Originally published in 1999
While members of the U.S. Senate may have been focused on one important event recently, plenty of other people in Washington have been actively working on issues which could affect airline service for business travelers.
Concern has been building up the last two years among businesses, consumer groups, airport officials and others that it’s not healthy for 80 percent of U.S. airline service to be concentrated with just the six largest carriers. While the hub-and-spoke networks of the big airlines provide business travelers in major cities with plenty of flights and low leisure-travel fares, the lack of competition on thousands of routes worries many people. Chief among them are corporate travel managers, who have watched business-travel fares rise since 1995 at a far more rapid clip than inflation.
Those who follow what Washington officials are doing on aviation issues say to watch out for these developments in 1999:
- A study that Congress mandated last year by the Transportation Research Board of National Academy of Sciences, on a range of issues related to airline competition and how to make it thrive again in more places. Results of the study are to be delivered to Congress in June.
- A Department of Transportation policy statement, to be issued this spring, aimed at keeping predatory competition in check and giving small airlines a better chance of starting new service against large carriers. The largest airlines, led by the Air Transport Association, bitterly opposed DOT’s first draft of the policy guidelines, contending that they would limit the availability of discount fares. An ATA spokesperson said the group plans to lobby just as actively this year as it did in 1996 on the issues.
- A determined effort by Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who heads the Senate Commerce Committee, to open up four airports that now have federal limits on takeoffs and landings to more airlines. Legislation proposed by McCain would only affect airports in Chicago, New York and Washington, but could help some smaller airlines prosper, enabling them to expand elsewhere.
- A focus on aviation issues by Rep. Bud Shuster, the Altoona, Pa. Republican who’s chairman of the House Transportation Committee, including a promise to send a major piece of legislation to the full House by this spring. Shuster has said he wants the bill to include some of the same measures McCain has pushed, plus make a major change to funding and management of the Federal Aviation Administration. If the FAA-related proposals are adopted, more federal funds could be available for airport improvements, which in tum could help some airports attract more service.
- More active lobbying on all these issues by a new coalition of travel-related organization, including the two largest national travel agency associations, the National Association of Business Travelers, consumer groups and some small airlines. Ed Faberman, a spokesperson for the asyet- unnamed coalition, said the main focus of the group will be much larger than just helping travel agents survive the cuts in commissions that airlines have imposed the last four years. “There are so many sources of buying airline tickets now … and so much confusion over fares, that consumer groups are getting involved,” said Faberman.
Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
