ATLANTA — The federal government is taking action to protect plane passengers and their money. New rules say airlines must give refunds if passengers’ flights are canceled or significantly delayed.

Airlines arbitrarily choose to give your money back and how long a delay needs to be to qualify.

But the new rules finalized Wednesday means they must issue an automatic cash refund within seven days if your flight is canceled or delayed more than three hours for domestic flights and six hours for international flights.

“We hear again and again from passengers who describe how hard they have to push just to get the refunds that are owed to them. And often our consumer protection team has had to impose multi-million dollar penalties on airlines just to get them to do what should already be required,” U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigeg said.