if Earnings - Fine > 0:
print("Cost of buisness is " + Fine)
end
> The department’s intervention contributed to the airlines’ issuing more than $600 million in refunds, it said.
> ...
> [United States Secretary of Transportation] Mr. Buttigieg said that, while the department was more focused on ensuring that refunds were paid than on collecting fines, he had nonetheless asked staff to look into whether the penalties were sufficient to prevent such behavior in the future.
> “This really shouldn’t be happening in the first place,” he said. “And we’ll continue ratcheting up the penalty side until we’re seeing less of this kind of behavior to begin with.”
Dan has more detail and isn’t paywalled: https://www.dansdeals.com/more/news/airline-news/dot-issues-...
> Frontier said it had issued about $100 million in what it described as “good-will refunds” that were not legally required. The airline will pay only $1 million of the $2.2 million fine because the Transportation Department credited it for providing refunds to passengers who canceled nonrefundable tickets early in the pandemic.
But, either way, the DOT's main focus is on getting people the refunds. I added a bit more context to my first message to clarify that, but also the fact that the fine is ~1% of the owed refunds makes it fairly clear IMO.
I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten a "one time refund" from the same companies over and over. From the perspective of a business any refund issued is done in good will. Otherwise it isn't a refund.