven Years After Approval, No Class Member Has Been Paid — the Money Waits Until Delta and United Settle, Win or Lose, and Their Class-Certification Fight Runs Into August 2027

No one has been paid from the domestic airline settlement, and you cannot file a claim yet. The administrator’s FAQ, as posted on September 27, 2026, answers “When will I receive my payment?” with: “No money is being distributed at this time.” On the amount: “At this time, it is unknown how much each eligible Settlement Class Member will receive.” And in capital letters: “THE CLAIMS PERIOD HAS NOT YET BEGUN.” That is not an oversight. It was the plan when Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved the Southwest and American settlements.

At the March 22, 2019 fairness hearing, class counsel told the court that distribution would be deferred until the end of the entire case, when the “Total Funds Available for Distribution” — the money collected from all four airlines — and the class members’ damages are known. The judge agreed in her May 2019 opinion: “In a case such as this, involving a large number of Class Members and two Non-Settling Defendants, it would be inefficient to distribute and process claims until the entire case has been resolved through litigation or otherwise and the Total Funds Available for Distribution are known.” Payment will come through “a second notice to Class Members, followed by a right to object and/or file a claim.” The official homepage lists the three ways that end can arrive: after “(1) United and Delta settle, (2) United and Delta are dismissed from the case, or (3) upon a favorable judgment at trial against United and Delta.” None of the three has happened.

So for anyone searching for a “domestic airline settlement” or “domestic airlines class action settlement” payout date, the honest answer is that there is none. The homepage says the $15 million from Southwest and the $45 million from American, “less the Court-approved notice costs, remain in escrow.” The FAQ adds two warnings. First: “Given the number of Settlement Class Members, it may not be economically practical to make a direct cash distribution to Class Members until additional settlements or judgments are achieved.” Second, what remains after fees and costs could go “to charities, governmental entities, or other beneficiaries approved by the Court.” What cannot happen: “No money will be returned to the Settling Defendants once the Court approves the Settlements.” The two settlements are approved; what is missing is the end of the case.

The two settlement classes are defined the same way except for the end date. In the FAQ’s words, they include all persons and entities that purchased “air passenger transportation services for flights, Within the United States and its territories and the District of Columbia, From Defendants or any predecessor, subsidiary or affiliate thereof, including US Airways and Continental” between July 1, 2011 and December 20, 2017 for the Southwest settlement and between July 1, 2011 and June 14, 2018 for the American settlement. “Defendants” means all four airlines, so a Delta or United ticket counts too — the court notice is headed “If You Bought a Domestic Airline Ticket on American, Delta, Southwest, United, Continental, or US Airways.” Businesses are included; the court’s opinion notes class counsel’s expectation that corporate buyers of air travel would file claims. Excluded are governmental entities, the airlines and their affiliates, their officers, directors, employees and immediate families, and the judges assigned to the case, which class counsel reads to cover court staff and law clerks who worked on it.

The court put the class at approximately 100 million members. The notice firm, Kinsella Media, emailed notice to 181,836,321 valid addresses supplied by the four airlines, and the court’s opinion says direct notice and paid media together were estimated to reach 72.3% of airline flyers. If you received the email notice before the January 4, 2019 deadline, it was part of this court-approved notice program.

Do you have to act? No. If you did not opt out by January 4, 2019, you are in the settlement or settlements whose class period covers your ticket and gave up the right to sue Southwest or American separately over this conduct; that deadline, which also applied to objections, has passed. What you can do is register on the official Registration Form — still online on September 27, 2026 — to be told when a distribution plan and claims period are announced. The form says: “Submitting your contact information on this page does not guarantee your eligibility as a Class Member or for future payment in these Settlements.” Registration is not a claim. The FAQ says a valid claim form will be required “before the claims period ends,” and that notice of the claims process “will be made at a later date as ordered by the Court.” Neither the notice nor the FAQ says what proof of purchase will be asked for.

The official site is DomesticAirClass.com, which says it “is maintained by the Settlements’ Administrator”; its footer names Rust Consulting. Its FAQ opens with “Is this Legitimate?” and answers: “Yes, the litigation and the Settlements are real. Judge Kollar-Kotelly of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia approved the notices in this case.” Contact: 1-866-459-3634, info@DomesticAirClass.com, or Domestic Air Settlements, P.O. Box 44, Minneapolis, MN 55440-0044.

Two things confuse visitors. First, the site looks abandoned. Its status box is headed “Current Status of Litigation and Settlements (as of December 13, 2023)”, every page reads “Last Updated: 12/13/2023”, and it still describes Delta and United’s 2023 request to appeal as awaiting a decision — although the judge denied it on September 29, 2025. An out-of-date page is not a sign of fraud here; it is the official site, and the court docket is the more current record. Second, the site offers only registration and a contact form. Because the claims period has not begun, any message that asks you to file an airline settlement claim now, to pay a fee, or to hand over bank details to release money does not match anything the FAQ describes. When a claims process opens, the court said class members will be told “in a manner similar to the way in which they received initial notification of the settlement” — which the first time meant direct email, national publications and online advertising.

The lawsuit is about fares, not baggage fees, refunds or delays. In the FAQ’s summary: “The lawsuit claims that the Defendants agreed to limit capacity on domestic flights. As a result, the lawsuit alleges that ticket purchasers may have paid artificially inflated prices.” Southwest and American “deny that they did anything wrong” and settled, the notice says, “to avoid the considerable cost, burden, and distraction of this litigation.” Both also agreed to cooperate with the plaintiffs against Delta and United. The court appointed Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy LLP (650-697-6000) and Hausfeld LLP (202-540-7200) as interim class counsel; the FAQ says contacting them is free.

The domestic airline class action lawsuit against Delta and United makes the same claims Southwest and American settled. In the court’s 2023 summary, plaintiffs allege that “between January 2009 and mid-2015, Defendants conspired in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act by agreeing to limit industry capacity growth on domestic flights (herein referred to as ‘capacity discipline’) for the purpose of increasing airfares.” Among plaintiffs’ arguments, the summary lists that the airlines’ conduct changed after the Department of Justice opened an investigation in 2015. Delta and United deny the claims.

Decided: on September 5, 2023 (entered September 12), the court denied Delta’s and United’s motions for summary judgment, finding that plaintiffs had shown enough evidence of parallel behavior and of “plus factors” to go forward. Delta and United asked the court to certify that ruling for an immediate appeal or to reconsider it, and the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq asked to file a brief defending public companies’ statements to investors about their future plans. On September 29, 2025 the court denied all three requests, writing that it agreed with plaintiffs “that Defendants’ characterizations of this Court’s holdings are inaccurate.” That ruling ended nothing: no one has won, and no class has been certified against Delta and United.

Open: plaintiffs filed their motion for class certification, appointment of class representatives and class counsel on May 7, 2026, under seal; we have not seen a public version or the proposed class definition. On August 24, 2026 Delta and United asked, with plaintiffs’ consent, for twelve more days because plaintiffs’ expert, Dr. Russell Mangum, may testify at another trial between September 15 and October 15, 2026; his deposition was set for October 27. The court granted the request on August 27. The schedule in the docket we read, whose last entry is dated August 28, 2026:

After that briefing the judge still has to rule on class certification and on the expert challenges. Only a settlement with Delta and United, their dismissal, or a trial judgment would trigger the second notice and the claims period for the $60 million already collected.

The figures below come from the settlement agreements and the court’s May 2019 orders; the last line is our arithmetic.

The fee decision has been parked since January 4, 2019: at class counsel’s request the court held the $15 million fee request in abeyance until counsel move to distribute the money, and it also stayed the request for about $3 million in future expenses. The FAQ says counsel may ask for up to 30% of each fund. An objector’s fee complaint was denied as premature in May 2019, with leave to renew it when fees are decided.

The 60-cent figure is not a forecast. Payment will be divided among people who file claims, not among everyone in the class, and the pot grows only if Delta and United pay. Class counsel told the court the plan would be a “pro rata, per capita return to class members,” and the court’s opinion cited an appeals decision noting that claims rates do not normally exceed 7% “even with the most extensive notice campaigns.” No filing we read gives an estimate per ticket or per person.

Some class members fought the open-ended design. Objectors Frank Bednarz and Theodore Frank argued that the notice should have explained how the money would be distributed and objected to a possible cy pres payment to undisclosed recipients. Judge Kollar-Kotelly overruled them, citing “this Court’s own disinclination toward cy pres distributions,” and in November 2019 declined to enter a separate final judgment for Southwest and American. On July 9, 2021 the D.C. Circuit dismissed their appeal for lack of jurisdiction: because the order dismissed only two of four airlines, the objectors “may not appeal the court’s settlement approval at this time.” The approval stands; the appeals court decided only that it could not hear the appeal yet, not whether the approval was right.