[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
AVIATION CONSUMER ISSUES
=======================================================================
(110-29)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
AVIATION
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 20, 2007
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
34-801 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2007
---------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866)512-1800
DC area (202)512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail Stop SSOP,
Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia JOHN L. MICA, Florida
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon DON YOUNG, Alaska
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
Columbia JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JERROLD NADLER, New York WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
CORRINE BROWN, Florida VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
BOB FILNER, California STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, JERRY MORAN, Kansas
California GARY G. MILLER, California
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa Carolina
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
RICK LARSEN, Washington SAM GRAVES, Missouri
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
JULIA CARSON, Indiana JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine Virginia
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California TED POE, Texas
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
DORIS O. MATSUI, California CONNIE MACK, Florida
NICK LAMPSON, Texas JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio York
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania Louisiana
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
JOHN J. HALL, New York
STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
JERRY McNERNEY, California
(ii)
Subcommittee on Aviation
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois, Chairman
BOB FILNER, California THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
RICK LARSEN, Washington JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
NICK LAMPSON, Texas JERRY MORAN, Kansas
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa SAM GRAVES, Missouri
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
JOHN J. HALL, New York SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin Virginia
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of TED POE, Texas
Columbia DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
CORRINE BROWN, Florida CONNIE MACK, Florida
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New
JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, York
California LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts JOHN L. MICA, Florida
DORIS O. MATSUI, California (Ex Officio)
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter........................................ vii
Listing of Hearings on Aviation Passenger Issues and Delays since
1999........................................................... 48
TESTIMONY
Hanni, Kate, Executive Director, Coalition for an Airline
Passengers Bill of Rights...................................... 29
May, James C., President And CEO, Air Transportation Association
Of America, Inc................................................ 29
Meeks, Hon. Gregory W., a Representative in the United States
Congress from the State of New York............................ 7
Mitchell, Kevin P., Chairman, Business Travel Coalition.......... 29
Neeleman, David, Chief Executive Officer, JetBlue Airways
Corporation.................................................... 29
Ruden, Paul M., Senior Vice President, Legal and Industry
Affairs, American Society of Travel Agents..................... 29
Schmidt, Hon. Jean, a Representative in the United States
Congress from the State Of Ohio................................ 7
Scovel, III, Hon. Calvin L., Inspector General, U.S. Department
of Transportation.............................................. 12
Steinberg, Hon. Andrew B., Assistant Secretary for Aviation and
International Affairs, U.S. Department of Transportation,
Accompanied by: Dan Smiley, Operations Manager, FAA Command
Center......................................................... 12
Thompson, Hon. Mike, a Representative in the United States
Congress from the State of California.......................... 7
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Carnahan, Hon. Russ, of Missouri................................. 50
Cohen, Hon. Stephen I., of Tennessee............................. 52
Costello, Hon. Jerry F., of Illinois............................. 53
Johnson, Hon. Eddie Bernice, of Texas............................ 60
Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona.............................. 66
Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota............................ 70
Salazar, Hon. John T., of Colorado............................... 72
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Hanni, Kate...................................................... 74
May, James C..................................................... 92
Mitchell, Kevin P................................................ 101
Neeleman, David.................................................. 106
Ruden, Paul M.................................................... 116
Scovel III, Calvin L............................................. 136
Steinberg, Andrew B.............................................. 152
SUBMISSION FOR THE RECORD
May, James C., President And CEO, Air Transportation Association
Of America, Inc., responses to questions from Rep. Lipinski.... 162
Mica, Hon. John L., of Florida, letter to the Hon. Mary E.
Peters, Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation........... 5
Scovel, III, Hon. Calvin L., Inspector General, U.S. Department
of Transportation, responses to questions from Rep. Lipinski... 164
Steinberg, Hon. Andrew B., Assistant Secretary for Aviation and
International Affairs, U.S. Department of Transportation,
responses to questions from Rep. Lipinski...................... 168
ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD
Association of Flight Attendants - CWA, AFL CIO, Patricia A.
Friend, International President, written testimony............. 172
Health Communications, Inc., Adam Chafetz, President and CEO,
written testimony.............................................. 180
www.kidsafefilms.org, Jesse Kalisher, Co-Founder, written
testimony...................................................... 183
U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Edmund Mierzwinski, Consumer
Program Director, written testimony............................ 188
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
HEARING ON AVIATION CONSUMER ISSUES
----------
Friday, April 20, 2007,
House of Representatives,
Committee on Transportation, and Infrastructure,
Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and
Emergency Management,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room
2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Jerry F.
Costello [chair of the committee] presiding.
Mr. Costello. The Subcommittee will come to order.
The Chair will ask all members, staff and everyone to turn
off electronic devices or to put them on vibrate.
The Subcommittee meeting today is to hear testimony on the
aviation consumer issues. I want to inform everyone that I have
been informed that around 10:30 to 10:45 we will have a series
of votes, probably as many as seven or eight votes, up to an
hour. So I will give my opening statement, call on the Ranking
Member of the full Committee and the Subcommittee to make
remarks, then we will go directly to our colleagues, who will
make up the first panel.
I would like to welcome everyone here today to our
Subcommittee hearing on Aviation Consumer Issues. This hearing
is timely given the recent string of delayed and canceled
flights, resulting in lengthy tarmac delays and again,
highlighting customer service issues. Voluntary efforts by the
industry to improve airline service have come under strong
criticism, and I believe closer oversight of the aviation
industry is needed.
While I question a one size fits all legislative approach
to regulating consumer issues, changes must be made and they
must be made now. As I have said before, if the industry does
not take action to address these issues, then Congress will.
For anyone to gloss over the problems by saying that these
instances are few and far between, or outside the norm, is
missing the point. To force anyone to be stranded on a tarmac
for eight, nine, ten or more hours just one time is
unacceptable.
This hearing is the first in a series of hearings that this
Subcommittee will hold to review aviation consumer issues. If
anyone in the industry thinks that if we can get by this
hearing that we will go back to business as usual, they are
wrong. We are not going back to business as usual, and if the
industry does not take action, we will.
A 2006 audit by the Department of Transportation's
Inspector General office found that only five of the airlines
that had signed onto the voluntary 1999 Customer Service
Commitment had internal quality assurance and performance
measurement systems in place to meet their promises, including
addressing passengers' essential needs during delays. I find it
very hard to believe that this is progress, as some have
claimed.
Further, I am disappointed that the progress was not made
on implementing well-defined contingency plans. This is not a
new issue. Airlines were aware of the need for contingency
plans to deal with extreme weather back in 1999. However, the
DOT Inspector General notes that only a few airlines'
contingency plans specify in any detail the efforts that will
be made to get passengers off the aircraft when delayed for
extended periods, either before departure or after arrival.
With long onboard delays on the rise from 2005 to 2006, this
must be a priority for the airlines and the industry.
I was pleased that in response to the December 2006
American Airlines incident and the February 2007 JetBlue
incident, the Department of Transportation requested that the
DOT Inspector General review those incidents, as well as the
airlines' 1999 voluntary commitments, so it can consider what
action can be taken and should be taken by the Department of
Transportation. I am interested in hearing from the DOT and the
Inspector General on the progress of this report.
I was also pleased that after JetBlue's February debacle
they took immediate action by creating a customer bill of
rights and incorporating those rights into a contract of
carriage. Passengers make an investment when purchasing a
ticket. They expect to get to their destination safely and on
time. There is a cascade effect that a delay or a cancellation
has on passengers and their plans.
Like most members of this Subcommittee and of this
Congress, I travel frequently. I see first-hand the
frustrations and customer service issues passengers encounter
each and every day from being trapped on the tarmac for hours
to lost luggage to being stranded at a location not of one's
choosing or simply a lack of information regarding reasons for
delays and cancellations.
Many times the airlines' answer to a problem is to give
passengers an 800 number and simply send them on their way and
wish them good luck. This is simply unacceptable. Communication
is the key to improving any customer service system. The
airlines must make customer service a priority. They must make
every effort to inform passengers of delays and the cause,
provide for passengers' essential needs when delays or
cancellations occur, and ensure that passengers are informed of
airline policies and the customer's rights before they fly.
Greater transparency by the airlines also is important.
Airlines must put policies in place and inform their passengers
of these policies. It should not be a guessing game or left up
to the passenger to try and sort it out.
With that, I again want to make it clear to everyone that
this is the first in a series of hearings on this issue. This
Subcommittee intends to closely monitor the actions taken by
the airlines and we will hold additional hearings to check on
their progress.
Before I recognize the Ranking Member of the full Committee
for his opening statement or comments, I would ask unanimous
consent to allow two weeks for all members to revise and extend
their remarks and to permit the submission of additional
statements and materials by members and witnesses.
Without objection, so ordered.
With that, the Chair recognizes the Ranking Member of the
full Committee, Mr. Mica, for his opening statement or remarks.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Costello. I want to thank you as
the Chair of the Subcommittee, and also Mr. Petri, our Ranking
Member, for taking this difficult issue head-on. I think it is
an important issue. We will have members testifying in a few
moments, and then hear from leaders in industry and Government
as to how we can do a better job in guaranteeing the safety and
the passage of people through our aviation system, particularly
in difficult times.
I would like to point out just a couple of things, though.
If we look at the situation we face, most long airline delays
are due and related specifically to weather, severe weather.
For the most part, these situations are extremely rare. Valid
statistics and facts will point that out, any analysis will
point that out.
Long taxi-out delays, such as occurred with American
Airlines in December and JetBlue in February, are also very
rare instances.
However, the nature of the industry has changed. Part of
what has happened is, with the advent of discount airlines,
what has occurred is the discount airlines are doing a faster
turnaround of their aircraft. And to compete, all airlines are
now doing this. And if you look at the situation that emanates
from this, in a severe weather situation, we may have planes
coming in, passengers being unloaded, another plane coming in
quickly, that plane going out, not able to take off.
So what we have created with this rapid turnaround is
having planes with no place to go. They can't take off, they
can't come back to the gate. Which is an interesting
phenomenon, most people don't look at what has happened in the
industry. But that is part of what happened in these two
instances that we look at.
Now, while some airlines have already begun to establish
some self-imposed policies to better accommodate passengers
affected by delays, caused by extreme weather, I think we have
to do a better job in having a policy, a uniform policy, to
deal with health and life safety situations. Passenger safety
and life safety is a shared responsibility between airlines,
airports and the Government.
But let's face it, folks, the Government cannot guarantee
customer satisfaction. That is one of the things that we cannot
do. We have all seen the bad press that the airlines have
received, and some of them have made, as I said, voluntary
changes. However, where safety and health hazards are exposed
upon passengers, airports and airlines should have in place
contingency plans. We should have a uniform requirement for
that, to remove passengers from those hazardous situations.
In that regard, I have sent today, actually should receive
it today, we sent it out last night, to Secretary Peters a
request and asked respectfully that the Federal Aviation
Administration, and a copy to Marion Blakey, develop a uniform
policy to determine acceptable procedures for extraordinary
flight delays, particularly when health and life safety of
passengers may be at risk. So it is hard for us to legislate
that, but I think we have a responsibility for the Department
and FAA to do that.
So each airline and each airport would be given the
flexibility to develop its own plan, due to varying
environments and situations and configurations at the many
airports and airline hubs that we have across the Nation.
At the end of the day, these events painfully demonstrate
that our ever more critical need to modernize our Nation's air
traffic control system, we also are better able to deal with
these types of delays, which will in fact become more frequent
this summer, and in continuing months again when we get into
severe winter weather because of our system's congestion and
inability to have the technology available to deal with this.
I thank you for the opportunity to participate. I am right
on time.
[Information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Costello. I thank the Chairman for his comments.
The Chair recognizes the Ranking Member of the
Subcommittee, Mr. Petri. We will follow and enforce the five
minute rule because of the time constraints that we are facing.
Mr. Petri?
Mr. Petri. Thank you very much.
I would ask unanimous consent that a statement from Mr.
Mica be placed into the record.
Mr. Costello. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Petri. I am happy to welcome all the witnesses here
today, along with our Chairman. Recent high profile incidents
in New York and Dallas have brought a lot of attention to long
flight delays on the tarmac. While these instances are rare,
they raise important concerns of how the industry and the FAA
can safely and efficiently operate our national air space
system.
First responsibility to the passenger from both Government
and industry obviously is the safety of the traveling public
and that passenger. In Dallas, a freak lightning storm that
stalled over the Dallas Fort Worth Airport prevented American
Airlines from safely getting its passengers to their
destination. In New York, unanticipated ice storm conditions
prevented JetBlue aircraft from safely launching flights and in
some cases, even froze the wheels of the aircraft to the
tarmac. In both cases, weather was the major cause of delays.
Because most of the causes of long delays, such as weather,
are out of human control, it is important to consider the steps
that the industry has and can take to mitigate the effect of
delays on their customers. I look forward to hearing what
policy changes the airline industry, both JetBlue Airlines
individually and the Air Transport Association collectively,
has taken to better respond to weather delays. Over the last
eight years or so, the Department of Transportation's Office of
Inspector General has been active in investigating and
evaluating major delay events. Over the years, the industry has
voluntarily adopted recommendations made by the Inspector
General, much to the benefit of the traveling public.
Shortly after this February's ice storm incident in New
York, Secretary Peters asked the Office of Inspector General to
review and evaluate the most recent major delays and report its
findings. I look forward to hearing from the Inspector General
and particularly learning about any recommendations he may have
for the industry.
At the end of the day, major delay events painfully
demonstrate the ever more critical need to modernize the
Nation's air traffic control system. In some sense, long tarmac
delays are really just the tip of the iceberg. With the
anticipated growth in operations over the next 10 to 15 years,
these types of delays will not be limited to days when there is
severe weather. They might become the norm, rather than an
anomaly.
Therefore, I believe Congress must focus its attention on
ensuring the transformation of the air traffic control system
during consideration of the FAA reauthorization.
I thank all of our witnesses, particularly our colleagues,
for appearing before the Subcommittee today to share your
concerns and points of view. With that, I yield back the
balance of my time.
Mr. Costello. The Chair thanks the gentleman and recognizes
the gentleman from Oregon, Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for this
important and timely hearing.
I actually introduced my first passenger bill of rights in
1987 with then-Representative, now Senator Cardin. We are still
falling far short of the mark. A number of times Congress has
been deterred from imposing a basic floor for customer
protections. I would hope that we won't be again.
Some would point to the DOT numbers and say, well, look,
there is only a few thousand complaints. Who knows that the DOT
takes complaints? Nobody. I established that office. But
unfortunately, I couldn't get the other provision, which is a
mandatory printing of a 1-800 number, or these days, a web site
reference on everybody's ticket or boarding pass and posted at
the airport. Nobody knows DOT is there. They don't know they
can take complaints there. Most people don't even know what it
is.
So that would be the most minimal thing we could do, is get
a real measure of how big these problems are, by providing that
access to our citizenry. Certainly security and safety come
first. But we cannot ignore consumer protection. I am pleased
we are having this hearing and look forward to the actions the
Committee is going to take.
Mr. Costello. The Chair thanks the gentleman from Oregon.
Let us go to our first panel of witnesses. We have three
colleagues that I will recognize in order. The gentleman from
New York's Sixth District, Congressman Gregory Meeks; next will
be Congressman Mike Thompson from the First District of
California; and last will be Congresswoman Jean Schmidt from
the Second District of Ohio.
Congressman Meeks, welcome. We welcome all of you here
today. We look forward to hearing your testimony and the Chair
recognizes you at this time.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE GREGORY W. MEEKS, A REPRESENTATIVE
IN THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK; THE
HONORABLE MIKE THOMPSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN THE UNITED STATES
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA; THE HONORABLE JEAN
SCHMIDT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS FROM
THE STATE OF OHIO
Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Petri
and all members of this Subcommittee.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to add my voice to
this debate.
Throughout my tenure in the House, the members of this
distinguished Committee and its able staff have provided me the
opportunity of giving my opinion and hearing my voice, so that
I can help shape public policy on aviation issues. As you have
just indicated, as the representative from New York's John F.
Kennedy Airport, I am grateful for the many professional
courtesies extended to me by this Committee.
Let me begin by stating that passengers should not ever be
stranded for untold hours on an airplane. That is unacceptable.
The Valentine's Day ice storm, which caused havoc up and down
the eastern coast, saved its worst damage for New York,
specifically at JFK Airport. The storm resulted in hundreds of
canceled flights and stranded passengers. It resulted in a
media firestorm for several days, and once again raised issues
by this Committee and the Congress in the late 1990s.
Could some things have been done differently during this
unfortunate incident? Absolutely. Should some things have been
done differently? Absolutely. The airlines can do better, and
we expect them to do better. But we should also understand that
there are mechanisms in place to achieve that currently.
When the airline industry was deregulated 30 years ago, the
Congress adopted a policy to put market forces in place to
address commercial air transportation issues. The airline
industry is one of the most competitive of any industry today,
with the legacy passenger carriers directly competing against
each other and against new entrants. As a result, the public
has benefitted. Today, consumers have more choices among
airlines, more destinations, lower fares, innovative amenities
and better service.
The proof of that continues to be the record amounts of
individuals who travel each year, now going over one billion.
Today, U.S. airlines conduct approximately 14 million takeoffs
and landings a year. As indicated earlier, according to the
U.S. Department of Transportation Bureau of Statistics in 2006,
there were 36 flights out of the more than 7.1 million that
were delayed five hours or more after pulling away from the
gate. While this ratio is statistically insignificant, the
frustration felt by those affected is very real.
The question is, what leads to these unusual delays? There
is a combination of multiple factors that contribute to this
problem. Most often, these factors include severe weather and
air traffic control directives. I personally experience some of
this every week going back and forth, traveling through JFK and
LaGuardia, we have delays that are related to airport and
airspace capacity challenges.
These factors are beyond the control of the individual
airlines. It is driven more by the fact of our national
airspace ATC system is built on outdated technology that was
deployed in the 1950s. Until a new, satellite-based ATC
navigation system is employed, passengers will continue to
experience longer and longer delays. If the ATC system is not
modernized, the delays will continue to mount.
While the delays passengers experience were serious and
regrettable, we also must let market forces work so that it can
begin to address some of the concerns and issues that we have.
In a competitive environment, as is the airline industry,
carriers cannot afford to lose customers to competitors,
especially when profitability is often determined by those
paying passengers as well as the ever-rising, increasing cost
of fuel.
Furthermore, the airline industry is very capital-
intensive. Much of the investments that they make improve the
traveling experience of its passengers. For example, when an
airline builds a new terminal or upgrades its facilities at an
airport, the passengers benefit. When a consumer can fly free
because of purchases made through a credit card, that is a
benefit. Today passengers can check online 24 hours in advance
to avoid lines at the airport, that is a benefit. And of
course, there are many others.
Like other deregulated industries, such as
telecommunications and financial services, airline passengers
and the general public have reaped many benefits from
deregulation. Competition is alive and well and market forces
are working. As a result, the focus of this Committee, I
believe, should rightly be on how airlines prepare for,
accommodate and respond to passenger needs when delays caused
by unusual conditions are encountered.
I am here, Mr. Chair, because JFK Airport is the economic
heartbeat of my district. My concern is that this situation is
more complex and legislation is not necessarily the answer. All
options, all options need to be evaluated carefully so we avoid
unintended consequences that will handcuff an industry that is
already on life support. Rushing to legislate can potentially
jeopardize the livelihood of thousands of my constituents who
earn their living and access to the American dream based on the
survival of this industry.
I will stop there, I have something else, but I know we are
getting onto the FAA reauthorization. I have some comments
about that also, because it affects my airport and others in
New York, very definitely. But that is in the record, and thank
you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify.
Mr. Costello. The Chair thanks the gentleman for his
thoughtful testimony.
Let me announce that there is a vote that is occurring
right now. We have exactly 11 minutes left on the vote. There
are nine votes, so it will be at least an hour, probably an
hour. But we will return immediately after the last vote, which
we anticipate will be in about an hour.
But we would like to get Mr. Thompson and Congresswoman
Schmidt, if you could summarize your testimony, we would like
to accept it now, if you would. Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Petri
and members of the Committee, for holding this important
hearing.
I also want to acknowledge and thank Ms. Kate Hanni, who is
here today. You will hear from her later. She is a constituent
of mine. She has really led the effort to improve customer
service by the airlines.
Mr. Chairman and members, she was on the flight on December
29th from San Francisco to Dallas that was diverted to Austin.
After flying to Austin, or whatever, that takes a couple of
hours, two and a half hours, she then sat with everyone else on
that plane for nine hours on the tarmac. As numerous people
have stated today, that is just absolutely unacceptable.
Passengers on that flight experienced toilets that didn't
work. They didn't have appropriate food. They didn't have safe
drinking water. There were pets on board that were making a
mess, causing other problems. And parents even had to resort to
making makeshift diapers for their babies out of adult
clothing. I think we know that that is unacceptable.
On the same day, Little Rock, Arkansas, folks sat on the
tarmac four or five hours. There are a number of examples of
this. It is not the limited instances that have been referenced
today.
As you know, and I think Mr. DeFazio mentioned, the
industry in the past has said that they were going to take
voluntary action to fix this problem. And as we also know, when
the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment Reform Act for the 21st
Century was passed, that mandated the Department of
Transportation Office of Inspector General analyze the progress
made by the airlines under their voluntary actions. As we also
know, that analysis by the Inspector General suggests that also
some progress was made, there is still a long way to go.
February this year, the Orlando Sentinel editorialized, and
I think they said it best, they said, leaving it to the
airlines to provide customers with better standard of service
has not worked. That is wy I applaud your effort, and I think
it is time that we step up efforts here in Congress to improve
things.
The bill that I have introduced gives passengers the right
to deplane after three hours, with two exceptions: if the pilot
determines it is unsafe to do so, obviously that wouldn't
happen; and if the pilot determines within a reasonable amount
of time, 30 minutes, that they can take off, we allow for two
extensions of that. It also requires that passengers have food,
clean water and that the toilets work.
It also calls the FAA, the Department of Transportation, in
on this. It has been referenced today. There are problems. We
need to figure out how to work through some of those problems.
Infrastructure problems, no question. The regulatory morasses
that is out there, if a plane leaves the queue to let somebody
off, they can't get back in, those are all things that we need
to do.
But I believe it is time that we do this, and I look
forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Petri and other
members of the Committee, to make sure that passengers have the
ability to know what they can expect out of their airlines,
without putting the airlines into some sort of terrible box, as
Mr. Meeks has mentioned today.
Thank you, and I would like to submit my entire testimony
for the record.
Mr. Costello. We will accept your testimony, and let me
thank you for your thoughtful testimony.
Let me ask you, Congresswoman Schmidt, can you summarize
your testimony in four minutes?
Mrs. Schmidt. Absolutely.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the panel. I would
venture to guess that all of us at one time or another have
been on the tarmac for a certain period of time. Given the
amount of time that we in Congress spend on planes, we have
spent some time in a delay.
The recent incidents, some of which are deeply troubling,
have brought light on an issue, and I believe can create some
positive results. I decided to launch my own research project
on this issue to find out what was happening and why. Based on
data provided to me by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics,
I randomly chose delays from last year and asked each airline
to explain the cause of each delay. While I am still compiling
the results, this morning I do have some preliminary findings.
All of this data is for calendar year 2006. In 2006,
commercial air traffic system handled over 7.1 million flights,
carrying some 740 million passengers. That amounts to 19,000
flights averaged per day. During 2006, there were 1,295 flights
that the BTS reported were delayed on the tarmac for more than
three hours. That is 2/100ths of a percent of all flights.
So if you were like me and found yourself on one of those
flights, congratulations, you really beat the odds. But the
data is quite revealing.
However, one data set that is not collected by the BTS that
needs to be is diverted flights. These flights, like the now
infamous American Airlines flight, do not fall into the
category collected by the BTS. As this Committee puts together
an FAA reauthorization bill, I hope that it will include
language directing the BTS to compile statistics on diverted
flights. This information should give us a clearer picture of
the situation.
Of these 1,295 flights, I randomly chose 100 of them in a
sample with all the major carriers. Most of those carries have
responded with their explanations. While I am still compiling
the data, some patterns are quickly emerging. The vast majority
of these delays are caused by weather officially. As a frequent
flyer, I am extremely grateful we are not flying in bad
weather.
But the underlying cause, more than the weather, appears to
be a horribly inadequate air traffic control system that simply
must be modernized. Mechanical delays, what I will term as
regulatory delays, are also a factor in a much smaller scale.
An even smaller factor, but more frustrating, is human error.
That would include the just dumb mistakes like grounds drops
with planes a few feet from the gate, or managers that simply
forgot to call to appeal to the tower.
While modernization would not have eliminated all 1,295 of
those delays, it appears to me that a vast majority of them
would have either been reduced dramatically in duration or
totally eliminated. While my research project does not deal
with the frustration passengers have experience, I strongly
feel that the best course for our Committee is to try to
eliminate the root causes of these delays, which I believe is
outdated technology.
Once I have completed my report, I look forward to sharing
it with every member of this Committee. Truly, I believe
together we can make great strides in eliminating these very
uncomfortable delays. Thank you again for this opportunity. I
look forward to continuing to work with you on this important
issue.
Mr. Costello. The Chair thanks you for your testimony, and
you came in under four minutes. So we appreciate that as well.
The Subcommittee will stand in recess until after the last
vote. As I said, we anticipate that we will have at least an
hour that we will be on the Floor. So after the last vote, the
Subcommittee will come back and hear our second panel.
[Recess.]
Mr. Costello. The Subcommittee will come to order.
We will now hear from our first panel after we heard from
the three members of Congress. The next panel is the Honorable
Calvin Scovel, Inspector General of the U.S. Department of
Transportation; the Honorable Andrew Steinberg, the Assistant
Secretary for Aviation and International Affairs, with the U.S.
Department of Transportation. And I understand that he in fact
is accompanied by Dan Smiley, Operations Manager of the FAA
Command Center.
With that, the Chair recognizes Mr. Scovel to summarize his
testimony under the five minute rule.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE CALVIN L. SCOVEL, III, INSPECTOR
GENERAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; THE HONORABLE
ANDREW B. STEINBERG, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR AVIATION AND
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION,
ACCOMPANIED BY: DAN SMILEY, OPERATIONS MANAGER, FAA COMMAND
CENTER
Mr. Scovel. Thank you, Chairman Costello, Ranking Member
Petri and Members of the Subcommittee. I appreciate the
opportunity to testify this afternoon. This hearing is both
timely and important, given the recent events this past winter
involving extended ground delays with passengers stranded
aboard aircraft for extended periods, some for 9 hours or
longer.
Secretary Peters has serious concerns about this issue and
has asked my office to review the airlines' customer service
commitments and policies for dealing with extended ground
delays and their contingency plans for such events.
As this Subcommittee is aware, airline customer service
took center stage in January 1999 when a similar situation
occurred with hundreds of passengers trapped onboard planes on
snowbound runways in Detroit. At that time, following
congressional hearings, member airlines of the Air Transport
Association, ATA, agreed to execute a voluntary airline
customer service commitment to demonstrate their dedication to
improving air travel.
In February 2001, we reported that the ATA member airlines
were making progress toward meeting the commitment, which has
benefited air travelers in a number of important areas.
However, the commitment did not directly address the underlying
cause of deep-seated customer dissatisfaction: flight delays
and cancellations. This is still the case today.
The debate again is over the best way to ensure improved
airline customer service, whether it is voluntarily implemented
by the airlines, legislated by the Congress, further regulated
by the Department, or achieved through some combination of
these. This is clearly a policy issue for Congress to decide.
Today, I would like to discuss three important points
regarding airline customer service as we see them, based on the
results of our previous airline customer service reviews and
our ongoing work. First, the airlines must refocus their
efforts to improve customer service. In November of 2006, we
reported that ATA member airlines' customer service plans were
still in place to carry out the provisions of the commitment,
including meeting passengers' essential needs during long, on-
board delays.
However, we found several areas where airlines need to
refocus their efforts to improve customer service. The airlines
need to resume self-audits of their customer service plans. A
quality assurance and performance measurement system and these
audits are necessary to ensure the success of the commitment
and the customer service plans. In our 2006 review, however, we
found that just five of the ATA airlines had quality assurance
systems and performed self-audits.
The airlines must also emphasize to their customer service
employees the importance of providing timely and adequate
flight information to passengers. Further, the airlines must
disclose chronically delayed flights to customers. We
recommended in our 2001 report that airlines disclose to their
passengers, at the time of booking and without request, the on-
time performance for those flights that are consistently
delayed. To date, none of the airlines have adopted this
recommendation.
Second, the Department should take a more active role in
airline customer service issues. DOT is responsible for
oversight and enforcement of air traveler consumer protection
requirements. However, when DOT discovered violations and
assessed penalties, it almost always forgave or offset the
penalties if airlines agreed to mitigate the condition for
which the penalties were assessed.
DOT's follow-up monitoring of compliance was limited. In
some cases, there was no follow-up monitoring at all. Also,
instead of on-site compliance reviews, the Department has
primarily relied on air carriers' self-certifications.
Third, the airlines must overcome challenges in mitigating
extraordinary flight disruptions. In 2006, approximately 10
percent of all commercial flights were delayed due to poor
weather conditions. While it is too early to tell what this
summer will hold, the picture in 2007 so far shows that the
number of delays and cancellations is increasing and the length
of delays is longer.
As I mentioned earlier, meeting passengers' essential needs
during long, on-board delays is a serious concern of Secretary
Peters. She asked my office to examine the airlines' customer
service plans for dealing with these events, especially the
recent events at American Airlines and JetBlue Airways, and
provide recommendations as to what can be done to prevent a
recurrence.
We are in the early stages of this review and plan to brief
the Secretary in June and issue our report and recommendations
shortly thereafter. However, our work thus far has shown that
there are a number of actions that airlines, airports, the
Department, and FAA can undertake immediately, without
congressional action, to improve airline customer service.
One: airlines should implement quality assurance and
performance measurement systems and conduct internal audits of
their compliance with the provisions. Two: the Department
should revisit its current position on chronic delays and
cancellations and take enforcement actions air carriers that
consistently advertise unrealistic flight schedules, regardless
of the reason.
Mr. Chairman, I see that I am at my time. If I can have one
more minute, please, I can finish up. Thank you.
Three: the airlines, airports, and FAA should establish a
task force to coordinate and develop contingency plans to deal
with lengthy delays, such as working with carriers and airports
to share facilities and make gates available in an emergency.
Finally, the Department_in collaboration with FAA,
airlines, and airports_should review incidents involving long,
on-board ground delays and their causes; identify trends and
patterns of such events; and implement workable solutions for
mitigating extraordinary flight disruptions.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be glad
to answer any questions that you or other Members of the
Subcommittee might have.
Mr. Costello. Thank you. The Chair recognizes Mr.
Steinberg.
Mr. Steinberg. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to testify today on
behalf of DOT. I will try and keep this brief, just hitting the
main points of my written statement, which I would ask to be
made part of the record.
Since deregulation of the airline industry almost 30 years
ago, the Government has tried to balance the interest in
protecting consumers against unreasonable business practices
against the basic mandate of deregulation, which is to let the
marketplace decide customer service issues. We continue to
think that this is the right approach, but we also recognize
that sometimes a regulatory action is necessary. Of course, our
broad regulations over safety are such an example.
When the marketplace doesn't work, we do have tools at our
disposal to address deficiencies. The cornerstone of our
consumer protection program is our very broad authority to
prohibit unfair and deceptive practices, as well as unfair
methods of competition in air transportation. You should know
that the Department's Office of General Counsel is the
Department that brings aviation consumer action cases under the
statute. And that office handles all consumer complaints and
inquiries and publishes a monthly air travel consumer report,
which summarizes airline data on the kinds of complaints we
get, delays, mishandled bags, denied boardings and so on.
Between 2000 and 2006, complaints with DOT actually fell by
nearly two-thirds. But we are beginning to see complaints
increase again. Most focus on airline performance problems,
including delays. We have already heard testimony today about
the most highly publicized incidents, involving JetBlue and
American Airlines this year and last year. The fact is that,
however, all carriers at one time or another have similar
problems.
The Inspector General is right, that Secretary Peters was
troubled by the incidents that were reported, particularly, I
would say, over the reports that food, water and other basic
needs were not being met by the airlines. If those reports are
true, it begins to cross the line between inconvenience and
discomfort and health and safety issues. That is why she asked
the Inspector General to conduct an investigation, to see
specifically how the airlines were doing on this commitment
that they made eight years ago to deal with on the ground
delays, because that commitment was not covered in the prior
Inspector General report, and to make recommendations. And as
indicated, after that review is completed, we will decide what
to do.
Although these very lengthy tarmac delays are statistically
rare, it is clear that airlines must have adequate contingency
plans in place to deal with these situations. Stranding
hundreds of passengers for many hours aboard aircraft is not
acceptable. Incidents like these raise questions about the
planning for such events.
So we were pleased to see that following these events, both
of the carriers involved announced corrective actions. In
American's case, they announced that they would limit any
tarmac delay to four hours. In JetBlue's case, of course, they
had a very highly publicized customer bill of rights that I am
sure you will hear more about later.
I would say the Department prefers that airlines address
these issues directly, rather than the Federal Government. But
again, we recognize sometimes action may be necessary.
We do need to keep tarmac delays in the context of a vast
system of more than 7 million flights a year. Airline networks
are complex operations in which the airlines are constantly
juggling operational, mechanical, safety, human resource,
regulatory constraints. So what I would ask the Committee to
consider is that any new requirement be assessed in terms of,
will it fix the problem, does it have the potential to make the
problem actually worse by creating more delays and what is the
public benefit from it.
I want to just conclude by saying that we are all
personally empathetic with people that are on planes on the
ground for unacceptable lengths of time. We have all been
there. And we don't just look at statistics. The question is,
how to fix this problem when it occurs. The Secretary has
indicated that we will wait until we get the Inspector
General's reports and we have all the facts and all the
information before recommending a course of action.
Thank you.
Mr. Costello. I thank you. And let me follow up on your
testimony and comment that I am, while you point out, and it
has been accurately pointed out before, both in the written
testimony that we will receive and hear from the next panel,
these circumstances and situations are rare. They are
oftentimes caused by weather.
The fact of the matter is, what we need to do is find a
solution. I am also pleased that you acknowledge that the
airlines need to do more.
In that regard, let me ask Mr. Scovel a couple of very
quick questions. You indicate in your testimony, as I did in my
opening statement, that the airlines need to adopt policies
that are very clear, very accessible and easy to understand by
the flying public. You indicate that they must implement more
effective contingency plans.
What items should be addressed in these plans, in your
opinion, Mr. Scovel?
Mr. Scovel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Sir, I would start with defining the extended period of
time, which relates back, in fact, to the June 1999 customer
service commitment that all member airlines of ATA at that time
joined. At that time, that term was not defined. When we
pointed it out in our 2001 report, the airlines at that point
agreed that it would be a priority for them and that they would
undertake steps to make that definition. To date, however, 5 of
13 airlines do not specify in their customer service plans what
is meant by an ``extended period of time'' with regard to
meeting passengers' essential needs.
Now, that term would also apply to situations where
passengers should be deplaned after an extended tarmac delay.
We have found that seven of the ATA member airlines do not
define the term for the purposes of setting a time limit for
deplaning passengers. The range for those airlines that do is 1
to 5 hours.
That would certainly be a tremendous starting point. A
uniform definition for time limits for both of those, we
believe, would go miles toward reassuring the public that the
airlines take their commitment to customer service seriously.
Mr. Costello. You also in your written testimony state that
you acknowledge that JetBlue and American Airlines responded
after their incidents, but you indicate that ATA has shortly
after the JetBlue and American Airlines incidents announced
several initiatives and requested that the Department of
Transportation convene a task force among other things. You
indicate that you have a concern that ATA's action merely
shifts responsibility from ATA to the Department. I wonder if
you might elaborate on that.
Mr. Scovel. Yes. We believe that it would shift
responsibility from the airlines to the Department. We believe
the airlines have a continuing responsibility, for instance, to
execute their contingency planning, to define the terms that we
have outlined, to take steps to provide for passengers'
essential needs, and to make plans to deplane passengers when
appropriate.
The airlines and the airports should be continually taking
those steps on their own, rather than relying on the
Department's review or judgment. At some point, the
Department's involvement will be necessary. In fact, one of our
recommendations for immediate action, even without any
congressional intervention, should the Congress decide to go
that route, is for the Department to convene a meeting of the
airlines in order to review all of that.
But, in the meantime, we believe that this is a continuous
process for the airlines, if they are to make any headway in
this area.
Mr. Costello. So instead of attempting to shift
responsibility to the Department, they should assume
responsibility and be proactive in an attempt to address these
issues internally?
Mr. Scovel. Absolutely, sir. And if I may, I want to be
clear on part of my earlier statement, when I was talking about
defining an extended period of delay specifically with respect
to deplaning passengers. We consider that a one size fits all
policy, which is, we would caution the Congress about going
down that route, should the Congress decide that legislation is
necessary.
We think, on the other hand, that a uniform definition of a
time period for provision of passengers' essential needs may
certainly be helpful to the customer. However, we realize there
are many more moving parts when it comes to deplaning
passengers, including safety for passengers, the layout of the
airport, whether it is physically possible, and if it were to
become desirable, if FAA were to reexamine its departure
sequence rule so that the desires of passengers who may want to
continue on a flight that may be promised a departure window at
some point, as opposed to those passengers who are simply fed
up and want to get off.
Mr. Costello. I think I made clear in my opening statement,
my concern about a one size fits all legislative approach,
however, the airlines have had the opportunity to address this
issue and in fact committed to doing so back in 1999. And
obviously some have been a little more proactive than others,
as you indicate in your testimony. But you know, the bottom
line is that either they are going to address the problem or we
are.
And number two, let me say that it is easy to just blame
the airlines. They made a commitment in 1999, and it was our
responsibility in this Congress to provide aggressive oversight
to make certain that they in fact were complying with their
commitments. That is one of the reasons why I made very clear
early in this hearing that this is the first in a series of
hearings. We are not just going to close the book on this at
the end of the day. We are going to hold additional hearings
and we are going to provide aggressive oversight on this issue.
So they will either comply and address the issue on their
own or we will certainly be back in this room examining what
action or the lack of action they have taken.
With that, let me recognize the Ranking Member if he has
questions at this time.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. I will be brief, Mr. Chairman, thank you
very much.
Just a couple of questions, gentlemen. What are some of the
logistical and operational challenges as well as safety-related
kind of regulatory barriers that currently would prevent, if
nay, airlines from simply returning to the gate and offloading
passengers who don't wish to continue? Has the Office of
Inspector General considered how to overcome some of those
challenges, if they do exist, and what are they? Does the DOT
have the authority, if it needs to address these challenges
right now?
Mr. Scovel. Thank you, sir. We have not undertaken a
detailed study of that. We believe that is properly within the
purview of FAA. As you may know, sir, the FAA has operated for
many years under a first come, first served rule when it comes
to the departure sequence. However, when we come up against
situations involving extended on-ground delays caused by
weather and a long queue of aircraft awaiting departure; when
an aircraft may need to return for either de-icing, as happened
in February at JFK with JetBlue, or perhaps even to return to a
gate to deplane passengers, the standing rule has been that the
plane must go to the end of the queue.
There are some exceptions. Airlines have what they call
``advocates'' in the air traffic control tower who may be able
to negotiate, on a one-time basis, a return to a higher place
in the queue. But generally, it is back to the end of the line.
As far as regulatory barriers, certainly FAA possesses the
ability, we think, to change that. What we identify as
problems, mainly, are the physical layout of airports
themselves. Some airports by virtue of their location and their
design and their more modern age may be able to safely
accommodate aircraft moving about in such a fashion. Other
airports, because they are much more crowded and narrow, may
not be able to have aircraft move about in that fashion and
guarantee passenger safety.
I think you mentioned deplaning passengers, and one method
for that, of course, and that happened in some locations in the
December incident involving American Airlines, was buses moving
to the location of the aircraft and taking passengers off in
that way. That, of course, would be highly safety-dependent,
depending on whether the passengers' own conditions and so
forth, and the ability of ground personnel to move about safely
under all those conditions.
But, that would require some detailed study. We have not
spoken in detail with FAA about it. But to the extent this
Congress or the airlines would anticipate undertaking a more
precise definition of an extended period of time for the
purposes of deplaning passengers, a key element of that, we
think, would be re-examining FAA's departure sequence rules, so
that passengers who may want to remain aboard aircraft, as I
mentioned, and try to make a departure window, will have that
option, while other passengers who are fed up can get off the
gate or exit the aircraft and get on a bus.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Am I hearing, though, that in your
opinion, there would be a problem with a one size fits all kind
of approach to consumer issues, including these issues? Am I
reading you correctly, or am I just making that up entirely?
Mr. Scovel. We see problems with a one size fits all
approach, specifically when it comes to deplaning passengers.
Frankly, in other areas, we think a more uniform policy across
the airlines would be helpful to the customers. So, I don't
think I can at this point say, one size fits all is not a good
approach across the spectrum of customer service concerns.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Let me ask you, and I don't know who
should answer this, are there right now requirements, either in
contracts, of either carriers or in regulation, that direct
airlines and airports to have contingency plans, clear
contingency plans for accommodating, for protecting the health
and safety of the travelers? For example, should there be an
extreme event, whether it is weather-related or otherwise, are
there clear contingencies, or is it through contracting? Is it
through regulation? Who can answer that?
Mr. Scovel. Let me defer to Mr. Steinberg.
Mr. Steinberg. As a result of the customer commitments that
were given in 1999, I believe that most of the airlines have
looked at the issue of contingency planning and have
incorporated some language on it in their contracts. Whether
that language is adequate or not and whether the commitments
are explicit enough is another matter. I suspect that is
something that the Inspector General will look at as he
determines whether they have met the commitments that they
made.
There are no regulations per se that really cover the
situation, except that to say that of course the FAA has many
regulations dealing with passenger safety, including when
passengers are on the ground. But none to my knowledge that
cover food, water and those kinds of things.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Costello. The Chair thanks the gentleman.
The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. DeFazio is recognized.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the Chairman.
To Mr. Scovel, don't you think that, and we talk about one
size fits all and the disadvantages of Federal mandates, but
wouldn't it be prudent to set a floor? What I observe in the
industry is that you have some very responsible carriers, and
then you have others who have adopted the old Ma Bell model,
which is, we don't care, we don't have to. There is not one
size fits all in the industry.
If you set a floor for customer protections across a broad
range of issues, then even the worst actors have to meet it.
And if the best ones, for competitive reasons or just because
they are good folks, want to exceed it, that is great. But
absent that floor, I don't know how we are going to get and
assure the kinds of protections and deal with the abuses we are
talking about here.
Mr. Scovel. Mr. DeFazio, I think I was speaking
specifically in terms of deplaning passengers when I was
expressing some reluctance to endorse a one size fits all
policy. However, I did say too that with regard to other
issues, specifically, provision of passengers' essential
concerns, a consistent policy across the industry would
certainly be helpful to customers. Whether you would term that
a floor, and hopefully the good citizens in the industry would
want to exceed that in providing for their customers. We would
certainly endorse that.
Mr. DeFazio. I don't know if you were here earlier. But
when I got the Office of Consumer Complaints established in a
prior FAA authorization, unfortunately due to objections by the
industry and concerns by that Administration about having to
staff the office, in case too many people had complaints, we
ended up with a secret office of complaint. And they don't get
a lot of calls.
Don't you think if we are going to have such an office, to
get a meaningful measure it would be useful to have it made
known? Do you think it would be overly burdensome if we
required, when you print out your boarding pass, that the
computer program actually prints, if you have problems with
this flight, this number is available? Or on tickets?
Mr. Scovel. It sounds like a reasonable approach. I will
note that the Department has on its web site a way to access
the Office of Aviation----
Mr. DeFazio. Right, but that means that we have a consumer
who knows there is a Department of Transportation or an FAA and
they sort of parse their way through it. But for a lot of
people who aren't frequent travelers, and even for frequent
travelers, I think it would be a useful thing. Thank you.
The denied boarding issue, I was puzzled. I guess I wasn't
aware of the exemption for the smaller planes. It says here, I
think you said in your testimony, consider extending it to
planes between 31 and 60 seats?
Mr. Scovel. Yes. That refers to the over-booking and over-
sold provision.
Mr. DeFazio. Right.
Mr. Scovel. We recommended in our 2001 report that the
airlines petition the Department to change the rules so that
instead of starting the protection for consumers with over-
bookings that occur aboard aircraft at 60 seats, that it be
reduced, if you will, to aircraft with 30 seats. That would
have greatly expanded the number of carriers reached and would
amount to the many tens of millions of passengers who would be
potentially protected by such a rule.
Mr. DeFazio. Sure, well, my mid-size, non-hub airport is no
longer served by planes larger than 60 seats. This must be a
fairly archaic rule.
Mr. Scovel. Precisely. I don't know when the 60 seat part
of the rule originated. But I can say that, to their credit,
very shortly after our 2001 report was released, ATA member
airlines endorsed it and did indeed petition the Department in
2001.
Mr. DeFazio. Oh, okay. So do we know what action the
Department has taken? The petition was when, in 2001?
Mr. Scovel. In 2001.
Mr. DeFazio. The industry asked to be regulated in 2001.
Okay, so where are we?
Mr. Scovel. They did, in April 2001.
Mr. DeFazio. Right.
Mr. Scovel. This month, in fact, the Department's Office of
General Counsel, I presume, began circulating an advanced
notice of proposed rulemaking addressing the airlines'
petition.
Mr. DeFazio. Let's see. Six years after being asked by a
regulated body, we are finally circulating a petition to
advance rulemaking. That is great. Do we have someone who can
address that issue here? Let's see. Mr. Steinberg, you are
international affairs. I don't think either of the other
witnesses are really accountable for that.
Mr. Steinberg. I can address it. We are actively working on
it now. I can't explain the number of years that it took. I
would just note that, of course, there was September 11th and a
lot of intervening events that affected that. It is not an
excuse. It shouldn't take us that long.
I can assure you that a rulemaking is imminent.
Mr. DeFazio. Yes, because, with the changes in the
characteristics of the industry, yes, 10 years ago, my city was
served by planes up to 130 seats. But now with the industry
changes, this is really essential.
One last thing, Mr. Chairman, if I might. Again, Mr.
Scovel, I was not aware, is this rule of back to the end of the
line, is that custom and practice or is that at each airport,
or is there some actually promulgated regulation or rule that
governs all airports that says if anyone pulls out of line they
have to go to the end of the line?
Mr. Scovel. It is my understanding that by longstanding
custom and practice that indeed is the practice. I cannot quote
you chapter and verse which FAA regulation, if any, addresses
that. Perhaps Mr. Steinberg would have that information, or I
would be happy to get that for you for the record.
Mr. DeFazio. I am curious if there is any statutory or
regulatory underpinning or if it is just something that we have
been doing and never thought about.
Mr. Steinberg. It is something that we have thought about.
It is part of the way that the FAA manages traffic. I might
defer to Mr. Smiley, who is the Manager of the Command Center
for the FAA. Perhaps he can provide more detail.
Mr. Smiley. Yes, sir, thank you.
I don't know of any rule that says that. However, it is
often a logistical issue at the airports, that if you take a
flight out of line that is in a line-up for departure, and are
able to bring it back to the terminal, often that is a problem
in and of itself. Then if they were to take the passengers off
and maybe even have to take their luggage off, time goes by,
they turn around and try and get back in the line, their space
is gone, in essence. They get back in the back of the line and
starting coming back out.
Mr. DeFazio. I understand operationally and congestion. But
what I am looking at here is the perverse incentives that we
are establishing, if there are five planes, ten planes out
there, I am tenth in line, and it is probably not likely we are
going to leave, but maybe we can leave, people have been on the
plane five hours and if I go back, that other plane is coming,
or if I am one in a line of ten, it seems to me it should have
some flexibility for adverse conditions and maybe it needs to
be more than just understood custom and practice since Orville
and Wilbur first went up, that maybe we want to, so we won't
abuse the passengers. We want to say, gee, look, if the
weather's bad and the pilot has had people out there for more
than a certain period of time, he should go back and not feel
he has to stay in line, because he might get to take off soon
and he is going to lose his place in line, or her place in
line. Do you think that would be reasonable?
Mr. Steinberg. Mr. DeFazio, I just want to note for your
benefit that the FAA does have customer advocates. It isn't
quite as inflexible as it perhaps has been presented. When an
airline is in a situation where they have had passengers
onboard for several hours, that can be communicated to the
customer advocate. Subject to the logistical constraints that
you mentioned, they can be moved. And that happens on a daily
basis. It is not quite inflexible.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Costello. I thank the gentleman, and let me comment if
I can that as I mentioned about the lack of aggressive
oversight by this Subcommittee and the Committee concerning the
agreement in 1999, I think when we talk about the agency to
come out with regulations to regulate the industry, and it is
six years later and we are still waiting, it is another reason
why this Committee needs to provide aggressive oversight.
The Chair recognizes the Chairman of the full Committee,
the distinguished gentleman who is chairing the full Committee,
Mr. Oberstar.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you very much for holding these
hearings, Mr. Costello. You have moved the ball forward
considerably on all of the subjects of aviation, as we prepare
for the reauthorization of FAA. I compliment you and Mr. Petri
on a very thorough in-depth review, which will continue over a
period of weeks to come.
The Chairman just a moment ago referred to the lack of
oversight on this Committee on the passenger bill of rights
issue, among many others. That lack of oversight is exceeded
only by the failure of the Department of Transportation to
exercise its own oversight and its own enforcement of Section
41712 of Title 49 of the U.S. Code that deals with unfair and
deceptive practices and unfair competition.
The ATA testimony goes on at length about the benefits
derived from the Deregulation Act of 1978. I sat right here in
this Committee room and rubbed my worry beads about the effects
of deregulation and in the end, I voted for it. There was a
great deal of protection for small cities and essential air
service written into the legislation, and hold-ins and all the
rest. And with the assurance that there was going to be
vigorous oversight by the existing Administration, the Carter
Administration, of the passenger concerns and of the community
concerns.
Unfortunately, they didn't last long enough to exercise
that oversight. The election of 1980 changed the course. And
the protection that passengers were anticipating and expecting
hasn't been forthcoming consistently from the airlines, despite
the pats on the back that the ATA's testimony gives themselves.
And we have had these meltdowns over a period of time. It is
hard to call a snowstorm a meltdown, in which case it is only a
figure of speech.
I think of all the testimony, which I have read over, all
the testimony submitted today, that of the Inspector General is
the most compelling and the most, creates with me the greatest
concern. When I see, Mr. Steinberg, from your testimony that
oh, shucks, violations are difficult to demonstrate, this
section is enforceable in its own right but violations are
difficult to demonstrate, prosecution is ultimately successful,
it is resource-intensive, time consuming, of limited
precedential value, because each case is highly dependent on
its own set of facts, baloney. If you don't exercise oversight,
they are going to continue to do stuff that the public doesn't
want. You are already recognizing that there is an increase in
complaints. The reason there haven't been more complaints is
that nothing much is done about them. That is why we have had a
parade of our colleagues in the Congress coming here and
saying, fix this.
Now, the Inspector General's statement, when DOT discovered
violation of assessed penalties and almost always forgave or
offset a portion of the penalty, there are cases when that is
appropriate. Why spend money on a fine if they will spend the
same money fixing the problem? I have no problem with that.
When it came to U.S. Air, I think it was, that did not
approve vouchers for lodging or meals, one of the many
complaints that DOT looked into and if they turned around and
gave money and compensate, make up for it later, or if I think,
I think it was Southwest that was getting a fine for not having
wheelchair storage, and they said, we will spend the money on
wheelchair storage, I think that makes up for the problem.
But if these are random enforcement, the airlines don't
take them seriously, then people get discouraged and they are
not going to file complaints. DOT says the IG has not conducted
on-site compliance reviews, relied on air carrier self-
certification and company-prepared reports. It has not found
supporting documentation. Chronically delayed and canceled
flights are clearly examples of deceptive practices by the
airlines.
This isn't new. We went over this almost 10 years ago in a
hearing of this Committee, at Dallas Fort Worth. There were 57
flights, regularly scheduled for departure at 7:00 a.m. No
airport in the world can depart 57 flights at the same time.
And the airlines, in a parade before this Committee, said, we
know that we are not being candid with the public. FAA said the
same thing. And everybody knows this.
So you mean all the travelers are in on the gag? I sign up
for a 7:00 o'clock flight knowing it is not going to leave
until 8:00? Baloney. I sign up for a 7:00 o'clock flight
expecting to leave at 7:00. And I know that 57 aren't going to
depart at the same time and you know it. So why don't you do
something about it? The reason we are having hearings is that
the Department hasn't done anything about it and the airlines
haven't and the FAA hasn't. Without waiting for your responses,
I am just telling you that a case is building for something to
be done in the upcoming authorization. And that something is
going to be, in my mind, a fine that means something, that
takes some pain out of the airline, and enforcement that we
will direct to be done. I don't want to send through this
Committee, a series of amendments by members are on the House
Floor, about how many inches are going to be from one knee to
the seat in front of you and how much of an incline will be
allowed on the seat recline from the passenger just ahead of
you. We were all set for that sort of thing seven, eight years
ago. That is not productive.
Airlines signed up for a passenger bill of rights. They
said, let's cure the problem. It was up to your department to
enforce it, whether you were there or someone else, your
predecessor or your successor, it hasn't been done. And the
airlines have to clean up their act. We have had Northwest with
their mess in Detroit and JetBlue with theirs. Each has tried
to correct their problems. But the problems come up with some
other carrier. They don't seem to learn from each other.
And you are the court of last resort. If deregulation is
going to mean anything, if we are going to hang onto it and
hold onto it, then you have to start taking these complaints
seriously and taking action on them. Or as I said, we will
bring a bill to the Floor and have a flood of amendments as to
how many bags you can put in the overhead, what size they
should be, what size should the overhead compartment be. You
think these issues are--wait until we get to the Floor. We are
going to have 433 people offering amendments.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Oberstar. The airlines will all go berserk.
So I am just telling you, we are going to have some tougher
enforcement, we are going to have tougher fines, tougher
penalties. If you want to keep the Government out of deciding
market entry and pricing for air carriers, then the air
carriers have to do their job of serving the public, and that
means more than what they are doing now. You don't need to
respond. It would be painful for you to respond. You might say
something that would get you in trouble at the Department, or
in trouble up here, or in trouble with the airlines.
Mr. Steinberg. If you would like me to respond, I can
address some of the many questions.
Mr. Oberstar. You are welcome.
Mr. Steinberg. Let me start by saying that we agree, the
airlines have to do a better job. It is our job to oversee
their compliance with their promises to their customers. We
have a lot of empathy when things go wrong.
It isn't in fact the case that we are doing nothing.
Obviously, Mr. Chairman, we are not doing enough. But by your
account and by many other of your colleagues accounts, but----
Mr. Oberstar. I encourage you on that point to take the
IG's report home with you, put it at your bedside table and
read it over tonight. When you wake up at 3:00 in the morning,
read it again.
Mr. Steinberg. Of course we will look at it and study it.
We have a pretty good track record of working with the IG's
office.
But just to give you a few examples, over the last six
years, the Department has assessed roughly $22 million in
penalties. Yes, a lot of them were offset. To explain our
policy on that, I think the Inspector General, with all due
respect, may not understand completely what we do. We don't
give an offset for just coming into compliance with our current
rules. Where we give an offset, it typically is paying for
improvements that aren't required by regulation. And so we make
a judgment that it makes sense, because we can get more for the
public by doing it that way.
We do forgive part of the penalties, typically about half,
but there again, sort of the reason is that we hold that out
over them. It is not an unconditional forgiveness. If they
violate the consent order that is signed, then we collect the
penalty. So I did want to correct that.
With respect to the issue of enforcement on scheduling
items, first let me tell you that the Office of Enforcement,
which of course is part of the General Counsel's Office at DOT,
is right now in the midst of settling or going through consent
order proceedings with eight carriers on the specific issue of
whether they disclose the on-time performance statistics as
they are required to do when a customer requests it. That is a
result of an investigation that involved about 20 carriers, and
they found that 8 were seriously out of compliance.
I am also told that we are launching an investigation
specifically into unrealistic scheduling. As you probably know,
we have a regulation that prohibits unrealistic scheduling as a
deceptive practice. Now we are looking at stepping up
enforcement efforts there. We are sending investigatory letters
out or will be shortly to all major carriers. We want to
understand, as you pointed out, sir, how it is possible that a
flight could be late 70 or 80 percent of the time and that
information is not disclosed in an adequate way to the
customer. So I expect you will see activity from General
Counsel's office on that as well.
Just one final comment, sir. The Office of Aviation
Enforcement has about 30 people. They are very skilled, 20, 30
years experience typically. They have been focused in ways that
Congress has directed us. Several years ago, there was more of
an emphasis on dealing with disabled passengers and civil
rights issues. So there were many consent proceedings brought
on that basis. I can assure you that we are listening and that
resources are being shifted to focus on these issues that have
been raised today. Thank you.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Mr. Steinberg. I want to commend
the Inspector General on the splendid service your office has
provided with this report. It is a very detailed report, and
the report last fall. I want to assure you, the Chairman is
going to keep an eagle eye out. We need more, we need a lot
more people in the Department. We need more air traffic
controllers. We need more inspectors in the maintenance
positions. We need more inspectors overseas for foreign repair
stations. And we clearly need more people to defend the public
interest in aviation. That is the role of the Department, to
stand between the traveling public and the airlines in the
public interest.
Yes, you have done a good job, and I should have commended
you at the outset on the civil rights issues and
responsibilities that we urged upon you in legislation. But
this is the next frontier. What has gone before us is not
satisfactory to a large segment of the traveling public. We
will address it in the upcoming legislation.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for your vigilance in
holding these hearings.
Mr. Costello. The Chair thanks the gentleman.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr.
Lipinski.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
holding this hearing today.
I want to start out with what may be an embarrassing
admission. Until this hearing, I did know there was a
Department of Transportation and an FAA. However, I did not
know that there was a phone number to call to register a
complaint about any problems with a flight on an airline. I
wholeheartedly concur with Chairman DeFazio about that, that it
needs to be made more public. We are talking here about, and
Mr. Steinberg talked about the marketplace and allowing the
marketplace to make sure that things are operating well,
operating efficiently. We oftentimes will do that, we talk
about marketplace imposing its own regulation.
One of the things that is very important when we are
talking about a market, for a market to operate efficiently
there needs to be perfect information. If you go back, look at
your economics textbook, it assumes perfect information if you
are going to have a perfectly efficient market. Obviously, if
information is not available and people do not fly often enough
to really get information, just collect it for themselves and
then know further down the line who they may not want to fly.
So there has to be a greater collection of this
information. Like I said, I had no idea there was such a
number.
Now, I want to ask Mr. Scovel about the, I know in the
airline customer service commitments, they include a provision
specifying how bumped passengers can be handled with fairness
and consistency. Now, how has this provision been implemented
by the carriers?
Mr. Scovel. Thank you, sir. To respond to your question, we
have found uneven implementation of that specific provision of
the customer service commitment. In fact, we have found in our
previous reports that passengers bumped from the same flight
have been offered different amounts of compensation. Our
understanding of the provision is that passengers bumped from
the same flight should be offered the same compensation. And we
have reported such.
Mr. Lipinski. I know that I experienced a long delay
recently, I was flying with my wife. I received an e-mail
saying that I was going to be compensated with 10,000 frequent
flyer miles, something like that. I told my wife, and she said,
I didn't receive anything like that. So I am not really sure
why that was the case.
But I want to go further, another issues besides being
bumped. There are concerns that I hear from people, although
they haven't been raised here, about canceled flights. Not
because of weather, but what is termed, because of mechanical
problems. And there are some questions about why this happens,
what these mechanical problems may be. I think at the very
least, I have not seen this, maybe Mr. Scovel you have, this
has been in an IG report, but is there any effort to collect
information on cancellations of flights and the reasons for the
cancellation of flights?
Mr. Scovel. I should defer to Mr. Steinberg to ask whether
the Department or FAA may have undertaken any such study. I can
say that, for my office, we have not examined that particular
cause for the event.
Mr. Steinberg. We do collect information on cancellations.
I am not certain whether we have the data divided by the
reasons given for cancellations. I will say this, that is one
of the most common questions that I get is, the plane seemed
empty and they suddenly came on and said, the flight was
canceled, and I am suspicious. The reason that that happens is
that when the airlines are required by circumstances, say a
mechanical problem, to cancel a flight, if there is identical
equipment, the same aircraft at the airport, they try to figure
out the least number of passengers to impose the inconvenience
on. Therefore, if they can substitute an aircraft for the
flight that had the mechanical but had the most passengers
leaving, they will do that.
Why it is explained the way it is, again, that is a fair
question. But it isn't the case, to my knowledge, that airlines
look at load factors and say, let's cancel that flight because
there are not a lot of passengers. It would be illogical for
them to do that, because the equipment needs to get to its next
destination for their schedules to work.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you.
Mr. Costello. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Tennessee, Mr. Cohen.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not sure who to
direct this to, so whoever wants it can just take off with it.
I want to talk about the St. Patrick's Day weekend
massacre. I was supposed to fly to Memphis. A lot of people
were supposed to fly everywhere and the flights were canceled
because of ice. Was that the cause of there not being enough
de-icing machines at the airports?
Mr. Scovel. Sir, my office has not had occasion to examine
how airports have tried to prepare for events such as ice
storms. I can say, and you may have noticed in our testimony,
too, that some of my staff were caught in the same ice storm
over St. Patrick's Day weekend.
Mr. Cohen. Right. I understand that. It makes me feel no
better.
Mr. Scovel. I know.
Mr. Cohen. Whose responsibility it is, the airport or the
airlines, to have de-icing equipment?
Mr. Scovel. My understanding, sir, it is the airport. Now,
the airlines are certainly interested in that. They have the
immediate economic interest in being able to move their
equipment and passengers.
Mr. Cohen. So airlines don't have their own de-icing
equipment, it is all the airport's?
Mr. Scovel. That is my understanding.
Mr. Cohen. Anybody else have a different understanding?
Mr. Steinberg. I am not sure. I think there are situations
where the airlines have their own de-icing equipment. I could
follow up and get you a direct answer on that.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, sir. I read somewhere where it was
the airlines and they didn't have enough de-icing equipment and
that is why flights were canceled.
Mr. Steinberg. One of the things I think we are observing
now is that because of what happened on Valentine's Day and
last December, the airlines are being a bit more cautious and
canceling flights more often than they were before. We were
actually seeing that in some of their financial results. That
just goes to illustrate the complexity of the system. If you do
something over here, it tends to----
Mr. Cohen. What is the policy when the flights cancel like
that? Just tough luck because it was God's will? Is that it,
you have to go Sunday and Friday night and kind of work on it
that way?
Mr. Scovel. Well, the airlines have different policies.
JetBlue, when it announced its customer service commitment, or
bill of rights, after its Valentine's Day event, it addressed
cancellations. But it is in terms of what they term a
``controllable irregularity,'' I believe. In other words,
something that may have been under their control, perhaps
mechanics----
Mr. Cohen. Let me ask you more directly. What could you do
on behalf of the public to have some regulations to require
that there be compensation adequate to compensate people. You
get a round trip ticket to Washington, as some people who were
traveling with me had. They were told they couldn't, on Friday
evening they couldn't get out until Monday morning. They didn't
want to go back to the hotel at a thousand bills a night, stay
in a hotel for two or three more days. So we rented a car and
did the journey back to Memphis, like the Pope used to do it,
more or less. Fifteen hours later, we arrived.
They don't need that return trip ticket. Shouldn't they
have some redress?
Mr. Scovel. In terms of----
Mr. Cohen. Yes, who wants a one way ticket from Washington?
You have to get here to use the ticket, you have to get on your
15 hour drive to drive up here again, or rent a car and take
advantage of it?
Mr. Scovel. A refund of that portion of the ticket.
Mr. Cohen. Shouldn't that be mandatory?
Mr. Scovel. Sir, I would leave that as a policy decision
for the Congress. That involves certain economic
considerations, and, as Inspector General, I believe my role is
just to present facts and data for your information and
consideration----
Mr. Cohen. Mr. Steinberg, do you have a different role?
Anybody got a role on this?
Mr. Steinberg. Our understanding is that generally if a
flight is canceled, completely, and a passenger is not re-
accommodated, they get a refund. I think that is the policy of
all major carriers today. The situation does arise, of course,
when they are accommodated, but in a way that is not completely
satisfactory and what do they get in exchange for that. My
belief is that the practices of the airlines vary all over the
lot in terms of vouchers and now we have seen JetBlue set forms
of compensation.
But we do not have a regulation specifically that requires
refunds in the case where the passenger is involuntarily denied
boarding, where we do have a regulation.
Mr. Cohen. And I guess some of that issue is, was it
involuntarily denied, or should the airlines have had de-icing
equipment? That is an issue we haven't determined a factual
basis for, whether it was the airline or the airport. But it
was reported in one major publication that it was the airlines
who didn't want to spend the money on de-icing.
I can understand it, but if they save money on de-icing,
they ought to spend the money on taking care of the passenger.
The passenger I am talking about bought their tickets through
some type of a special thing with Merrill Lynch. They gave up
oodles of amounts of points to get these tickets, first class
tickets. Well, you compensate them somehow. I don't think they
were.
Mr. Smiley, do you have an answer?
Mr. Smiley. Yes. With regard to the de-icing equipment, I
am familiar with what occurred in Newark, and Continental
Airlines in particular had some equipment that broke after a
period of time during that weekend long ice storm that they
had. I don't know the number, maybe seven or eight machines,
and two or three of them failed after a period of time.
So I believe that it can be either the airport or the
airlines that own the equipment and operate the de-icing pans.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Costello. The Chair thanks the gentleman from
Tennessee. And let me thank all three of our witnesses for
being here today, and in particular Mr. Scovel, let me
compliment you on your work as Chairman Oberstar did. We had a
chance to read your testimony and discuss it, and we appreciate
the information that you were able to provide to us.
The Chair at this time would ask the next panel to come
forward as I introduce you. My understanding is that Mr.
Neeleman and Mr. May both are on tight schedules here, so we
will try and get you up and get your testimony as quickly as we
can.
Mr. David Neeleman, who is the Chief Executive Officer of
JetBlue Airways Corporation; Mr. James May, President and CEO
of the Air Transportation Association of America; Mrs. Kate
Hanni, the Executive Director of the Coalition for Airline
Passengers' Bill of Rights; Mr. Kevin Mitchell, the Chairman of
Business Travel Coalition; and Mr. Paul Ruden, Senior Vice
President for Legal and Industry Affairs of the American
Society of Travel Agents.
If you will take your seats, and we will begin by
recognizing Mr. May, the President of the Air Transport
Association. We would ask all of our witnesses, your entire
statement will be submitted into the record and we will ask you
to summarize your statements under the five minute rule.
TESTIMONY OF JAMES C. MAY, PRESIDENT AND CEO, AIR
TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC.; DAVID NEELEMAN,
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, JETBLUE AIRWAYS CORPORATION; KATE
HANNI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COALITION FOR AN AIRLINE PASSENGERS
BILL OF RIGHTS; KEVIN P. MITCHELL, CHAIRMAN, BUSINESS TRAVEL
COALITION; PAUL M. RUDEN, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, LEGAL AND
INDUSTRY AFFAIRS, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF TRAVEL AGENTS
Mr. May. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the interest of time,
I will truncate my oral even more severely than I would have
otherwise. I am pleased to be here on behalf of the nearly
400,000 passenger airline employees who every day make it their
mission to safely and smoothly transport over 2 million
passengers throughout the United States and the world. Much has
been said today about the quality of airline customer service,
some of it fairly harsh, some of it fair and well-deserved.
With more than 20,000 flights a day, we may not get it right
every time, but we do get it right most of the time. For the
times we don't, we do apologize.
What troubles me ius the suggestion that our members and
employees don't care about how passengers are treated, which is
not true. They care deeply, and the service they receive is
very important.
Following safety, on-time service is the most important
factor for success in the airline business. The reputations
that airlines earn for good service is the currency they have
to offer in the marketplace.
I would like to make two fundamental points. I don't think
you can effectively legislate airline industry response to
irregular operations, especially when severe weather strikes.
Arbitrary deadlines and inflexible standards will have serious
unintended consequences.
Extreme weather delays and cancellations are the enemy of
every airline, crew member and passenger. They are costly. They
drive missed connections, mis-handled bags, upset flight
schedules. And in the worst case, they have a cascading effect
that can spread to many cities and disrupt passengers' plans
for several days. We saw in the St. Patrick's Day storm that
there were over 3,300 cancellations, stranding thousands of
passengers and upsetting spring break plans for many. If we
don't have any place to put the passengers on succeeding
flights, that is when we have those cascading effects.
So those factors are incentive enough for our airlines
members to avoid cancellations and delays whenever possible. It
is in our best interest to complete as many flights as
possible.
Recent events have caused us, however, to review our
policies and procedures, update contingency plans and engage
key airports in discussions about dealing with severe weather
conditions. In addition, as you heard earlier, the DOT
Inspector General is reviewing these incidents and will issue a
report shortly.
Mr. Chairman, we are not waiting for those reports. I have
just concluded a tour of our company headquarters, and we are
aggressively pursuing updating our plans. We requested the IG
DOT investigation. I think it will yield some very positive
results. And we look forward to the opportunity to not only
aggressively update our plans, but to meet with the Inspector
General, key members of this Committee and the Secretary of
Transportation to address those recommendations.
I don't think, however, that Congress can legislate good
weather or the best way to respond to bad weather. Because
every situation is in fact unique. As I said earlier, every
irregular operation is different. In December it was recurring
thunderstorms. In February it was snow, and very importantly
ice pellets, a subject that we ought to talk more about. This
week, it was intense rain and high winds along the East Coast.
Operational flexibility is needed if passengers, crew members
and airplanes are to reach their destinations when different
types of adverse weather conditions arise.
A strict three hour limit, even with two extensions, I
think eliminates much of the flexibility that we need to
actually complete those flights whenever possible. No passenger
likes a delayed flight, including me. What they like even less,
however, is not being able to get to their destination at all,
or to have a two or three day delay in reaching their final
destination.
So in conclusion, flexibility is the best tool the airline
has to respond to severe weather conditions. With 42,000 city
pairs, more than 20,000 flights a day, we needed flexibility to
respond to irregular operations and get passengers to their
destinations safely, which is our ultimate goal.
Have we made mistakes in terms of our customer service? You
bet. Do we apologize? Absolutely. Can we do better? For sure.
We are committed to work with this Committee and the Department
of Transportation to make sure that happens.
Thank you.
Mr. Costello. We thank you.
Mr. Neeleman, you are recognized at this time.
Mr. Neeleman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members
of the Committee, for this opportunity to speak to you today.
We were invited here and agreed to come by our own
volition. We are the only airline that has agreed to do so. I
think it exemplifies our up-front nature of what happened in
the events of Valentine's Day. What happened was unacceptable
to our customers and it was unacceptable to our for our crew
members. We are deeply sorry for those events. It really has
become a defining moment in our company as we have changed so
many things.
What happened on that day, and it was interesting,
Congressman Cohen's comments about de-icing, there is a
relatively new Federal mandate that says we can't fly in
certain conditions. We are basically grounded. That is now
being reevaluated by the FAA. We have been flying lots of years
and never had that problem in these conditions. It was
mandated.
So that is what started the series of events. I am not
blaming that for what happened to our people that were stranded
on airplanes. We have now come up with contingency plans. As
long as I am head of this company, it will never happen again.
We have purchased extra equipment and we have extra places to
evacuate customers with extended delays. We have new systems,
procedures and leadership.
So I am confident that these things, the way it happened on
St. Valentine's Day will never happen again as far as stranding
our customers. Like I said, it was unacceptable.
We have also enacted a customer bill of rights, which we
have disseminated on our web site and to our customers that
spells out exactly what is expected of them with us, and
defined compensation, explaining what is controllable, what is
uncontrollable and what remedies they have in the case that
they have a bad experience with us. So we are really focused on
our customers. We have always been a customer service company.
It is something that we pride ourselves in. We have won award
after award. So our reaction to this event is not dissimilar to
the way we have treated customers in the past.
I think the reason I agreed to come and be here today and
testify is, I am concerned about the legislation that has been
proposed. Sometimes the best intentions, and we are going to
hear from Kate Hanni here in a second about her horrible
experience, and I know it was a horrible experience. But I
think if you have the best intentions, you can really come up
with some really bad unintended consequences.
On just a good day in New York, in the summertime, you can
have taxi-out times of an hour, hour and a half. We get a
thunderstorm that will come over the field and close departures
for a couple of hours, it would be very easy to have somebody
on a plane over a three hour period of time. To the extent that
our pilots were mandated to bring people back to the gate at
that limit, chaos would reign at a place like LaGuardia, where
there is very little maneuverability.
I think it would be interesting for Congressman DeFazio and
Mr. Chairman to come out to Kennedy on a night when it is
snowing. We are not talking about 10 airplanes in line, we are
talking about 80 airplanes or 100 airplanes that are trying to
get out. If we were to have to come back to the gate, it would
be physically impossible in some places, to get to the gate to
let people off, if two or three people wanted to get off an
airplane, it would be very, very difficult to do that. It
would, more importantly, create a huge disservice to the other
98 percent of the customers that are on board that don't want
to get out of line, don't want to go back to the gate, and
their planes could be stranded. We could find ourselves in a
position where we had thousands of people in the airport
sleeping overnight instead of going on to their destination, if
this was mandated.
Now, I take all of your comments to heart. This industry
has to regulate itself. We have to have evacuation plans, we
have to have contingency plans. And JetBlue is committed to
doing that in the future.
But let us work together with the Department of
Transportation, with the FAA, to figure out how to not keep
airplanes, and to make sure that we don't strand customers and
have ways of letting people off without mandating these hard
limits, which during an irregular operation would potentially
prove catastrophic for our customers, which is the last thing
that we want to do.
Thank you very much for the time.
Mr. Costello. Thank you.
Before we hear the testimony of the other witnesses, we
will respect your time commitment, so I am going to ask a
couple of questions and see if other members have questions or
Mr. May or Mr. Neeleman.
Mr. Neeleman, let me just say to you that both, Mr. May
commented that you can't legislate good weather and you
indicated that the weather, of course, is beyond your control.
I have flown out of JFK on a night where the weather was bad
and we had delays. I think everyone understands that. Everyone
understands. No one is telling you that you have to control the
weather.
The issue here is communication, communicating with the
people who in fact are your customers. As I said in my opening
statement, I was pleased that you took the action at JetBlue
that you did immediately after your incident.
But the other airlines have not. Some have, better than
others. But it defies logic to me why the other airlines
wouldn't be doing exactly what JetBlue has done, why they
wouldn't communicate to their passengers what circumstances you
control, and what other things you can't control. What happens
if in fact because of weather, a flight is canceled,
communicating with them, giving them information and telling
them what their rights are. That hasn't been done.
When the airlines say today, we are going to work, please
don't legislate and we will try and work this out internally,
that was said in 1999. Everyone trusted the airlines to do
that. In fact, here we are back again doing these hearings
because one, the airlines didn't live up to their promises;
two, the department, the DOT didn't handle the responsibility
in making certain that the promises that were made in fact were
carried out; and three, this Subcommittee and the Congress did
not do their job in oversight of the agency and of the
industry.
I am inclined, as I said in my opening statement, not to
legislate these things or to do a one size fits all. But unless
the industry addresses this and addresses it now, there is
going to be Congressional action. There is no question about
it. As Chairman Oberstar said, in a markup of the FAA
reauthorization, unless there is something in place and
evidence that in fact the airlines are following the policies
that they put in place that can clearly be understood by their
passengers, then when we do a markup of the FAA
reauthorization, if that is not in place and being followed,
then you are going to see members offering amendments and you
are going to see an industry that will in fact be regulated
when it comes to passengers and their rights.
So I just wanted to comment, and I wanted to ask Mr. May,
you heard the Inspector General talk about the action that was
taken by ATA after both the American Airlines incident in
December and JetBlue in February. Basically the IG, as I take
it, says that ATA is really just taking the ball away from the
airlines and putting the responsibility on the agency. I want
to give you a chance to comment on that.
Mr. May. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know that that can be
an interpretation, but as somebody who sat in the board meeting
and participated in the discussion prior to that, I can tell
you that it was with the most sincere objectives and motives
that this industry went to the Department of Transportation, to
the Secretary of Transportation, asked her to have the IG look
at the specific circumstances surrounding not just the Austin
event but the events in New York with JetBlue and elsewhere and
how we are responding. We have provided our customer service
plans to the IG. We have provided our contingency plans to the
IG, while at the same time assuring that we are, as I said in
my oral statement, sitting down to re-review those and make
sure that we are updating them and making the changes that are
necessary.
I think this is a very different industry, from the
leadership right on down, than it was in the last event, in
1999, when this took place. I think our CEOs are absolutely
committed to the most positive kinds of changes when it comes
to customer care.
I would reiterate that we don't think that legislating
behavior from the perspective of when we take off and when we
land, we want to leave safety as the primary consideration, and
the opportunity to get where we are going and get our
passengers where they are going safely is the primary. So Mr.
Neeleman and I are absolutely in accord on all of these points.
I think our board also recognizes that customer service is
a critical component. We have to equally address that.
Mr. Costello. The Chair recognizes Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I guess we keep focusing on very specific legislation and
behavior that could impinge operations. I am not sponsoring nor
recommending any legislation that would do that. And my past
attempts on this issue haven't either.
What we are talking about, though, is establishing a basic
floor. For instance, Mr. Neeleman, you have here, it says,
customers are experiencing an onboard ground delay for more
than five hours, JetBlue will take necessary action so that
customers may deplane. Well, I think it would be worth going
through an FAA rulemaking and determining if that is a good
standard for the entire industry. Because right now, apparently
some airlines don't have that standard. And if we say, well, we
don't want to impede operations, well, sorry, it was ten hours.
I think five hours might be right, maybe not. Maybe it could be
a little less.
But I think establishing a floor makes sense. I just don't
understand. And Mr. May, I would hope that you would agree with
that. We shouldn't leave it to the vicissitudes of the
marketplace, because nobody knows what their contract of
carriage said, except the people at JetBlue now, about how long
they might be kept prisoner on a plane without any offer of
getting off.
So we are talking about some really basic floor. And then
if anybody wants to compete over and above that, maybe the FAA
would say it was ten hours. Whatever. But then JetBlue says,
hey, we are only five, we will advertise it. So when people
know that they are stuck at JFK, they are only going to be
stuck on the plane for five hours.
It seems to me, and I had this discussion when I was a
freshman with Mr. Bolger who preceded you in this job. I said,
you do not want to represent the industry to the lowest common
denominator of your organization, and you don't do the ATA or
the industry a service by doing that. I know it is hard to run
a large organization like yours and if you have someone who is
a substandard actor over here, you are trying to urge them to
move up, but then again, you don't want them to pull out of the
organization, so you are not going to beat them over the head
with a club. So you come and say these sorts of things.
But my point would be, we have made your job easier if we
say, in reasonable areas where we can agree, where we are
identifying sort of ongoing chronic problems, we are going to
have the FAA knowing about operational stuff come up with a
reasonable rule and everybody will have to follow it and
anybody who wants to exceed it can. Wouldn't that be
reasonable? I am not talking about arbitrary stuff here.
Mr. May. I think the key, Congressman DeFazio, is making
sure that we don't have a standard that doesn't acknowledge
that JetBlue operates in certain markets with certain equipment
and certain conditions that can be very different from some of
the competitors in the business, United Airlines, American
Airlines and so forth. So I think probably we can take a long
look at trying to find some basic----
Mr. DeFazio. I understand your caveat. It is a good caveat.
But I don't think that humans vary that much. And a human
trapped on United Airlines at Denver for five hours is not
going to be any happier than a human trapped for five hours at
Kennedy or gee, maybe even in beautiful Paris, France, when I
am trapped for five hours on the ground, I am still trapped
five hours in a can with a bunch of people who run out of
water, the lavs are getting ready to overflow and we are
sitting there and no one can tell us what is going to happen.
That is what we are talking about here. I just think that
we are going to have to look very carefully as a committee of
those sorts of what I think would be reasonable floor
standards, understanding, I know it has been 21 years, I
understand operational stuff, I have flown over 3 million
miles, I am pretty well versed in what is good, what is bad,
what works, what doesn't. And I don't think that you are going
to find the Committee doing things that are unreasonable, going
to impinge the operations. But they are, I think, going to set
a basic floor.
Let us go to maybe something we can agree about.
Mr. Neeleman. Can I respond to that for just one second?
Mr. DeFazio. Sure.
Mr. Neeleman. Just from our perspective. I met with some
people who were on our planes that were on for nine hours, on
the plane. They said that the pilot announced at five hours
that there was a break in the weather, the ice pellets were
potentially going to stop, and they said, we are going to
leave. Everybody on the plane cheered after five hours.
Mr. DeFazio. Just like when they used to announce they were
going to ban smoking. I understand. We are all captive. We want
to go somewhere.
Mr. Neeleman. Nobody wanted to get off the airplane.
Mr. DeFazio. That is fine.
Mr. Neeleman. They all wanted to go----
Mr. DeFazio. Okay, well, then, maybe we will mandate that
we have a vote after five hours, and you can have a ballot.
Mr. Neeleman. If you had that vote, if you were number one
for takeoff, nobody would----
Mr. DeFazio. Yes, I know. But the point is, I think that
this needs further deliberation, rather than just allowing it
to just stay out there and let market forces, because the
market is not transparent. Let me go to, one thing I think we
can agree on, I think, is the 30-60 rule, apparently. I have no
idea why that would still exist, since many communities are
served now by commuter jets that are less than 60 seats.
Mr. May. Correct.
Mr. Neeleman. We agree on that.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay, good.
Mr. Neeleman. And we don't over-book our flights.
Mr. DeFazio. We will do what the FAA can find out why. And
then this end of the line thing. It seems to me if
operationally it would be possible, I know there are
extraordinary constraints at Kennedy and elsewhere. But there
are some times, some places where applying the end of the line
rule might not make sense, for instance, at Denver, where there
is a lot more capacity for planes to return to a terminal. It
may not be your gate, but there are lots of gates there. Or
some other place. I mean, it just seems that that should, the
FAA apparently has some process to break that rule with the
customer service representative, whoever that is, wherever they
are and however they can be contacted by the pilot. I think we
ought to be taking a look at that.
Mr. Neeleman. I think it is a good question, but when you
think about it in practical terms, even if we could get back in
line or back to the front of the line, if two people in the
back of the plane said, my business meeting, I am not going to
make it, I want off the airplane, this is----
Mr. DeFazio. Nobody is taking it to that extreme. I have
been there with people, yes, there are a lot of people you
don't want to be on a plane with.
Mr. Neeleman. But if two people can affect 148 people,
delay their trip another two hours because two people say----
Mr. DeFazio. Right, and I have been on planes where I had
to come back and I was delayed four hours out of Dulles because
a woman was very nervous about the flight and the pilot went
back. I said, I can't believe you went back because that woman
was nervous. But they did and she got off and then they had to
find her bags, which, since we don't offer RFID on baggage, it
took about an hour and a half to find her bags. Then we got to
leave.
So I understand that. But again, that doesn't mean we
exclude, we say, gee, we will just keep the in-line thing and
it will be totally inflexible, or you will have to find the
elusive customer--I am saying some level of review and
scrutiny. I think the point the Chairman is trying to make is
that having an industry-friendly Administration is not always
the best thing you can have. They will let a rule languish that
the industry wants because they, we don't want to make any
rules on the industry.
So it is not necessarily serving your needs. And not having
oversight by the committee of jurisdiction, you let these
things get pent up, and then you get some of our colleagues who
don't understand the industry introducing legislation that
might become popular and might move if there is another
incident or two.
So just kind of work with us here.
Mr. May. We hear the counsel of the Chairman very clearly.
Mr. Neeleman. And we are working, all we care about is
customers. If we didn't have our customers, we wouldn't be in
business. So all we are trying to do is help our customers. We
think some of this legislation, and I know you haven't
sponsored it, but it could actually hurt customers.
Mr. DeFazio. I understand. That is why I am not a co-
sponsor of those particular bills.
But again, and just two more quick points, Mr. Chairman,
thank you for being generous. I think these are important.
If you do look, and I am sure you have, the IG report,
there are two things that again, the disclosing of chronically
delayed flights. Yes, there are a couple of web sites where you
can go and get some fragmentary data about airline performance,
and I have done that. But I think they make a good point there
about disclosure. If we want to talk about something that is
market-based, for consumers, if you go back and read Adam
Smith, it has to be, it can't be opaque, it has to be
transparent. Everybody has to have perfect information.
So I would think that the airlines would rush to provide
this information, except maybe there are a few who have such
miserable records with certain flights, they don't want to
disclose it. And then everybody else kinds of says, well, they
are not doing it, so we are not going to do it. So again, this
is an area that we are going to have to look at, if the
industry doesn't do a better job there. And then just the
emphasizing to customer service the importance of providing
timely and adequate flight information.
I had one, everybody relates to it, but you say, oh, yes,
they will do that. But there are times it doesn't quite work.
They have what I call a random excuse generator, because you
can go to the gate and they will look at the computer and they
will say, oh, it is this. Then you go to the Red Carpet room
and oh, it is this. And I will say, well, that is really
different. They said they didn't have a crew, you said it is
a--and there is this ongoing credibility problem. United once
had this great ad campaign. They knew this was what upset
business travelers. I told the former CEO, I said, this is the
greatest ad campaign I have ever seen, you guarantee people,
you were going to tell them, no more than 15 minutes, you will
tell them exactly what is going on. I said, but you had better
follow through on it or you are going to be in a world of hurt.
And they didn't, and they were. Thank you.
Mr. Costello. The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from
Texas, Ms. Johnson.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you
for having this hearing. It is very interesting.
I have experienced, since I have been here now a little
while, around 15 years, every kind of weather you can think of,
all over the Country, the airlines had to stop. I would much
rather be on the ground when we have that kind of weather, even
if I had to sit for eight hours, than to be up in the air.
And let me say that I have observed some improvements in
the way that the information is coming. I was six weeks ago or
something like that, I was stuck in Abilene, Texas, for six
hours on a plane trying to get to Dallas. And the pilot offered
the opportunity for people to get off. He did say, if you get
off, you can't get back on because of security. If you wanted
to rent a car or whatever. And some did get off.
They did pass out additional water, and they ordered pizza.
It was just that by the time, the pizza didn't get there by the
time we got a notice to leave.
I am trying to figure out what else the airlines can do to
accommodate passengers when this comes. I ride one two ways
almost every week. And I know that I am not going to avoid the
weather. And I can't challenge the weather. But I am trying to
figure out what else the airlines can do.
I saw this ad that JetBlue printed, which I thought was
very, very well done. So I want to ask the two CEOs here from
airlines, what else can you do?
Mr. Neeleman. I will tell you, since St. Valentine's Day,
the storm that we had, we have been racking our brains to try
and figure out what we can do more for our customers. I think
the difficulty arises that if you are going into like the
President's Day weekend and you have to cancel 200 flights
because of an ice storm in which you can't take off, now you
have all those customers that are on canceled flights, and the
flights are full through the holiday weekend, that is a very
disruptive thing for our customers. It is really disruptive if
you can't get through on the phones and talk to anybody.
So our focus has really been about notifying people of the
cancellation before they get to the airport, and we did this
this last weekend with the nor'easter that came through, much
better. And then offering them the ability to re-book their
tickets with no additional change fee or no additional charge
so that they can go a different weekend. And do it quickly,
through the internet, where they can push a button and have it
automatically changed over.
But to the extent that if you want to go on that day at
that time, and now you can't go any more because of weather
event, that is a hard thing to talk to customers about. I think
just the ease of information, letting people know what it is,
letting them get in touch with you quickly and receive an
alternative or a full refund. I think one of the things that
wasn't quite clear maybe on the other panel, if we cancel a
flight, a customer, by Federal law, is entitled to a full
refund. We don't hold onto people's money if we cancel a
flight.
So I think it is just the communication and letting people
know. As you said, weather will come. And so it is just trying
to communicate better with our customers and letting them
communicate back with us a lot easier. That is really all we
can do when things are really, really bad on weather.
Mr. May. Congresswoman, I think certainly I endorse
everything that Mr. Neeleman said, and reinforce from our
perspective that I think the suggestions made by many members
on this panel, by the IG, the DOT and others, are things that
we have to pay particular attention to and incorporate wherever
is reasonable into our game plan. We thank you for your
attention to this issue. It is very important to us.
But at the end of the day, completing those flights is the
most important thing, and doing it safely.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much for your response. My time
is expiring. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Costello. I thank the gentlelady. The Chair recognizes
now the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I actually have a
plane to catch so I will make this quick.
Mr. May. So do we.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Lipinski. Hopefully, it will be going out.
Information, that I can't emphasize, information I think
should be available. There should be, the airlines should,
there is absolutely no reason the airlines should not be making
information available about delayed flights, and cumulative
information available about delayed flights, the most important
thing, in the short term, for everyone sitting there waiting
for a flight, in the long term for people being able to make
decisions, judge airlines, et cetera.
I have a question that had come to my mind during what
happened with JetBlue. Is it possible to have a system where if
you don't have any gates at airports, you can still take
passengers off the plane, bring stairs up there, have an area
where the plane could go and get passengers off in that way? Is
that logistically possible?
Mr. Neeleman. Absolutely. In preparation for our next
event, we always have to have these contingency plans. We have,
in the process of purchasing equipment, we have an area, and we
have a luxury at JFK because we have this area, other airlines
don't have it. But we have leased a large area where we can
bring airplanes back and we will have stairs there. Because
what happened on St. Valentine's Day, all the planes were at
the gate, they were stuck to the gates, the wheels were stuck
to the ground, we couldn't push them off, we couldn't push them
on. But we could have done better. We have reevaluated what
could have been done better. So we will take those planes over
there.
There was concern about people falling down stairs and
hurting themselves. We didn't hurt anyone on that day, we just
made their lives very, very miserable.
Mr. Lipinski. You could have just carried them down.
Mr. Neeleman. That is right. We did that eventually, but we
should have done it much sooner. So yes, we have contingency
plans for that.
Mr. Lipinski. Do you think this is possible to be something
that is done regularly by all airlines, to have that available?
Mr. Neeleman. I think it depends on the airport. Jim can
answer that. But I think every airport should have a plan in
place, an evacuation plan, where you have to go to a gate if it
is open. If it is open, you have to be allowed to go there. But
if there is another plane coming to that gate, you could delay
another plane.
Every airport should come up with a space, a plan to be
able to pull something together to make sure that customers can
get off airplanes, be it in Austin or in JFK.
Mr. May. And Congressman Lipinski, I would endorse what Mr.
Neeleman has said and point out to you also that in many of
these circumstances, and we are working with the airports to
try and update our contingency plans. But in many of these
circumstances, when you have these terrible weather events, you
may have 80, 100, 110 planes on the ground that are not
expected to be on the ground at that particular time. Those are
in addition to those that are sitting at the gate.
So one of the complications, again, depending on the
airport, and the bigger the airport, the bigger the problems,
Chicago being one where you could have just no place to put
some of those planes for extended periods of time. That is why
we want to have as much flexibility in our contingency plans
and make sure they are adjusted airport by airport, and try not
to have a mandate of one size fits all.
Mr. Lipinski. Very quickly, Mr. May, the Inspector General
said that there has not really been, the uniform compliance
with the compensation for people who are bumped from flights,
what is the reason for this?
Mr. May. My sense is, and I would be happy to come back to
you, review my members and give you a more defined answer, but
my sense is that it is an airline by airline issue.
Mr. Neeleman. Maybe I could comment on that quickly.
Mr. Lipinski. Well, I am out of time.
Mr. Neeleman. As an airline, I can just tell you that
involuntary separation from an airline is a federally mandated
amount of money. There is no variation on that. But until you
get that amount, I think it is $500, airlines can negotiate
with customer and get volunteers to come off and can offer less
money or free tickets if they want to do it. So that may have
led to the variability he was speaking of.
But there is Federal law that says if you involuntarily
take someone from an airplane, there is a specific amount,
which ours is $1,000, theirs I think is $500, which is Federal.
Mr. Lipinski. That is something I think it would be good
for passengers to know. I would also like to put forward the
possibility of, as I brought up before, of flights being
canceled, not due to weather but mechanical problems, the
possibility of there being some sort of compensation for that.
It certainly has happened to me, happened twice in a row coming
out here, and I needed to be here and expected the flight to go
out at a certain time.
I think that is also something that should certainly be
considered, at least.
Mr. Neeleman. That is what is in our bill of rights. That
is the difference between controllable and uncontrollable. I
can tell you that there is an infinitesimal percentage of
flights that are canceled due to maintenance compared to
weather. It is vastly different. We would be happy, if you
wanted us to provide that, to provide it. But it is very small.
Mr. Lipinski. I very much would like to see that type of
information available out there.
Thank you.
Mr. Costello. The Chair thanks the gentleman from Illinois
and thanks Mr. May and Mr. Neeleman for being here today and
offering your testimony. We will see you in the not too distant
future as we continue our series of hearings. Thank you.
The Chair now recognizes Mrs. Hanni, under the five minute
rule, to please present your testimony. Then we will recognize
the other members of the panel after your testimony and then
have questions for you at the end of Mr. Ruden's testimony.
Mrs. Hanni. Okay, thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the
Committee, my name is Kate Hanni. Thank you for the opportunity
to testify on behalf of the 15,000 members of the Coalition for
an Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights. Some of them, all
volunteers, paid their own way to be here today.
Plus, I also want to note that all of the Nation's leading
consumer protection organizations, including the Aviation
Consumer Action Project, U.S. PIRG, Public Citizen, Consumer's
Union, and the Consumer Federation of America support this
legislation on behalf of their 15 million members.
I have included as a part of my testimony the letter which
all of these groups, including APBOR, sent to the full House
this week.
Before I begin, I would like to point out that I am the
only person here today exclusively representing consumers, your
constituents. Before December, I had no knowledge of airlines
and regulations. But after my stranding, I have taken it upon
myself to fight for the rights of millions of people. Passenger
rights matter to anyone boarding a plane. I hope today to give
the flying public a voice. We appreciate your efforts and ask
for your help in ensuing our safety and well-being when
boarding an aircraft.
We need a new law that will hold the airlines accountable.
On December 29th, my family, I, my husband Tim and my sons
Landon and Chase Costello, and 5,000 other passengers were
treated inhumanely on 121 diverted American Airlines flights.
The horrific conditions and treatment we suffered that night
could have been prevented with legislation protecting the
flying public. Our tires were not glued to the tarmac.
We departed San Francisco aboard American Airlines Flight
1348 en route to Point Clear, Alabama, by way of Dallas Fort
Worth, for a much-needed holiday vacation. Still recovering
from a violent assault, this was my first trip away with both
of my children and my husband. Due to thunderstorms, we were
diverted to Austin. Nearly nine hours later, we were still
sitting on the tarmac with twelve other jets.
During those nine intolerable hours, we ran out of water,
toilets overflowed and we were given only one 45 calorie bag of
pretzels, which I gave to my 11 year old son. As time ticked by
slowly, passengers started to get frustrated, angry and feel
helpless. We were left with no information on how long we would
be held on the plane.
Because of the lack of care and service, a mother made
diapers out of tee-shirts for her baby. People walked their
dogs on the tarmac, while lightning exploded a transformer.
Flight 534, a diabetic paraplegic was in such distress that
paramedics were called. The passengers revolted. Because they
were unable to remove the patient, the pilot declared an
onboard emergency so the plane could go to a gate. On another
aircraft, police arrested brawling people. Flight 2412, a small
dog defecated on passengers who began vomiting and were told to
hold their own vomit bags, due to full trash receptacles.
People ran out of medications and others had no water with
which to take theirs.
Finally, against orders, our pilot drove the airplane to a
gate, where we eventually deplaned. In order to assure we
didn't leave, the airlines refused to unload our bags and said
they would resume the flight the next day. By not canceling our
flights, they did not have to refund our money.
My husband and I were so disappointed with the airline that
we turned our anger into advocacy. We started a blog and a
petition and then finally, the coalition. Yet since coalescing,
there have continued to be an epidemic number of strandings by
different airlines in different airplanes, proving the airlines
see passengers as cargo.
These events are not new. They have just been tolerated
until now.
Two fourteen, JetBlue. Michael Skolnik, one guy, two jets,
17 and a half hours on the JetBlue tarmac. Three five, United
Airlines, Chicago O'Hare; 3/17, Philly and JFK. Rahul Chandron,
I have submitted his testimony in my written statement. He has
three strandings, starting with Northwest Airlines in 1999.
Just when you thought it couldn't get more absurd,
Cheyenne, Wyoming and Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, abandonment by
the airlines. Four planeloads of diverted passengers were
dropped off at two airports, not their destination, and left
there with no resources. Roger Barbour was trying to get to his
own wedding when he was dropped in Coney by United Express, and
the planes later flew away empty. It ended up costing him
$3,000 to get home. This is simply unacceptable.
I have told you some of our stories. I want to tell you
that believe the DOT and the industry are severely under-
stating the number of tarmac strandings. The airlines have said
that all these events are statistically improbable. Evidently
not. In fact, our analysis of the written DOT testimony reveals
that the widely-reported number of 36 planes held for 5 hours
or more doesn't include planes that never took off. This phrase
in the DOT's written testimony shows their oral testimonies are
an attempt to dissuade this Committee with statistics that
don't include some of the more severe incidents that have taken
place.
The DOT and ATA tell us that tarmac delays have improved
and complaints are down since the airlines promised to self-
regulate in 1999. By this, they must mean that an increase of
19,000 tarmac delays of one hour or more over the year 2000 is
a good thing. But the rest of us want these numbers to
decrease, not increase. If we use tarmac delays of over three
hours since 2000 and extrapolate to 100 passengers per flight,
then only 800,000 passengers have been affected.
This slide shows 16,186 diverted flights last year. If we
extrapolate to 100 passengers per flight, over 1.6 million
passengers may have experienced tarmac delays like ours in
Austin. But there are no tarmac statistics for any of those
flights.
Is that the full extent of the problem? Not even close.
This slide simply shows that the statistics the DOT and the ATA
are using account for only 75 percent of all domestic passenger
travel. Therefore, the Cheyenne and Scotts Bluff strandings
would not be accounted for anywhere.
I have outlined today why Congress needs to enact
legislation to curb these outrageous practices and require the
airlines to report all tarmac delays. We need to keep the
public informed and cannot let strandings continue to happen.
As I conclude my testimony, let's watch a clip of the
United Express flights leaving passengers in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Congress must now step up and use the current FAA
reauthorization legislation as an opportunity to ensure that
airlines make passengers' rights a top priority once and for
all.
In 2001, the airlines made commitments which they haven't
kept. And why should they? There are no consequences for their
actions. The DOT forgives most of the fines imposed, so they
are virtually meaningless. Please impose meaningful
consequences in this bill, so that the legislation has some
hope of making a difference to the flying public.
Thank you, Committee members, for giving me the honor of
speaking here today, and a special thank you to Representative
Mike Thompson for taking the first step and proposing this
life-saving legislation. Thank you. I am available for
questions.
Mr. Costello. We thank you for your testimony.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Mitchell under the five minute
rule.
Mr. Mitchell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for
inviting the Business Travel Coalition to testify before this
Committee again and to provide our views on the subject of
airline passenger service. I am here representing corporations
that purchase billions of dollars of air tickets and dispatch
millions of travelers each day. Formed in 1994, BTC has
consistently advocated the need for improved airline service
and has provided Congress and the DOT with suggestions on how
to ensure such improved service in the marketplace.
However, legislation in this area is not needed, in BTC's
view, and could make matters worse in terms of safety margins,
flight cancellations and higher airfares. These unfortunate
incidents do not rise to a level of national seriousness to
warrant Federal laws governing airline industry customer
service. Massive delays are not usual in this industry.
That is not to say that Congress does not have an important
role. Indeed, this hearing is timely in the larger customer
service sense. Progress at the beginning of the decade against
airline customer commitments was recorded for several quarters.
Then the tragedy of 9/11, new security requirements, followed
by SARS, the Iraq war, sky-high jet fuel prices and $40 billion
of airline losses hit. As was said in a few different ways
today so far, airlines, the press, the Government, all lost
focus on these customer service commitments.
Indeed, it is time for the airlines to refocus.
Importantly, DOT is already moving on this issue, as we saw on
a previous panel. In addition, the FAA is examining its role in
contributing to extended delays, for example, with the
confusion created during the February storm in New York
regarding the varying interpretations of the regulation
concerning ice pellets.
DOT, Congress, passenger groups and the press are a potent
combination, a highly visible bully pulpit, to inform consumers
who in turn take purchasing decisions that drive the market.
Reporters and customers pounded JetBlue in the aftermath of its
customer service fiasco. Customers do have choices, and power
to effect to change. In the case of JetBlue, the operational
debacle cost it millions of dollars and tarnished its high-
flying image. The effectiveness of management in responding
with changes to policies and procedures will determine
JetBlue's future success. The marketplace is holding them
accountable.
In addition, in the immediate aftermath of the terrible
conditions that American Airlines' customers endured in
December, the airline implemented new policies and procedures.
There are actions the Federal Government can take to
improve the experience of the flying public. One, increase
airline competition through open skies agreements and the
promotion of new entrants, such as Virgin America. Prevent
radical consolidation of the airline industry. The greater the
competition, the more influence the customer has in driving
service improvements.
Number two, invest in a new satellite system for air
traffic control, to reduce delays and improve system
efficiency, especially during times of severe weather systems.
Pass FAA reauthorization, so the Government and the industry
can head off a real crisis in passenger service. Number three,
build more runways, such as at O'Hare, the modernization
program there that BTC supported.
Number four, insist on better decision making on rules
promulgated by the FAA to prevent highly confusing and service
degrading circumstances, such as with the ice pellet
regulation. And five, require greater DOT enforcement of
existing carrier commitments and existing regulations and laws.
In conclusion, while BTC believes the airlines must do
more, a lot more to reduce delays and minimize customer
hardships during delays, we believe that Federal legislation
would be proven to be counter-productive and something that we
as an organization couldn't support.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Costello. We thank you.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Ruden.
Mr. Ruden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for permitting ASTA to
share its views today.
Since the ATA airlines adopted the 12 so-called voluntary
passenger service commitments in 1999, DOT Inspectors General
have twice found and soon will find a third time that there has
been widespread non-performance of the promises made to the
Government and the public. On behalf of the travel agents who
serve a substantial majority of air travelers, enough is
enough. It is time, after eight years of futility, to achieve
closure with these problems.
Absent a clear threat to safety, passengers should not be
forced to remain on aircraft for periods such as six, eight or
even more hours while waiting to take off. That does not mean
that six hours is okay. Six hours is not okay. I will return to
how that number can be determined in a moment.
ASTA rejects the position that tarmac detentions are too
infrequent and unpredictable or affect too few passengers or
that real solutions are too costly to warrant intervention.
Severe snowstorms and thunderstorms happen every year. It is
time to stop looking for reasons not to deal with these
problems and to act decisively with a program to change the
culture of denial and resistance to change.
Market forces are not going to resolve these issues for us.
The airlines do not compete on customer service as a general
rule, and after eight years, marketplace forces have failed to
do the job. There is no reason to withhold decisive action. The
question is, what action?
A meaningful solution should address all parts of the
airlines' unfulfilled commitments. We need a fundamental and
principled solution, combining legislative, regulatory and yes,
perhaps some self-help by the airlines. An approach that
attacks the roots of the problem, as well as the symptoms, and
that applies to all airlines, not just members of the Air
Transport Association.
There are three steps that Congress could take right away.
First, limit the scope of statutory preemption of State
consumer protection laws and restore consumer access to State
courts and State law. Empowering the States to act against
abuses of air travelers' interest in the same way they can act
against other industries would in one simple step effect a
major change in airline attitudes and performance.
Second, appropriate funds to equip DOT's enforcement staff
with the resources needed to compel compliance with DOT's
unfair and deceptive practices authority.
Third, mandate that all elements of the airlines' passenger
service commitments be made part of their contracts of
carriage. Provable violations of real promises would then be
actionable in State courts as breaches of contract. Such action
by Congress, however, is not sufficient. The Department of
Transportation can and should play a critical role in refining
the operational issues, either for regulatory intervention,
industry action or, if necessary, further Congressional action.
DOT should bring together the parties necessary to craft an
informed regime that assures that airline customers will be
treated properly. Yet in doing so, we must be sensitive to
possible unintended consequences form imposing regulations on a
complex and highly networked system. A joint fact-finding
process would identify the relevant facts, risks and
opportunities. Does it matter, for example, whether the flight
is a domestic two hour trip or a twelve hour international
trip? Is the position in line guarantee as requested by ATA
even feasible?
Under FAA rules and airline operating procedures, who makes
the decisions regarding return to the gate? Is it the pilot?
Company managers? The FAA? What is the influence of FAA and
airline flight crew work rules on flight delays, detentions and
cancellations?
Representatives of interested and responsible parties
should be convened by DOT to develop a factual understanding of
what drives bad outcomes and how they can be avoided. Most
importantly, Mr. Chairman, joint fact-finding should not be
limited to insiders such as the airlines and the agencies. To
earn legitimacy, joint fact-finding must include
representatives of consumers and travel agents, along with the
airlines, the airports, FAA, assisted by the independent
Inspector General.
The airlines, Mr. Chairman, are resisting compulsion,
promising again as they did before, to do better. DOT prefers
marketplace solutions that have no history or chance of
success. The public frustration with repeated mistreatment must
be at or near an all-time high. The time for voluntary
passenger service commitments has passed.
Congress and DOT should act now, then, to limit Federal
preemption of State consumer protection laws, require service
policies be integrated into contracts of carriage, replenish
DOT's enforcement budgets and promptly convene a meeting of
responsible interests, including ASTA and representatives of
consumers, airlines, airports, the FAA and the Inspector
General, to develop a plan as we have described.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Costello. We thank you for your testimony.
Mrs. Hanni, I wonder if you might just, a few questions.
One, you have had an opportunity, obviously, to take a look at
JetBlue's, what they would call a passenger bill of rights,
spelling out what passengers' rights are, compensation for
delays, canceled flights and so on. I wonder if you might
comment on their policies that they have adopted.
Mrs. Hanni. I admire very much that he came out immediately
and first of all, gave the passengers a refund for their ticket
and a free round-trip ticket somewhere, which I think was
extremely admirable. I also admire that they canceled flights
the next time that there was a serious weather event that they
knew they were going to have people either out on the tarmac or
stuck in the terminal. That was extremely proactive. I was up
all night, by the way, on March 17th, with a woman whose
daughter was lost in the Philadelphia airport, from a different
airline. So JetBlue did the right thing.
I think their customer bill of rights is pretty
comprehensive. I don't know yet how many people are or are not
being compensated. I have had a few people say they are not and
a few say they are. So it is very hard for me to tell how it is
working so far. Although I am getting a lot of reports, now
that I have become the advocate for airline rights, I have
people text messaging me when they are stuck on the tarmac or
if their wives are. So I guess the biggest problem is that it
is not binding unless it is in their contract of carriage, and
I am not aware that it has been made a part of their contract
of carriage.
The other thing is with the airlines, whatever they give
us, they can take it away. So that appears to be what has
happened in the past, that there have been agreements made that
they can then summarily remove for one reason or another. I
don't know if those agreements were ever incorporated in their
contracts of carriage, the agreement with the ATA, the 12
points. What scares me is that they can. And for any reason,
that they can make a management decision that may benefit them
financially, but not the passengers.
Mr. Costello. Let me ask, and of course, the policy has
only been in place a very short time.
Mrs. Hanni. Right.
Mr. Costello. In reviewing what JetBlue did as far as their
customer bill of rights, is there anything that you would add?
Would you say that it is pretty comprehensive, as you said, is
there anything missing?
Mrs. Hanni. I don't think chronically delayed flights were
mentioned in their customer bill of rights. Also, the whole
idea of the controllable irregularities. As I understand it,
that means that if there is a weather delay for 24 hours, then
they don't have to compensate. But then if there is an
additional 24 hours, that is where a controllable irregularity
becomes an issue and they get to determine. See, the big
problem is that they get to determine what is weather, they get
to determine what is a controllable irregularity. It is not us,
it is not the FAA. It is them.
So also, in our situation, we were diverted, but we knew
were weren't going to fly after three hours. So our situation
was very different than the JetBlue strandings.
Mr. Costello. Mr. Mitchell, you indicate in your testimony
that how management responds at JetBlue will determine the
future success of JetBlue. Do you want to elaborate on that?
Let me ask, maybe the first question is, you heard what
Mrs. Hanni just said, that there have been some reports that
some people have not been compensated. One, have you had,
either Mr. Mitchell, or Mr. Ruden, have you had any feedback
concerning the JetBlue policy not being adhered to, and number
two, I ask both of you about, in particular Mr. Mitchell, the
effectiveness of what management does with their policy will
determine the future of the company.
Mr. Mitchell. To address your second question, I have not
heard any feedback about passengers being treated unevenly
against JetBlue's new policy. It could be, I am just not aware
of it.
I think the marketplace is watching JetBlue very carefully.
I can speak very specifically about the corporate marketplace
that JetBlue has been endeavoring to enter for the last six to
eight to twelve months. Travel managers and purchasing managers
in particular are watching the follow-up and the follow-through
and the actual commitment of JetBlue.
So they would be hurt in that market, one that they
desperately want to break into. I am talking about the large
corporations that buy business travel.
So I think as well, as long as the press stays on the issue
and this Committee and the DOT and consumer groups keep a
bright light shined on JetBlue, they will empower the
marketplace to further reward or penalize JetBlue for the
effectiveness.
Mr. Costello. Thank you.
Mr. Ruden?
Mr. Ruden. Mr. Chairman, I don't have any information
indicating that JetBlue is not complying with what they said.
It would be surprising if they weren't. There may be individual
mistakes being made here and there, but I don't expect that
they will deviate materially from what they have done.
Whether this is going to have the influence on the
marketplace that Mr. Mitchell suggests, I am highly skeptical,
based on the experience of the last eight years.
Mr. Costello. Well, before we conclude the hearing, let me
just say that we appreciate your being here today, your
testimony and your advocacy, in particular, Mrs. Hanni, on
behalf of customers and the flying public. You heard me say
earlier, more than once, that we are not going to conclude this
hearing, put it on the shelf and walk away from it. We are
going to be aggressive in our oversight. We will work very hard
to make certain that either from a legislative standpoint or a
standpoint of the industry coming together and doing what
JetBlue and American Airlines both have done in proposing a
passenger bill of rights or customer bill of rights, and making
certain that they are followed, that is one of the major
problems, in my judgment, from 1999, is that there is an
agreement, and the agreement was that Congress said, you work
it out, they worked it out, it was acceptable, there were
promises made but promises were not kept.
The DOT did not do its job in making certain that the
airlines lived up to their promises, and the Congress did not
do its job in proper oversight. I assure you that I am
committed, and members of this Subcommittee are committed to
following through with this to make certain that customers are
protected, that they understand their rights, they understand
the procedures when they book their flight from the beginning
of the process to the end.
So we thank you for your testimony.
Before I conclude the hearing, the Ranking Member has asked
that we submit for the record hearings on various issues that
have been conducted by the Subcommittee since 1999. So we will
enter the hearing list without objection.
[Information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Costello. And with that, we again thank you, and this
concludes the Subcommittee's hearing. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 2:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]