Posted by Seth on April 25, 2011 under News, TSA | 
Can you list every address you’ve lived at since birth? What about every employer – including the name of your supervisor and their phone number – you have ever had? Every school you attended, including address and phone number? If not, you might not be able to get a passport if the State Department has its way. And those are the easy questions on the newly proposed form DS-5513.
Here’s the justification for the new form as provided in the Federal Register filing:
The primary purpose for soliciting this information is to establish citizenship, identity, and eligibility for a U.S. Passport Book or Passport Card. The information may also be used in connection with issuing other travel documents or evidence of citizenship, and in furtherance of the Secretary’s responsibility for the protection of U.S. nationals abroad.
If you can demonstrate (arguably via a certified birth certificate) that you were born in the US then the above questions are the only ones you really need to complete. If not, however, the questionnaire gets way more detailed. Here are some of the specifics that are asked for:
- What type of document, if any, did your mother use to enter into the United States before your birth?
- Please describe the circumstances of your birth including the names (as well as address and phone number, if available) of persons present or in attendance at your birth.
- Was there any religious or institutional recording of your birth or event occurring around the time of birth? (Example: baptism, circumcision, confirmation or other religious ceremony. Please provide details including the name, location of the
institution, and date.)
They even ask for specific details regarding any medical professionals that may have been involved, including a history of appointment dates. Oh, and the mother’s profession, address and, because we don’t want to be particularly obvious that we’re discriminating against immigrants, "What type of document, if any, did your mother use to enter into the United States before your birth?"
In case you’re curious, they estimate that compiling all this information will take only 45 minutes on average. I only have to answer the easy questions and I’m not sure I can do it that quickly.
Sadly, this will almost certainly become the rule, just like all the other asinine things the government is doing to infringe upon our rights "out of an abundance of caution." Today is the last day to register a complaint to the appropriate officials. The easiest way to do so is to email GarciaAA@state.gov. You must include the DS form number (if applicable), information collection title, and OMB control number in any correspondence. For this particular abomination those details are DS-5513 and Biographical Questionnaire for U.S. Passport; there is no OMB control number currently assigned.
UPDATE (17:55 EDT 25 APR): This form is supposedly only to be used if the veracity of the initially supplied documentation is in doubt. So it probably won’t apply to everyone. Still, there is a TON of data in here way beyond what should be needed to establish citizenship and well beyond what the government should need from us.
Here’s the letter I’m sending. I encourage you to contact them as well. Oh, and the 60-day comment period started on February 24th so it is pretty much over so it is important to act quickly (i.e. TODAY) on this issue!
To: GarciaAA@state.gov
Subject: Comments on proposed rule for DS-5513 – Biographical Questionnaire for U.S. Passport
To whom it may concern:
I am writing to comment on the proposed rule change published in the Federal Register as Public Notice 7345 regarding form DS-5513 – Biographical Questionnaire for U.S. Passport; there is currently no OMB control number assigned to this document.
The proposed form is collecting an excessive amount of data, well beyond what is necessary to confirm citizenship and issue a passport for qualified individuals. The time burden suggested – an average of 45 minutes – is a gross underestimate of how long it will take to collect even the basic information; answering questions 5-12 will take significantly longer. As an adult in my 30s who is qualified to answer only the basic questions I found that it took me well over one hour to compile the information and it is still incomplete.
My schooling and job history have no bearing on my citizenship status, yet the form asks for full details of both. If I fail to provide it (and potentially if I miss something) the State Department can deny me a passport, even though I am a naturally born citizen.
The form show significant bias against home-birthed children, requiring them to complete extensive documentation as though they are an undocumented alien in this country. Similarly, the extensive details requested about the circumstances of the birth – names and phone numbers of everyone present, for example – are excessive and go well beyond what is necessary to document citizenship.
Travel is a wonderful thing. It provides education, experiences and perspective all at once, helping to better both the people doing the traveling as well as those whom they visit. It should be encouraged and facilitated by our government, not impeded. This form represents an excessive data collection against US citizens and is an undue burden for demonstrating citizenship. It is working against these goals, not towards them.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Wandering Aramean.
Posted by Seth on March 10, 2011 under Flying, News |
When the Department of Transportation announced in December 2009 that they were setting a hard limit on the amount of time flights could be delayed (the so-called "3-hour rule") before the operating carrier would be subject to significant fines there was quite the debate as to its potential impact. Many lauded the government for helping protect the passengers while others (self included) raised the point that more cancelled flights is worse for passengers than being stuck on the airplane but actually getting to the destination. Nearly a year into the new program the data available suggest that, so far, customers are losing far worse than expected from this policy.
With nine months of data available it is pretty clear that the number of 3-hour or longer tarmac delays is down. The DoT is making sure to trumpet that news and many media outlets are picking it up and running with it. They even have a pretty graph showing the impact of the rule:
Seems great, right? It is not.
Yes, there are fewer folks spending entirely too long in the plane on the way to wherever they are going, but that does not mean they are actually getting where they are going. It turns out that the number of flight cancelations has increased dramatically during this period as well, both as an absolute number and as a percentage of total scheduled flights. Actually, the latter is even worse as the total number of scheduled flights has decreased since the rule went into effect.
Here’s another look at the data, compiled based on the statistics published by the same federal agency that the DoT is using for the above numbers (click the images for the source data):
Yes, the variation in the size of the lines is much more dramatic in the bottom graph, but Marshall McLuhan would not be amused. It may look like the decrease in 3-hour delayed flights is more dramatic than the rise in cancelations, and in terms of percentages it is. But most significant is that the number of passengers displaced is MUCH higher because of the increased cancelations.
Oh, and the total number of flights operating each month was lower in 2010 than in 2009 so the fact that the cancelation numbers are higher in 6/10 samples and essentially the same in 3/10 is not a particularly comforting thought at all. That’s 90% of the sample since the rule went into effect where the percentage of flights canceled was higher than the previous year.
Load factors are running at or near all-time highs. This means that once a flight is canceled it is even harder to accommodate the affected passengers as there simply are no empty seats to place them in. So increasing the number of canceled flights certainly doesn’t seem to be the way to solve the problem of inconvenienced customers.
It should be pointed out that correlation certainly does not equal causation. Maybe there is another reason that there were so many flights canceled. But there is weather every year and the impact of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption was mostly confined to April 2010. Ironically that was the one month of the past 10 that had a lower cancelation rate.
Penalizing lots of customers for the sake of a select few is a bad way to operate. The Department of Transportation needs to take a hard look at these numbers and reconsider this policy. Delays and cancelations suck for everyone. The government should not be in the position of inducing them.
A bit more coverage of this phenomena can be found here, too
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Posted by Seth on September 21, 2010 under frequent flyer, News, points |
So, just how much extra can you expect to pay on top of your fare to travel? While it depends on the airline you’re flying the number is about 6% on average. Sortof.
Tracking the reality of airline pricing is, at best, a gray magic sort of scenario. There are quarterly reports, annual reports and a myriad of different acronyms and categories of statistics reported. Some of the reports are required by the Department of Transportation and then aggregated and distributed by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Even those numbers are incomplete, however, because the reporting requirements simply have not kept pace with the flood of fees that the airlines are coming up with. So all the numbers are soft. The BTS states it rather clearly:
Revenue from seating assignments and on-board sales of food, drink, pillows, blankets, entertainment, or any other ancillary items are reported as Transport Related Revenue and cannot be identified separately.
So they cannot identify all those details but that doesn’t mean that the details are trivial. The Q2 2010 report was just released and the numbers it documents are rather impressive. The industry realize $2.1 billion in “ancillary revenue” in Q2 2010. Of that nearly $900MM of the revenue came from checked baggage fees. Another $600MM came from reservation change fees with the balance attributed to standby fees, pet carriage charges and sales of frequent flyer miles to business partners.
Putting the number in context, the total industry profits from the reporting carriers during the time period was a hair over $3 billion. If there was any doubt about just how important these fees are to the profitability of the airlines this report (along with the past few that have told similar stories) should put said doubt to rest.
As for which airlines are seeing the bulk of the profit from these fees, the usual suspects are pretty well represented. As the largest carrier in the world (for a couple more weeks) Delta is atop the list for total ancillary revenue. The soon to be largest carriers, a combined United Airlines/Continental at about half the total revenue that Delta realized in the quarter ($681MM v. $340MM combined). US Airways is holding strong in its position near the top of the list which is quite impressive, especially considering how much smaller than the other airlines it is.
There’s Southwest, coming in at $200MM in ancillary fees collected in the quarter. Sure, the may not charge for checked bags (and they love to publicize that in their commercials) but their customers are still paying plenty of fees, enough to see them above the industry average in terms of revenue from fees compared to total operating revenue (6.4% to the industry average of 6%).
And, just to make sure that they’re on the top of some list, there’s Spirit Air. The carrier realized 24.2% of its revenue in the quarter from ancillary charges. Ouch.
Of course, if the total cost is the same then no big deal but the numbers generally are not well published or particularly clear for customers meaning that the total travel cost is often not known by passengers until the trip is over, after it is too late to make a fair fare comparison. There are a few folks out there trying to help level the playing field (check out TruPrice for a pretty solid example) but it is still nearly impossible for customers effectively compare prices in advance.
Lots more numbers in the report, including fuel costs (figure ~$3.5 cents per seat mile flown, so that 2500 mile trip from New York City to Los Angeles costs the airline about $85 in fuel for your seat. Kindof hard to believe that they still sell the seats for not much more than that so often.
Tags: Continental, Delta, DoT, fees, frequent flyer, merger, points, Southwest Airline, Spirit Air, United, US Air
Posted by Seth on August 28, 2010 under News |
In a move that was only surprising for how quickly it happened, the Department of Justice has stated that they are satisfied with the terms of the proposed merger between Continental and United Airlines. The new carrier will be the largest and there was some concern that various regulatory agencies would place undue barriers in the place of the merger. Given the conditions that the DoJ assigned, however, that seems to have been false fear.
The only significant condition that the DoJ applied was that a number of slots – amounting to 18 daily round trip flights – be ceded to another carrier in the Newark market. That number roughly represents the number of flights that United operates from Newark today. Given the relative domination of the Newark market by Continental today (64% of enplanements are on Continental or Continental Express), this requirement does not seem unreasonable. While Cleveland and Houston both have a higher percentage of service operated by Continental, the New York City market is apparently in greater need of competition. Plus there is the fact that Newark is slot-restricted while the other airports are not.
Those slots will be granted to a new entrant in the Newark market: Southwest Airlines. The carrier will be leasing the slots from the combined United/Continental and is expected to begin operations in March 2011. The full complement of slots will be transferred by June 2011. They have not yet announced destinations for the 18 daily flights.
Unlike the recently proposed Delta/US Airways slot swap, the Continental/Southwest deal was welcomed by the DoJ. It seems to reason that having a significant number of slots go to a single stakeholder, particularly a new entrant, is a better competitive solution than spreading a limited number of slots across a broad collection of carriers, effectively limiting any one of them from providing significant service and competition.
With this approval the number of potential road blocks for the proposed merger diminishes quite significantly. There are still potential union issues and the Department of Transportation will eventually need to rule on a combined operating certificate. And there is the pesky little issue of the stockholders needing to approve the merger, but that seems quite likely given the large number of institutional shareholders. At this point things appear to be progressing rapidly towards this deal being done somewhere around Halloween, if not sooner.
Speaking of the union issues, it is no real surprise that the pilots’ unions have brought up the scope clause in their initial negotiations with the companies. What is somewhat surprising is just how aggressive they are being with their stance. Currently the United and Continental pilots have differing scope clauses for their operations. With United the limit for regional operations permits the operation of 70 seat aircraft by regional partners, Continental has a more restrictive 59 seat limit in the agreement with its pilots. The initial stance of the combined union is that there should be zero flights operated by regional carriers. Yeah, a bit extreme. They’ve made it clear from the initial announcement that they’re looking to be as restrictive as possible on this and the initial position is not too surprising as a jumping off point for the negotiations. Still, it is a bit unreasonable to expect that will actually be the ultimate agreement.
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Posted by Seth on August 27, 2010 under News |
One of the conditions handed down by the European and US authorities for the approval of the American Airlines – British Airways anti-trust immunity application was the ceding of slots for service between London and certain US airports. Delta has decided to take advantage of this opportunity. They have applied to the appropriate authorities to serve both Boston and Miami from London’s Heathrow airport. Based on the limited number of slots at Heathrow currently held by the SkyTeam alliance, it appears likely that the application will be approved. If awarded the new service Delta would operate 10 daily frequencies from Heathrow to 6 different US gateways:
- New York JFK: 3x daily
- Boston: 2x daily
- Miami: 1x daily
- Minneapolis: 1x daily
- Atlanta: 11x weekly
- Detroit: 10x weekly
In addition to the new London service, Delta is also looking to beef up its presence in the Raleigh Durham market. Noting a significant increase in traffic from RDU this year, the carrier is adding 14 daily frequencies, increasing service by more than 25%. Included in these additions is service to three cities not currently served by Delta from RDU of which two have never seen Delta service from RDU. Additionally, Delta has recently opened a SkyClub lounge in RDU, demonstrating their commitment to the market.
Of course, it is entirely possible that part of the traffic increase is based on the fact that Delta has been running a rather significant promotion for flights from RDU and that when the promo ends the volume will decrease as well. Then again, maybe the fact that the region is pretty stable is really what is driving the expansion. Delta will be competing against Southwest on three of the routes. A number of the new frequencies are on the somewhat miserable CRJ-100 aircraft so that might not be so great either, but who knows.
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Posted by Seth on August 5, 2010 under News |
After taking quite a beating in the press (including here), Southwest gave up on trying to use their PR machine to convince the world that we were all misinterpreting their Contract of Carriage. They finally got the lawyers to actually fix it.
The latest version of the CoC – updated 28 July 2010 – now reflects the following in their definitions section:
Force Majeure Event means any event outside of Carrier’s control, including, without limitation, acts of God, meteorological events, such as storms, rain, wind, fire, fog, flooding, earthquakes, haze, or volcanic eruption. It also includes, without limitation, government action, disturbances or potentially volatile international conditions, civil commotions, riots, embargoes, wars, or hostilities, whether actual, threatened, or reported, strikes, work stoppage, slowdown, lockout or any other labor related dispute involving or affecting Carrier’s service, mechanical difficulties by entities other than Carrier, Air Traffic Control, the inability to obtain fuel, airport gates, labor, or landing facilities for the flight in question or any fact not reasonably foreseen, anticipated or predicted by Carrier.
The line about mechanical failures has changed from “mechanical difficulties” to “mechanical difficulties by entities other than Carrier.” Just a couple words but they make all the difference when it comes to actually doing right by the customer.
It is worth noting that Southwest is still the only carrier that has such a clause in their CoC but at least now it isn’t quite so badly stacked against the customer. They did not relent on their decision to restrict travel funds, but such a change was not expected as they are doing what they can to increase revenue and close loopholes in their policies.
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Posted by Seth on July 25, 2010 under News |
Airlines generally stack the deck against their customers. Most rules are written such that should anything go wrong, the airline will likely benefit more than the passengers do. In some cases this is reasonable – an airline certainly isn’t responsible for delays caused when weather happens – but in many cases it is not. Historically airlines have accepted that maintenance of their aircraft is something that they are responsible for and that a mechanical failure of a plane is something that they should have avoided in the first place, leaving them on the hook to care for passengers during any associated delay or cancelation.
Southwest has decided to push the envelope on this issue, however, declaring that mechanical failures of their aircraft are force majeure events in their newly revised Contract of Carriage (CoC):
Force Majeure Event means any event outside of Carrier’s control, including, without limitation, acts of God, meteorological events, such as storms, rain, wind, fire, fog, flooding, earthquakes, haze, volcanic eruption or any other event, including, without limitation, government action, disturbances or potentially volatile international conditions, civil commotions, riots, embargoes, wars, or hostilities, whether actual, threatened, or reported, strikes, work stoppage, slowdown, lockout or any other labor related dispute involving or affecting Carrier’s service, mechanical difficulties, Air Traffic Control, the inability to obtain fuel, labor or landing facilities for the flight in question or any fact not reasonably foreseen, anticipated or predicted by Carrier.
Tucked away at the bottom there is the phrase “mechanical difficulties.” Having those two words in this section of the CoC essentially means that Southwest has significantly fewer obligations to their customers now should there be an aircraft breakdown. Southwest is the only major US-based carrier to include that phrase in the force majeure section of their CoC. Maybe this only applies if the whole fleet is affected – think DOT maintenance directive or something similar – but that certainly is not clear from the way the Contract is written. Moreover, there are a number of seemingly conflicting sections in the CoC that Southwest may or may not hold responsibility in the same instance. These gray areas are dangerous territory for customers.
Combined with the move to limit the use of travel credits for canceled reservations, the new Southwest CoC takes a significant step backwards in customer flexibility and care. The airline has made a name for itself in many ways because of the reputation it carries for customer care. These changes portend a very unfortunate change in such customer-focused service.
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Posted by Seth on June 5, 2010 under News |
The Department of Transportation (DoT) has been rattling their saber quite a bit lately, handing out fines to a number of carriers and revising rules to better protect passengers, mostly under the auspices of enforcement against “deceptive trade practices” in whichever way the DoT chooses to interpret that clause. The most recent big-name actions coming from the DoT included notable fines for failure to comply with reporting requirements and insufficient notification of passenger rights when flights are overbooked. Oh, and the recently implemented 3-hour tarrmac hold time rule.
That was a pretty busy first half of the year for the DoT but they are not done yet. This week they’ve unveiled a slew of proposed rules changes to the rules. Most of the proposed rules appear pretty solid though there are a few which are questionable at best. Tarmac delay rule enforcement would be increased from domestic carriers to all airlines operating planes of 30 or more seats in the United States, for example. But beyond that change there are three significant areas that could see dramatic revisions in policies as enforced by the airlines.
Denied Boarding Compensation
The idea of permitting airlines to overbook flights and hope to have the correct number of passengers by the time the door closes is one that has been in effect for nearly 50 years, originally prescribed by the Civil Aeronautics Board way back when they ran the show for airline policies. Even after deregulation and the dissolution of the CAB the voluntary/involuntary denied boarding policies have more or less thrived. Passengers have often been willing to accept bumps and the airlines would pay out compensation either under the voluntary rules or the forced comp scheme of IDB as set by the Feds.
Unfortunately, however, the IDB comp is often not keeping pace with the economy or the changing landscape of air travel. The dollar amounts are fixed rather than tied to an annual adjustment rate such as the CPI. Moreover, there are some holes in how the compensations offers are presented to customers at the gate. Generally there isn’t much time to fully educate these passengers of their rights and the airlines have been taking advantage of this rushed environment to convince passengers to take company credit vouchers rather than cash or check compensation that they may be entitled to. Similarly airlines will offer a “free round trip ticket” without sufficient details of the restrictions surrounding those tickets. The DoT is suggesting that the rules be changed on this front such that any offer made verbally include all the options and details, not just the one that is best for the airline with the alternate options buried in fine print.
If a carrier offers free or reduced rate air transportation as compensation to volunteers, the carrier must disclose all material restrictions on the use of that transportation before the passenger decides whether to give up his or her confirmed reserved space on that flight in exchange for the free or reduced rate transportation.
Additionally, the DoT is altering the definition of what “confirmed reserved space” means with regard to denied boarding compensation. Currently “zero fare tickets,” those from certificates, frequent flyer points or consolidator shops where the actual price is not stored in the PNR, would not be eligible for denied boarding compensation. The DoT suggests that this be changed such that zero fare tickets are included. Determining the value of those tickets for the purposes of compensating the customer my be difficult as there is no good way to translate the value of points to dollars. One proposal is to use comparably priced tickets from others on the flight. Another is to simply refund double the number of points redeemed for the travel, plus the cash component paid for taxes and fees. Either way, this change will be good news for protecting folks on the “free” flights, tickets which are generally anything but.
Of course, increasing the compensation requirements may induce the carriers to reduce their overbooking thresholds. They overbook because they generally get enough volunteers to accept a voucher – and only about 35% of those vouchers are redeemed – to the point that they can still make money handing out the chits. As loads increase such that the airlines are less able to accommodate passengers on a re-route in a timely manner it becomes much less convenient for the customer to the point that a $200 or $400 voucher is less likely to solve the problem if it also involves a delay of a couple days rather than a couple hours. Hopefully this new set of regulations helps on this front.
Full Fare Pricing
The DoT holds a unique position in its ability to control pricing advertising rules over airlines. Neither states nor the Federal Trade Commission have jurisdiction; it is just the DoT. And for quite some time now the DoT has had a policy that
…states that the Department considers any advertisement that states a price for air transportation that is not the total price to be paid by the consumer to be an unfair and deceptive practice in violation of 49 U.S.C. § 41712. However, the Department’s enforcement policy regarding this rule has permitted certain government-imposed charges to be stated separately from this total price. Under this policy, taxes and fees that are collected by a carrier on a per-person basis, are imposed by a government entity, and are not ad valorem in nature are allowed to be excluded from an advertised fare. The existence, nature, and amount of these additional taxes and fees must be clearly indicated where the airfare first appears in the ad, so that the consumer can easily calculate the total price to be paid. The Department has consistently prohibited sellers of air transportation from breaking out any other fee, including fuel surcharges, service fees, and taxes imposed on an ad valorem basis.
In other words, the airlines have to publish everything except the per-passenger taxes as a single number and they have to make it very easy for a customer to figure out what those extra taxes are. Unfortunately airlines are stretching the limits of what those fees are the DoT is now suggesting that the rule “include a requirement that all advertisers include all mandatory fees in the advertised price.”
One quirk of such a plan is that each airport has a different Passenger Facility Charge item that is added on to a fare on a per-person basis but specific to a routing. So flying from New York City to Chicago to Las Vegas would price differently than New York City to Houston to Chicago or on a non-stop flight from New York to Chicago. This is just one of many hurdles that would need to be overcome to enforce a true “full fare pricing” scheme.
The policy would also prohibit the advertising of “one way” fares where a round-trip purchase is required. This is a pet peeve of mine and I would be quite happy to see it go away.
Another hurdle to overcome is the fact that carriers are racing to unbundle costs that have traditionally been considered part of air travel including checked baggage or carry-on baggage, meals, seat assignments and other similar benefits.The DoT is investigating the likelihood that pricing engines can accurately support the ability to allow passengers to specify a search not just by dates and city pairs but by the amenities required such as the ability to check a bag and have a meal on the flight. The GDS networks that handle the majority of the fare pricing for customers are not quite to the position where they can support these queries but it will be interesting to see what happens as they come about. Of course, it might mean deciding 9 months in advance if you’re going to check a bag on a vacation next summer, but you’ll have some idea of what it will actually cost in the end, much more so than is possible today. All booking documents such as e-Ticket receipts would be required to show the full details of these pricing details so as to inform the customer of any future charges as far in advance as possible.
Opt-Out Sales
The DoT is proposing to ban all add-on sales offers that require customers to opt out of a service rather than to opt in. These services often include advance seat assignments, airport transfers, travel insurance, show tickets and similar ancillary offers. These are generally high margin sales for the agents and confusing to the customer to figure out how to unselect all the offers. Even an educated consumer can be easily tricked by these opt-out offers as a good friend of mine experienced on a recent trip to Panama City and Mexico City.
Codeshare Service
Airlines love codeshare service. By creating phantom flight numbers one airline can sell service from another with virtually zero responsibility to actually deliver on that service. Whether through the outsourcing of flight operations to smaller, regional carriers or in setting up long-haul partnerships to provide increased global coverage, codesharing is generally a fantastic thing for the airlines. As part of approving international codeshare service the DoT has generally inserted this clause in the deal:
…the carrier selling such transportation (i.e., the carrier shown on the ticket) accept responsibility for the entirety of the code-share journey for all obligations established in the contract of carriage with the passenger; and that the passenger liability of the operating carrier be unaffected
When all the airlines had generally similar policies this was easy as there weren’t enough discrepancies in policies for it to matter. But as each carrier carves more benefits into nuance and minutiae the ability to deliver those benefits consistently across the codeshare is diminishing rapidly.When one airline permits holders of a certain credit card to check bags for free but then sells those customers a codeshare flight operated by a partner which does not extend that same benefit then the spirit, if not the letter, of this clause is violated. The DoT hopes that the revised rule will address this issue and require truly seamless applicability of benefits.
Peanuts
Finally, the DoT is back to looking at how to prevent peanuts from showing up on airplanes in the name of protecting people who have severe peanut allergies. In short, the DoT suggests that, “Airline passengers with severe allergies to peanuts have a qualifying disability as defined in Part 382.” A “qualifying disability” in this sense requires action to address it on the part of the carriers. The DoT once previously tried to issue a ruling on this issue. In 1998 they proposed that accommodations be made when the airline was informed in advance. Congress quite quickly stepped in and threatened to pull funding should that guidance actually be enforced.
The DoT isn’t giving up on the issue, however, and they are coming back with proposals for other ways to make such a ban stick.
A lot of the things the DoT is trying to require here are actually moves that will ultimately benefit the traveling public. Sure, I’d love to see more DBC vouchers in my travel funds kit but I also understand that protecting the folks who don’t understand how they work, the folks who will be left stranded for days at an airport waiting to get home, do need some protection. Probably not a ton of huge impact with these changes, especially with the current crop of GDS interfaces unable to actually produce the truly full fare costs including the al a carte services, but the ideas are definitely good ones. Hopefully the rest of the technology catches up soon to make it happen.
Want to read more about these proposals? Check out what Aviation Week, View from the Wing or Chris Elliott have to say about it.
Posted by Seth on May 4, 2010 under News |
The Department of Transportation (DoT) issued a ruling this afternoon denying the attempt by Delta and US Airways to dictate the terms of landing slot divestitures as part of a mega deal between the two carriers. The initial deal was announced last August, with Delta to gain over 120 slot pairs at LaGuardia and US Airways to gain more than 40 at National Airport in Washington, DC. The DoT had issues with that plan and suggested that the two carriers would need to divest some of those slots to offer other airlines the ability to become more competitive in the NYC and DC markets.
So then, in late March, the two carriers announced a plan to offer a number of slots to competitors. No, they didn’t offer quite as many as the DoT initially requested, but it was pretty close. And the swaps announced did offer a lot of competition. Most notable was the US Airways deal with JetBlue, bringing that carrier into National for the first time. But, in a ruling today, the DoT has stated that the plans drawn up by Delta, US Airways and the other five carriers are insufficient.
Why? Because the slot divestiture was not conducted as a blind auction. In other words, the two carriers should not have been permitted to negotiate with other airlines to get the best deal possible for the slots they are being forced to give up. They must, instead, simply place them up for grabs and hope that the revenue they realize is good enough. Odds are the prices will be similar enough, but it is hard to know for sure.
The other objection, one raised most vocally by Southwest, is that the airlines should not be allowed to choose their competitors. This makes a bit of sense coming from Southwest; they are not shy about their desire to acquire more slots at LaGuardia. But there is also nothing stopping them from pursuing those slots on the open market. If the price is right someone will be willing to sell the slots, right?
And so it is back to the drawing board, and the courthouse. Delta and US Airways have announced their intentions to appeal the ruling.
There are no winners in this decision – consumers lost, communities lost and our employees lost. Even our competitors lost.
Yeah, they’re not too happy about this at all. And I’m guessing that a few others are pretty annoyed, too, including JetBlue. The good news is that JetBlue still has eight slot pairs that it acquired in a deal with American Airlines. But those extra five would have been pretty nice to have.
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Posted by Seth on March 24, 2010 under News |
The writing was on the wall for this one since a couple weeks ago when Delta, American Airlines and jetBlue applied for exemptions at JFK, followed by Continental applying for exemptions at Newark and LaGuardia. US Airways applied for an exemption for their operations at Philadelphia today.
The claim by US Air is actually pretty entertaining. Basically they’re saying that they pick up so much of the overflow from New York that it overwhelms their facilities. Just 11 flights diverting was enough to throw a spanner in the system.
…on March 13, 11 flights headed for New York-area airports diverted to Philadelphia because of bad weather. The extra demand caused a delay for departures from Philadelphia. This resulted in clogged taxiways and gates…"
These 11 diversions had such an impact that the airport informed the FAA that they were unable to accept any more diversions for fear of completely disrupting operations. For only 11 extra planes on the ground. Something doesn’t add up there.
The exemption applications have become a joke. I truly hope that the FAA denies all of them; doing otherwise would expose the new rule for the farce that it is and there’s no way the FAA is ready to admit that yet.
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