U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

25–311 PDF 2017

OVERSIGHT OF U.S. AIRLINE CUSTOMER SERVICE 

(115–13) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 2, 2017 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

Available online at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/ 

committee.action?chamber=house&committee=transportation 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee, 

Vice Chair 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

ERIC A. ‘‘RICK’’ CRAWFORD, Arkansas 

LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

BOB GIBBS, Ohio 

DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida 

JEFF DENHAM, California 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois 

MARK SANFORD, South Carolina 

ROB WOODALL, Georgia 

TODD ROKITA, Indiana 

JOHN KATKO, New York 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina 

MIKE BOST, Illinois 

RANDY K. WEBER, SR., Texas 

DOUG LAMALFA, California 

BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas 

LLOYD SMUCKER, Pennsylvania 

PAUL MITCHELL, Michigan 

JOHN J. FASO, New York 

A. DREW FERGUSON IV, Georgia 

BRIAN J. MAST, Florida 

JASON LEWIS, Minnesota 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., Georgia 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut, Vice 

Ranking Member 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois 

JARED HUFFMAN, California 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida 

DONALD M. PAYNE, JR., New Jersey 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan 

MARK DESAULNIER, California 

(III) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... iv 

WITNESSES 

Oscar Munoz, Chief Executive Officer, United Airlines, accompanied by Scott 

Kirby, President, United Airlines: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 86 

Responses to questions for the record from the following Representatives: 

Hon. Mark Meadows of North Carolina .................................................. 100 

Hon. Brian Babin of Texas ....................................................................... 101 

Hon. Brian J. Mast of Florida .................................................................. 102 

Joseph Sprague, Senior Vice President of External Relations, Alaska Airlines: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 105 

Responses to questions for the record from the following Representatives: 

Hon. Mark Meadows of North Carolina .................................................. 109 

Hon. Brian J. Mast of Florida .................................................................. 112 

Bob Jordan, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, Southwest Airlines: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 114 

Responses to questions for the record from the following Representatives: 

Hon. Mark Meadows of North Carolina .................................................. 117 

Hon. Brian J. Mast of Florida .................................................................. 117 

Kerry F. Philipovitch, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience, American Airlines: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 120 

Responses to questions for the record from the following Representatives: 

Hon. Mark Meadows of North Carolina .................................................. 126 

Hon. Brian J. Mast of Florida .................................................................. 127 

William J. McGee, Aviation Consultant, Consumers Union: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 130 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Letter of April 11, 2017, from Hon. Lloyd Smucker, a Representative in 

Congress from the State of Pennsylvania, to Oscar Munoz, Chief Executive 

Officer, United Airlines ....................................................................................... 48 

ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD 

‘‘Essential Reforms Needed to Stop Unjust Airline Passenger Ejections and 

Bumping’’ and ‘‘Proposed Airline Passenger Bill of Rights 2.0’’ from Paul 

Hudson, President, FlyersRights.org, submitted by Hon. Michael E. 

Capuano, a Representative in Congress from the State of Massachusetts ..... 137 

iv 


Insert offset folio 1 here 25311.001
v 


Insert offset folio 2 here 25311.002
vi 


Insert offset folio 3 here 25311.003
vii 


Insert offset folio 4 here 25311.004
viii 


Insert offset folio 5 here 25311.005
(1) 

OVERSIGHT OF U.S. AIRLINE CUSTOMER 

SERVICE 

TUESDAY, MAY 2, 2017 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

WASHINGTON, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m. in room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bill Shuster (Chairman 

of the committee) presiding. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The committee will come to order. I first want to 

recognize Mr. LoBiondo for a motion. 

Mr. LOBIONDO. Pursuant to rule 1(a)1 of the rules, Committee on 

Transportation and Infrastructure, I move that the chairman be 

authorized to declare recess during today’s hearing. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The question is on the motion. 

All in favor, signify by saying aye. 

All those opposed, signify by saying nay. 

In the opinion of the Chair, the ayes have it, and the motion is 

agreed to. 

I first want to start by thanking all the witnesses for being here 

today. You have accepted our invitation to testify on this oversight 

hearing on airline customer service. We invited all the major carriers to participate, and you were the brave few to be here with us 

to seek answers regarding the treatment of passengers in the airline industry. 

Now, air travel can be a stressful experience for passengers, as 

many of us on this dais knows. We are passengers, many here are 

passengers on a twice-a-week basis, flying all over the country. But 

anyone who flies knows just getting on a plane can be stressful. 

Getting to the airport, checking in, getting through security, and 

getting to your gate on time can rattle even the most seasoned 

traveler. 

But the whole process starts with the purchase of a ticket. When 

one of our constituents buys that ticket, there is an expectation 

that they will be treated fairly and with respect by the airlines and 

their employees. There is also an expectation that the ticket will 

be honored, and the airline will get them to their destination safely. 

I used to be in business. In fact, I was in business for 20 years. 

And one of the fundamental rules of any successful business is that 

the customer comes first. And, as I said, I spent 20 years face to 

face in the retail business with customers, so I know firsthand how 

a customer is supposed to be treated if you want to be a successful 

business. 

2 

And so there is something clearly broken when we see passengers being treated the way some of them have been treated on 

recent flights. Regardless of the contractual relationship between 

the airline and the ticket holder, it is just common decency and 

common sense that you don’t treat a person that way, let alone a 

paying customer. As I mentioned, Members of Congress fly a lot. 

So do many of our constituents, the people in this room, and those 

watching online. We have all been in a situation where we just 

want to get to our seat, get in the air, and get home as quickly as 

possible. 

But imagine, almost 7 hours into a long flight, and you get physically ripped out of your seat that you paid for, thrown off the 

plane, and you get your teeth knocked out. Or imagine, while single-handedly trying to get your infant children on a flight, an attendant yanks your stroller away, nearly hits your baby with it, 

then almost comes to blows with another passenger who stands up 

for you. 

These are just recent examples of some serious, disturbing customer service breakdowns. I expect we will hear more examples 

when the members of this committee get their opportunities to 

question the witnesses. There will be tough questions today, and 

make no mistake about it, you owe the public and this committee 

answers. Hundreds of millions of people fly in this country every 

year. In fact, 2 million people will fly today, or something close to 

2 million, and they are tired of being treated inappropriately and 

without courtesy. Something is broken, and the obvious divide between passengers and the airlines needs to be addressed. 

That is why we are here today. We are here to learn. And I want 

to repeat that. We want to learn. We want to hear what the breakdown and what the response is from the industry to make sure 

that it doesn’t happen again, to learn about these customer service 

policies, what you are doing to improve the customer experience, 

what needs to be done to make some incidents like the ones we 

have recently witnessed not happen again, or never happen again. 

This won’t be a pleasant hearing for the witnesses today, but I 

do want it to be constructive. And I want to stress that. This needs 

to be constructive. We need to come out of here with a better understanding from this committee on what—how the airlines operate, and a better understanding of what the response to the airline 

industry is going to do to change, to make sure that steps are 

taken to improve customer service. 

Mr. Munoz has been on TV, I watched him. Others have already 

made changes to the way they operate. It is a positive first step, 

but it is only a first step. This committee and Congress do not want 

half-measures or temporary fixes. This issue is not going away. We 

are not going away. We will hold you accountable, and we expect 

real results. 

As a general rule, I don’t believe in overburdening our businesses 

with regulations, or reregulating industries that have successfully 

deregulated. But I shouldn’t need to remind you that Congress will 

not hesitate to act, whenever necessary, to ensure your customers, 

our constituents, are treated with the respect they deserve. 

3 

If we don’t see meaningful results that improve customer service 

the next time this committee meets to address this issue, I can assure you you won’t like the outcome. 

So, again, I want this to be a constructive hearing today. And I 

appreciate the witnesses being here today to take these tough questions because, as I said, it is going to be a tough, tough hearing 

today. 

And with that, I would like to recognize the ranking member, 

Mr. DeFazio, for 5 minutes to make an opening statement. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, I appreciate 

your holding this hearing. A number of us asked for a hearing after 

the highly publicized incident on United Airlines, and I am pleased 

we are here today for the hearing, not pleased for the circumstances. 

I would say that today’s hearing is really the culmination of a 

deterioration that we have seen over a number of years. I mean 

just think back to last summer. Hundreds of thousands of people 

were stranded and displaced for days because of major computer 

meltdowns at two airlines, including Southwest, who is represented 

here today. 

Airplanes, you know, you are very good at filling them up. They 

often don’t have a single empty seat, and the seats are getting 

smaller, and they are getting closer together. The new high-profile 

or low-profile seats are just great; you can jam more people into the 

cabin. But it is certainly testing the patience of the passengers, and 

testing the patience of the flight crew. 

Just last month we saw an American Airlines flight attendant 

trying to goad a customer into a physical fight. I mean tempers are 

short everywhere. And then, of course, Dr. Dao, that incident. And 

I know, Mr. Munoz, that you have apologized, and I am interested 

what you are going to tell us here today about why this will never 

happen again, and how things are going to improve. 

My first term in Congress, I introduced a bill called the Airline 

Passenger Equity Act, to keep airlines accountable to their passengers. Among other things, it would have required them to report 

information regarding flight delays, cancellations, reroutings, luggage status performance, bumped passengers. Some of these provisions were included in the Passenger Act of 1987. But, 30 years 

later, I think there is a lot of room for improvement. 

So, I think we are here today to look and hear about where we 

could prod, push, or regulate, or legislate to get better service for 

passengers. 

Today Ranking Member Larsen and I are requesting a GAO 

study of what more Congress and the DOT can do to remedy what 

has gone wrong with the airline system. We have seen massive 

consolidation. We have, basically, four carriers, 80 percent of the 

market. And, you know, less than a decade ago we had much more 

diversity and much less concentration. 

Load factors are at a near 15-year high, 82.4 percent. Denied 

boardings, 40,000 passengers denied boarding last year. And a lot 

of people just don’t have a choice any more. And we hear that the 

big problems are air traffic control, but actually 60 percent of 

delays were caused by factors within the airline’s control. There is 

a recent article in Forbes by an advocate of privatization of air trafVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:29 Nov 13, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\5-2-20~1\25311.TXT JEAN
4 

fic control who said you can’t take 15 or 20 planes off in a 1-minute 

period from any airport, no matter what you have as a system, yet 

airlines insist on scheduling that way. And, in part, they are at 

fault, in addition to the meltdowns in the reservation systems, 

their dispatch systems, and other things. 

The so-called passengers—you know, passengers’ rights, when 

they are told to look at your contract of carriage, their contracts of 

carriage are, I would say, deliberately obscured, in terms of 

legalese. Some airlines, this is a—which one is this [indicating a 

document gived to him]? OK, these are the contracts of carriage. 

Some of them are 37,000 words, 67 pages long. And I would say 

very few passengers have any idea what their rights are. 

I had a staff member last weekend, after we had been talking 

about this, decide to print out the contract of carriage for the airline she was traveling on, and she found that there was a delay 

within the control of the airline which required her to get compensated, as she paged through the whole thing and found that. 

But, I mean, how many people have the patience to do that? 

We need simple language disclosure and transparency in these 

contracts of carriage. That, in part, was what led to the incident 

with United Airlines, was the limitations in the policies. 

Representative Larsen and I have introduced H.R. 1420, the 

Know Before you Fly Act, 2 months ago, and it would require that 

the airlines provide information to the public regarding their policies from posing baggage fees, assisting passengers during widespread disruptions. 

You know, as we have seen the concentration grow for a long 

time, the airlines neglected their own IT infrastructure. We had 

those incidents last summer with dispatch and with ticketing. And, 

you know, that really shows, to me, that this is all being driven by 

the bottom line, and not by customer service. And we have got to 

get some customer service back in there, and customer rights in 

there. 

And now, you know, now we are being pressured by the airlines 

to privatize the air traffic control system, and put them in effective 

control of the governing board. I think the airline industry needs 

to focus on getting its own house in order, instead of extending its 

reach to control our skies. The airlines’ lack of focus on the traveling public and the repeated failures to invest in IT infrastructure 

only add to the many reasons I will continue to oppose privatization of air traffic control. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the time, and look forward to the testimony. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman and now recognize subcommittee chairman Mr. LoBiondo for 5 minutes for an opening 

statement. 

Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Like you, I was deeply troubled by the events that occurred last month, where a paying 

passenger was forcefully removed from his seat. No one should ever 

be treated this way, and we are here today to ensure that this 

never happens again, and hear how that is going to take place, so 

it never happens again. 

Flying is stressful. That is just the simple truth. Passengers are 

stressed, waiting at a crowded gate for a delayed flight, or trying 

5 

to make a connecting flight when the weather is not cooperating, 

or spending a long, exhausting day flying with young children. Unfortunately, there are examples where airline employees make an 

already stressful situation even more unpleasant, and, in some 

cases, impossible. And those situations need to be singled out, addressed, and talked about how they will be solved in the future. 

There are also daily instances where flight attendants take action on their own to improve the flying experience, go above and 

beyond, as well as gate attendants and pilots. These incidents— 

these situations need to be recognized. But the recent upsetting incidents were absolutely avoidable. Airlines need to clearly communicate their policies, and use good, old-fashioned, common sense 

when applying those policies, especially during difficult situations. 

Today we will hear what actions airlines are taking to ensure 

that passengers receive the best customer service possible, and I 

look forward to a productive discussion. 

I would like to hear what the airlines are doing to uphold their 

commitments to the passengers, and ensure that the paying customers are treated in a fair and respectful manner. It is this committee’s responsibility to make sure that airlines follow through on 

these commitments, and we will continue our oversight efforts to 

ensure that positive changes made as a result to recent customer 

service debacles are not just a temporary response to the media 

spotlight. 

I want to thank the witnesses for attending today, and look forward to hearing the testimony. I yield back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. I would now like to recognize subcommittee ranking member Mr. Larsen for an opening 

statement for 5 minutes. 

Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Chairman Shuster, for holding today’s 

hearing. I don’t want to belabor all the points, just a few of them, 

so I will be brief. But I do want to note, Mr. Munoz, I want to 

make clear to you and all the other airlines at the table and those 

who are not here: What happened on United Express 3411 cannot 

happen again. 

We are here to discuss what went wrong, and how such a scenario can be prevented from happening again. The incident that 

took place on April 9th was a result of United Airlines policy failures, failures your company took steps to recognize last week. But 

in truth, these problems generally are not specific to United. Several of the airlines represented here today have recognized room for 

improvements in their own bookings, overbooking, and other policies, and have announced changes in the recent weeks. 

I am hopeful these changes result in an enhanced focus on the 

paying customer, going forward, and better training and empowerment of front-line employees who must apply the changes in their 

interactions with passengers. 

In that same spirit, this morning Ranking Member DeFazio and 

I requested that GAO dive deeper into consumer protections for 

airline passengers. Understanding current protections and then 

identifying any gaps will be critical as we develop meaningful improvements in consumer protections for the flying public. 

Earlier this year, Ranking Member DeFazio and I introduced legislation to address two surefire ways that ruin someone’s flight: unVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:29 Nov 13, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\5-2-20~1\25311.TXT JEAN
6 

expected fees and lengthy delays. The Know Before You Fly Act 

would ensure that airlines remain transparent when it comes to 

baggage fees, and would require airlines to inform passengers at 

the time of ticket purchase what they will and will not do for passengers in the event of a widespread computer network failure. 

I would also like to note that consumer protection means that we 

must recognize the importance of improving air travel for persons 

with disabilities. I was pleased that last year’s short-term Federal 

Aviation Administration extension bill included my provision requiring the DOT to move forward with a long-delayed rulemaking 

updating the standards for airplane lavatory access for passengers 

with disabilities. 

We all must continue to advocate for the rights and protections 

like these for all travelers. So, to you, they may be your customers. 

To us, they are constituents, deserving of the oversight and questions that we will ask today. 

So, with that, I look forward to today’s panel, and to the forthcoming GAO report, and I yield the remainder of my time so we 

can proceed with this hearing, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. Again, I would like to welcome our panel of witnesses. 

Mr. Oscar Munoz, who is the chief executive officer of United 

Airlines, he is accompanied by Mr. Scott Kirby, the president of 

United Airlines. 

Mr. Joseph Sprague, who is a senior vice president of external 

relations for Alaska Airlines. 

Mr. Bob Jordan, executive vice president and chief commercial 

officer for Southwest Airlines. 

Ms. Kerry Philipovitch, senior vice president of customer experience for American Airlines. 

And Mr. William J. McGee, aviation consultant for Consumers 

Union. 

I look forward to hearing your testimony and to working with 

you in the coming months, and I ask unanimous consent that all 

our witnesses’ full statements be included into the record. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

Since your written testimony has been made part of the record, 

the committee would request you limit your oral testimony to 5 

minutes. 

And with that, Mr. Munoz, you may proceed. 

Microphone. 

TESTIMONY OF OSCAR MUNOZ, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 

UNITED AIRLINES, ACCOMPANIED BY SCOTT KIRBY, PRESIDENT, UNITED AIRLINES; JOSEPH SPRAGUE, SENIOR VICE 

PRESIDENT OF EXTERNAL RELATIONS, ALASKA AIRLINES; 

BOB JORDAN, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

COMMERCIAL OFFICER, SOUTHWEST AIRLINES; KERRY F. 

PHILIPOVITCH, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, AMERICAN AIRLINES; AND WILLIAM J. MCGEE, 

AVIATION CONSULTANT, CONSUMERS UNION 

Mr. MUNOZ. Thank you, Chairman Shuster and Ranking Member—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. And you might want to pull it a little closer to you. 

7 

Mr. MUNOZ. Thank you, sir. Better? Thank you. And Ranking 

Member DeFazio, thank you, as well, and all members of the committee. We thank you for the opportunity to address the committee 

on this, an equally important matter to us. 

As you said, my name is Oscar Munoz. I am the CEO of United 

Airlines. And with me is our president, Scott Kirby. 

The reason I am sitting here today—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. Could you pull that mic a little bit closer to you? 

Will it move? The whole thing should move. Thank you. Thank you 

very much. 

Mr. MUNOZ. Thanks. The reason I am sitting here today is because on April 9th we had a serious breach of public trust. I would 

like to again apologize to Dr. Dao, to his family, to every person 

on that flight, 3411, and, of course, to all our customers and employees worldwide. 

Further, I am personally sorry for the fact that my immediate response and the response of our airline was inadequate to that moment. No customer, no individual should ever be treated the way 

Mr. Dao was, ever. And we understand that. 

For the last 3 weeks, I have spent, literally, every single day 

thinking about how we got to this point, what chain of events culminates in the injury of a customer and the loss of trust in so many 

more. And so, last week, on April 27th, we delivered on our promise to release an analysis of sorts about what happened, where we 

fell short, and the actions we need to take to change the customer 

experience at United, as all of you have so wonderfully articulated. 

From our perspective, there were four—there were many failures, but there were four main failures that we outlined in this report. 

First, we called on law enforcement when a safety or security 

issue did not exist. That should never happen, period. 

Second we rebooked crew at the very last minute. We created a 

situation at our own doing that we should have never done. 

And third, we didn’t offer enough compensation, or enough incentive, or any options for those customers to give up a seat. And, 

therefore, and perhaps the largest failure, our employees did not 

have the authority to do what was right, or to use, frankly, their 

common sense, as some of you outlined. And in that moment, for 

our customers and our company, we failed. 

And so, as CEO, at the end of the day that is on me. And this 

has to be a turning point for the 87,000 people and professionals 

here at United. And it is my mission to make sure that we make 

the changes needed to provide our customers with the highest levels of service, of course, that you come to expect—reliability, but 

also, a deep sense of respect and trust and dignity. 

Our report announced several immediate and some long-term 

changes that will, at first, completely prevent an issue like this 

from ever happening again, and, second, improve the overall 

United experience, not just today, but into the future. 

For example, unless safety or security is an issue, we will never 

again ask a customer to give up their seat, once they are on board. 

Simple common sense. Or, ask law enforcement to remove a customer from a flight. 

8 

Second, we have already taken, as we constantly do, a relook and 

a reevaluation of our overbooking policies. Although that wasn’t a 

factor necessarily in this case, it is something that we chose to reevaluate. And so we have reduced it. 

And, if faced with an overbook situation, which will indeed occur 

in certain instances for many, many factors, we will identify volunteers earlier, when we can, and, more importantly, offer incentives 

up to $10,000. Because, again, common sense says that you can’t 

stop at a number. If no one is moving in their seat, you have to 

give them something more. And, even more importantly, offer them 

options for travel on top of that. And that is the combination of 

things that we do. 

And, of course, we are not going to move our own crew, our own 

folks around, unless—schedule those 60 minutes before departure, 

so we don’t have the same situation that happened. 

And then, as an additional policy review that really had nothing 

to do with a particular incident, we have eliminated the redtape 

around permanently lost bags, by instituting a no-questions-asked, 

$1,500 reimbursement for permanently lost luggage. 

And later this year we will roll out a new app on our phones that 

will give front-line employees the ability to compensate customers 

proactively when service disruptions occur. 

If we break it, it is incumbent upon us to fix it. And that is the 

intent of the work that we are doing. 

So these changes are just a start, we understand that. I also 

know we need to do a better job of solving problems in the moment, 

and making travel smoother and easier for our customers when 

challenges arise. And challenges often arise, some beyond our control, some well within our control. But it is incumbent upon us to 

solve those as best as possible. 

When I became CEO 18 months ago, I promised we would make 

United the best airline, not only for our customers to fly, but for 

our employees to work with. I said it because I believe in this company, a company that has been in business since the earliest days 

of aviation. That is almost a century of flying. 

In fact, at this very moment there are 600 to 700 United planes 

in the air, carrying hundreds of thousands of people all over the 

world. And before the day is done, we will take off and land almost 

4,500 times. And by the end of this year, we will carry 86 million 

people to 53 countries around the globe. 

It has become routine to be in Washington today and in China 

tomorrow. Our United team, along with many of us in the industry, 

have truly made that extraordinary feat of moving around the 

world, we have made it ordinary and routine. And we had a horrible failure 3 weeks ago. It is not who we are, it is not this company. And, frankly, it is not this industry. It is the—we have many, 

many successes. And it is important to note that too. 

But we are here to discuss certain issues that won’t happen 

again. So we will work incredibly hard to re-earn not your business, necessarily, but your trust, because that is the most important thing that we have for our customers all around the world. 

And more importantly, as we have proven over the course of the 

last week, our actions will speak definitely louder than our words. 

We will do better. 

9 

And so, I thank you. And Scott and I look forward to answering 

any questions you may have. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Munoz. 

Mr. Sprague? 

Mr. SPRAGUE. Good morning, Chairman Shuster, Ranking Member DeFazio, Chairman LoBiondo, Ranking Member Larsen, and 

members of the committee. My name is Joe Sprague, and I am senior vice president of external relations for Alaska Airlines. 

Alaska Airlines is the fifth largest U.S. airline. We have a workforce of 19,000 employees, 280 aircraft, and 1,200 daily departures. 

While we have grown considerably over the last 10 years, we are 

still small, by airline standards. The four largest airlines represent 

85 percent of the U.S. domestic capacity, while Alaska is just 7 percent. We fill a niche role in the industry. While we are an 85-yearold company, we have a low-cost, low-fare business model, yet offer 

a premium service product to our guests. 

We know this hearing is driven by a desire to explore U.S. airline 

customer service policies in light of certain recent incidents. This 

has been a tough few weeks for the airline industry, and the team 

at Alaska acknowledges our colleagues at United and other airlines 

for their policy changes and other efforts to quickly respond to 

these situations. 

For our part, Alaska is actively reviewing sensitive customer 

policies, such as overbooking, and it is our intention to further improve the experience for our guests. 

Alaska’s relative small size requires us to have a laser-like focus 

on customer service, as we compete every day for each of our 

guests. Our stated purpose is creating an airline people love, which 

we view as an ongoing process of improvement. We are continuously implementing service enhancements to improve our guests’ 

in-flight experience, including the recent launching of premium 

class, the enhancing of in-flight entertainment and conductivity options, and upgrading our food and beverage service. 

However, it is the caring service our people deliver that is key 

to us winning guests, along with any accolades we may receive. 

And our formal company value of being kind-hearted serves as an 

important guide. We have been humbled to receive recognition for 

our customer service, including receiving the J.D. Power award for 

highest in customer satisfaction for 9 years in a row, as well as just 

recently earning the number one ranking in the annual airline 

quality rating. 

While we are proud of these accomplishments, we know the 

strong competition we face every day from our fellow U.S. airlines 

requires us to constantly up our game. The airline business is not 

only highly competitive, but also extremely complex. This means 

comprehensive policies and procedures are necessary. 

At Alaska Airlines, we also have a focus on empowering our employees to use their judgment to make exceptions to policies and 

procedures to ensure our guests have the most positive experience 

possible. Our smaller size gives us the ability to be somewhat nimble in this area. 

All of Alaska’s customer-facing employees, over 8,500 of them, 

have attended a day-and-a-half-long training session called Beyond 

Service, which is specifically designed to give them the tools they 

10 

need to execute on our high-service standards. This training is refreshed annually, and incorporated into new-hire training courses. 

In addition, all our customer-facing employees are given what we 

call an empowerment toolkit, enabling them to provide additional 

compensation, including miles or discounts, on the spot to resolve 

customer service issues. Our airport customer service agents have 

recently been outfitted with mobile devices to better assist customers, and our empowerment toolkit is a key app on these devices. 

One area where sound policies and good judgment is certainly 

needed is in the denied board environment. At Alaska Airlines, denied boarding events are very rare. In 2016, only .4 guests per 

10,000 boarded were faced with an involuntary denied boarding, a 

rate of just .004 percent. While this positions us as one of the better performers in this area, we believe even this is too high. We 

are actively looking at our policies to see what we can do to bring 

this number down further. 

For example, in a denied board situation, we are updating our 

policies to make it explicit that our customer service agents are empowered to do the right thing for our guests, including having discretion over compensation, with the overriding goal to provide the 

incentives needed so as not to adversely impact our guests. 

At Alaska Airlines, we view the airline business as fundamentally a people business. If we have angry customers, no one wins. 

This is not to say that mistakes and anomalies do not sometimes 

arise, and every airline is vulnerable to that, including us. But it 

has been our experience that such mistakes become lessons that 

carriers use to improve and, where necessary, implement changes 

to policies and procedures affecting customers. I believe this is on 

display with the airlines represented here today. 

Thank you for the opportunity to present Alaska Airlines’ views, 

and I would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may 

have. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Sprague. 

And, Mr. Jordan, you may proceed. 

Mr. JORDAN. Thank you. And good morning, Chairman Shuster, 

Congressman DeFazio, and the other members of the committee. 

My name is Bob Jordan. I am the chief commercial officer at 

Southwest Airlines, and I have been there nearly 30 years. A lot 

of that time I have had the chance to work on the customer experience, so hopefully I can be helpful today. 

You all know the history of Southwest Airlines. We started in 

1971, serving the Texas Triangle: Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. And we have grown to be the largest domestic carrier in the 

U.S. today, serving over 120 million customers a year. We have 

about 54,000 Southwest Warriors. We have an unblemished history 

with our employees, which is a 46-year record of no furloughs, no 

layoffs. And I think what I am actually most proud of is that we 

have, for 43 years, provided profit-sharing for our employees, which 

includes a $586 million profit-sharing payment to our employees 

here in this past year. 

One of the basic principles of Southwest Airlines comes from our 

founder, Herb, who many of you know. And it is pretty simple. It 

is if you treat your employees right, they will, in turn, treat your 

11 

customers right. It is also important to know that, while this hearing is about customer service, our employees, particularly at the 

airports, have very tough jobs. And they are critical, not just to 

providing customer service, but to providing a safe and reliable operation every single day. 

Another key principle at Southwest is our purpose statement, 

which is pretty basic, as well. It is to connect people to what is important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost air 

travel. And we have invested in that a lot in the last couple of 

years, and I think made improvements. And one of those big investments is a very intense program around hospitality, and training our employees on hospitality, and generally, just how to be 

more civil with each other, and how to be more civil with our customers. 

But at the same time, I appreciate the fact that our company is 

not perfect, and we make mistakes. There is always room for improvement. And, as Herb likes to say—and a lot of you know 

Herb—please never rest on your laurels. Because, if you do, you 

will simply get a thorn up your ass. 

So, with that in mind, and with the need to constantly make improvements, we have announced that, beginning May 8th, Southwest will no longer overbook flights. That decision is the result of 

a bunch of factors. Some of those are unique to Southwest Airlines. 

And I will just tell you what those are very quickly. 

First, compared to others, we have historically had a comparably 

high no-show rate. That is really because we have very flexible 

policies. We allow customers to change their flights, cancel their 

flights without a fee. And so you have more no-shows. That noshow rate has come down considerably over the years, though, as 

we have had better improvements in technology. 

And then, second, we made a change where we simply asked customers who are not going to travel to please call and cancel that 

flight before they board the aircraft. They can cancel as late as 

boarding, and then they receive the ability just to reuse those 

funds without any kind of change or fee. 

Second, we are conducting a major upgrade to our reservation 

system, which is the largest system that any carrier uses. And the 

final components to that go into place on May the 9th. It is, by far, 

the most ambitious technical project we have ever undertaken at 

Southwest Airlines. And the implementation of that new reservation system gives us better data and better forecasting techniques, 

so we can predict better who is going to show up for a flight. 

And finally, I will be honest. While we have been looking at this 

issue for many years, the recent events related to overbooking did 

cause us to stop and pause and take a look at this again. It just 

gave us another reason to review, and another reason to go ahead 

and move forward with this change today. 

And, simply put, discontinuing the practice of overbooking is 

completely consistent with our other customer-friendly policies like 

bags fly free, no change fees, no cancel fees, points that never expire, award seats on every single flight, every single day, so that 

we think that it fits perfectly with our brand. 

Now, it is important to note that we will still have oversells on 

a very small number of flights on occasion for operational reasons. 

12 

Weather, you have weight and balance restrictions, we may have 

downgrades, or an aircraft that was 175 seats, gets downgraded to 

an aircraft that is 143 seats. But we expect those to be very rare. 

And again, we will no longer overbook as part of the selling process. 

And, most importantly to note, I expect our denied boardings to 

go down by 80 percent as a result of this policy change. And, to 

date, denied boardings are very small. About .01 percent of every 

passenger that flies Southwest Airlines is affected by a denied 

boarding. And again, I expect that number to go down by 80 percent as a result of that policy change. 

So, in conclusion, I wanted to thank you for inviting us here 

today. And I would be happy to take questions, as well. 

So thank you so much. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Jordan. 

With that, Ms. Philipovitch, you may proceed. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Good morning, Chairman Shuster, Ranking 

Member DeFazio, and distinguished members of the committee. My 

name is Kerry Philipovitch, and I am senior vice president of customer experience at American Airlines. Thank you for inviting me 

to talk with you today about American Airlines’ focus on improving 

customer service. 

American Airlines is a global airline operating nearly 7,000 daily 

flights to 350 destinations in 50 countries. Our mission is to validate the trust placed in us by our customers, team members, and 

other stakeholders. 

There is no question that travel can be stressful, and disruptions 

will occur. When they do, we first deliver a resolution to our customers. We commit to finding the root cause, and we incorporate 

those learnings quickly. It is this process that leads to continuous 

improvement at American Airlines. 

We work in a business that relies on people serving people. And, 

with 120,000 team members who are spread around the globe, it 

will be difficult to avoid inconsistencies and occasionally falling 

short. 

On April 21st, an incident occurred on an American Airlines 

flight from San Francisco to Dallas-Fort Worth that involved one 

of our team members and a customer traveling with small children. 

Clearly, what happened was wrong, and we promptly apologized to 

the customers involved. Our immediate focus was on ensuring our 

customer and her children were cared for during the remainder of 

their trip. We issued a prompt public apology, and reinforced that 

this incident did not reflect the values of our company and team 

members, or how we care for our customers. We removed the team 

member in question from service to further investigate the situation. 

Situations like this are an outlier, but it is important for American to take responsibility when we don’t handle things well, and 

we accept that responsibility completely. 

Recent incidents have been interpreted by some as evidence that 

customer service is broken in the airline industry. There is no 

question that we can do better, but we are making progress. Overall, airline customer satisfaction increased in 2016, reaching an alltime high in the J.D. Power airline ratings, and tying the record 

13 

in the 2016 American customer satisfaction index travel report. In 

fact, industry ratings in both reports have improved each year 

since 2012. 

On the other side of decades of turmoil, we have been hard at 

work to enhance our customers’ experience, and we are seeing the 

results of our front-line team members’ hard work to improve the 

reliability of our operation. American delivered our best-ever performance this year for mainland flights departing on time, arriving 

on time, and our lowest rates of mishandled baggage. Running a 

reliable operation is the foundation for delivering the experience 

that our customers deserve. 

Today the U.S. airline industry is stable, the safest in the world, 

reliable, competitive, and, most importantly, widely accessible. This 

is an intensely competitive industry, with carriers offering different 

prices, products, and service. This competition is good for consumers. Adjusted for inflation, the average cost of an airline ticket 

has decreased by more than 24 percent since 1995. 

At the same time, we are also making significant investments to 

improve customer experience. At American, we take delivery of a 

new aircraft, on average, every 4 days. We are devoting nearly $3 

billion in investing to make the travel experience more comfortable 

and more convenient. And we have $17 billion in capital improvement projects underway at multiple airports in which we operate. 

This includes a new regional terminal here, at Washington Reagan 

National Airport, so we can, once and for all, retire the dreaded 

gate 35X. 

[Applause.] 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Other events have drawn concern about customer impacts from overbooking flights. Given the frequency with 

which travelers adjust their plans, overbooking avoids empty seats 

in a congested air traffic system, allowing more people to fly, and 

greater availability of lower fares. An oversale situation occurs 

when more confirmed passengers arrive at the gate than the number of seats on the aircraft. More than 50 percent of oversales are 

driven not by overbooking, but by operational and safety factors, 

like equipment swaps, weather-driven weight restrictions, and accommodating Federal air marshals. 

In light of recent events, American has added the following initiatives to our efforts to improve customer experience. 

First, we committed that we will not involuntarily remove a customer who has already boarded the aircraft to accommodate another passenger. 

Second, we have increased the number of employees who monitor 

oversales and work to solicit volunteers prior to customers arriving 

at the airport. New procedures are already showing a reduction to 

the previous low numbers of involuntary denied boardings, as we 

work to bring that number closer to zero. 

Third, there is now a dedicated hotline into our day-of-departure 

support desk, so our gate agents can offer the compensation necessary to entice customers to volunteer. We have not established an 

upper limit on what we will pay to solicit volunteers, but have entrusted our team to make the best decisions to serve our customers. 

14 

Lastly, we are adding training for our customer-facing team 

members to strengthen their abilities to avoid and de-escalate contentious situations in real time. 

This is a time of great optimism at American Airlines and for air 

travel in our country. American is committed to validating the 

trust our customers, team members, and stakeholders place in us 

each day. We look forward to our continued work together to make 

this economic engine of our country all that it can be, so Americans 

everywhere have the choice to travel affordably, safely, and comfortably. 

I appreciate the chance to be here, and I am pleased to answer 

any questions you have. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much. 

And with that, Mr. McGee, you may proceed. 

Mr. MCGEE. Good morning, Chairman Shuster, Ranking Member 

DeFazio, Chairman LoBiondo, and Ranking Member Larsen, and 

all committee members. On behalf of Consumers Union, the policy 

arm of Consumer Reports, thank you for the opportunity to speak 

today regarding the concerns of millions of American air travelers. 

The abusive treatment of Dr. David Dao on board United Express last month shocked us all, and exemplified that consumers 

are at the mercy of powerful airlines in an ever more concentrated 

industry. 

American consumers are very much aware that Dr. Dao’s fate 

could all too easily have been their own. This incident, and other 

recent media reports, has regalvanized Congress, and we applaud 

this committee for calling this hearing. 

The major airlines may boast of investing millions into their operations, but a closer examination reveals those investments often 

focus on amenities and perks for the few who can afford to pay 

more to fly in premium classes, while the overwhelming bulk of 

passengers in economy are subjected to packed cabins, tight seats, 

new and higher add-on fees, and, all too often, an utter lack of respect. 

We hope the committee will take this opportunity not only to address overbooking and denied boarding, but to take a broader look 

at the one-sided contracts of carriage that give all rights to airlines, 

and precious few rights to passengers. 

Dr. Dao’s mistreatment highlights one aspect of passenger rights 

that is badly in need of reining in: airlines overbooking flights, and 

then not having seats for all passengers who bought tickets. This 

practice is a throw-back to the 1950s, when passengers could make 

multiple alternative bookings without penalty. But since deregulation in 1978, four key factors have emerged. 

One, no-show passengers today are penalized, either with high 

fees or the forfeiture of their tickets. 

Two, state-of-the-art yield management systems allow airlines to 

closely manage selling all available seats. 

Three, the demise of once-ubiquitous interline agreements that 

allowed bumped passengers to be accommodated on rival carriers. 

And four, record-high passenger loads, historically in the 50 to 60 

percentile range, now average in the low 80s, and regularly reach 

100 percent. 

15 

We are not aware of other industries in America where the business is given this kind of free license to oversell the product, with 

so little accountability for failing to deliver. Last year, domestic 

carriers bumped 40,629 passengers against their will. Airline executives may tell you this is a small percentage, but they were 

bumped without explanation, based on criteria known only to the 

airline, and missed family events, business meetings, vacations. 

United and other carriers announced changes to their policies, 

but we believe that all denied boardings should truly be voluntary. 

The airline should pay whatever compensation is necessary to convince a passenger to willingly give up a seat for any reason. 

Airline industry consolidation, and most particularly the megamergers since 2008 of Delta-Northwest, United-Continental, and 

American-US Airways, has hurt consumers and entire communities. The harmful effects of this consolidation have come home to 

roost in numerous ways. A lack of competition and consumer choice 

allows carriers to disregard the interests and concerns of their passengers in ways that would have been unthinkable when there 

were 12 or 10 or even 8 major airlines in the United States. 

Compounding the harmful effects of industry concentration, passenger protections are further compromised because the Airline Deregulation Act preempted State consumer protection laws. The intent was to keep States from reimposing economic regulation. But 

consumers do not have the right of action to sue, and courts cited 

the Federal preemption clause in striking down New York State’s 

2007 airline passenger bill of rights. 

It has also become more difficult for consumers to determine the 

true cost of flying. Basic services, such as checking baggage, selecting seats, changing flight reservations, even carrying on a small 

bag, in some cases, are subject to higher and higher fees. This 

means it is no longer possible to make accurate, apples-to-apples 

comparisons to previous airfares. 

We are calling for a consistent, uniform, comprehensive, clearly 

written set of passenger rights for U.S. airlines. What we cannot 

do is continue to leave it to the airlines to decide what rights they 

will confer in their contracts of carriage, which, as Consumer Reports has documented over the years, are lengthy, filled with legal 

jargon, and where the priority is to protect the airline, not its passengers, and is subject to change whenever it suits the airline. 

Here is an example taken from Delta’s contract of carriage: ‘‘Delta’s published schedules are not guaranteed, and form no part of 

this contract. Delta may substitute alternate carriers or aircraft, 

delay or cancel flights, change seat assignments, and alter or omit 

stopping places shown on the ticket at any time. Schedules are subject to change without notice.’’ 

And here are some of the passenger protections we endorse: clear 

and consistent guidelines for compensation for flight delays of varying length; clear and consistent guidelines for compensation for 

flight cancellations; clear and consistent guidelines for mishandled 

baggage; clear and consistent guidelines for compensation for voluntary relinquishment of a ticketed seat, and a clear prohibition on 

involuntary relinquishment. 

Complete airfare transparency, including all taxes and surcharges, and all possible ancillary fees from the airlines, equally 

16 

available in all booking channels, online and offline, whether offered directly by the airlines themselves, or offered through third 

parties. 

Enforcement of minimum seat standards, to ensure reasonable 

passenger comfort. Address health concerns, including the risk of 

deep vein thrombosis. And promote safety, including adequate 

space for effective evacuation. 

Much has happened in the nearly four decades since passage of 

the Airline Deregulation Act. But some of the key promises of deregulation, especially enhanced competition and improved customer 

experience, have not been realized. These disturbing incidents of 

passenger mistreatment have made clear we need to start a conversation immediately. 

I will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank 

you very much. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. McGee. Now we will proceed to 

questioning. 

Members will have 5 minutes to ask their questions, and we will 

stay pretty close—not pretty close; we will stay very close to the 

5-minute timeframe on the questioning. So I would ask all of our 

Members to respect that, and watch the clock. And I will begin by 

questioning. 

I truly believe that what happened over these past couple of incidents deals with empowering the employees. And I look at everything through the prism of 20 years in business, myself. And many 

times situations would occur. My employees, hopefully, with the 

proper training, the proper policies in place, they would make the 

right decision. But occasionally they didn’t, but we always stood by 

those decisions, and making sure that the customer was taken first 

was always paramount. 

And as I said, I believe that to empower your employees, you 

have to have clear policies in place, so they understand what is expected. And they have to be trained, trained so that they can develop the judgment. 

So, I am interested in hearing from Mr. Munoz and from Ms. 

Philipovitch, since—two situations that occurred most recently— 

what are you doing to make sure that your employees are empowered, specifically? 

Mr. Munoz, why don’t you start? 

Mr. MUNOZ. Sure. Our curriculum for customer service and training and dealing with de-escalation issues is something we have to 

strengthen. I think we do it when you are first hired, but we don’t 

do it on a recurring basis. So there is lots to learn from some of 

the other folks at this table. 

Specifically on the empowerment angle is, beyond the empowerment at the point of a situation like we were faced with on April 

9th, I think it is incumbent on us to put policies and practices and 

protocols that inhibit or prohibit us ever getting into a situation 

like that. It is an impossible situation, when you put folks in that 

kind of state. And no rules, no empowerment, no training can deal 

with that. 

So it is important to go back in the chain, which is the policies 

that we have implemented, to say we are not going to de-board 

someone if they have already been—we are not going to allow law 

17 

enforcement—we are going to reduce overbooking, although that 

wasn’t a factor in this particular case. 

So, for us, there is training and curriculum. We will continue to 

do that and learn from others at this table. But, most importantly, 

it is important to—you know, it is the start of the chain, you know, 

just not create these impossible situations for people that there is 

no out. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Ms. Philipovitch? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Yes. I would agree with Mr. Munoz. And we 

know that it is the responsibility of airline leadership to make sure 

that our employees have the proper tools, training, resources, and 

support to deliver the kind of customer service that they are so 

good at doing, and that they want to do every day. 

We recently launched a service training initiative for front-line 

team members called Elevate the Everyday Experience. It is a 2- 

day program. And, by this summer, over 40,000 of our team members will have completed the cross-functional experiential learning 

course that we are very excited about. 

In light of recent events, and also based on feedback from our 

employees, we are working to enhance that curriculum to further 

support our employees with training on de-escalating complicated 

situations, and to provide kind of interim training between those 

sessions, as well. So we are looking forward to that and, again, 

want to make sure our employees have the support and the tools 

that they need. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Well, thank you. Second question, it is on overbooking. I think I basically understand the overbooking situation, 

but I know there are refundable and nonrefundable tickets. And it 

has been my experience in business, if somebody buys a product 

and it is—they paid for it, they get it. 

So can you explain to me the difference how refundable and nonrefundable customers are treated when it comes to not putting 

them on a flight, refunding their dollars, those kinds of things? 

Mr. Munoz, if you would. 

Mr. MUNOZ. Sure. There are many practices and procedures. And 

one of the reasons Mr. Kirby is with me today, he has been in this 

industry for 20 years, and is widely recognized as an expert in this 

field. And I thought this committee deserved a more exacting 

knowledge base. 

And so, if I could—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. Sure, absolutely. 

Mr. KIRBY. Thank you, Chairman Shuster. As we have talked 

about, the incident on United was not driven by overbooking, but 

overbooking is much in the news about this. And it is important 

to understand that most of our oversale situations are driven by 

operational restrictions, the largest being weight restrictions because of weather. 

So, for example, when you are at an airport and there is snow 

or ice, or even wind and weather, at either the departure or arrival 

airport, we are often not able to take a full load of customers and 

meet our safety parameters. And in those situations, we will have 

to deplane 20, 30 people, sometimes, because the aircraft simply 

can’t operate safely. That is the vast majority of our oversale situations. 

18 

As to overbooking, we also use it to actually take care of thousands of customers who we otherwise couldn’t accommodate. Just 

this past weekend we had an incident in Mumbai, where an engine 

went out of service on landing, and we were going to have to replace the engine, which takes a while in India, to get the engine 

replaced. So we had to cancel the return flight. 

We reaccommodated a couple of hundred customers on other airlines. But because there were so many, we had customers still to 

deal with. We overbooked the following day’s flight by 48 customers, because that was the only seats that we had. Otherwise, 

we were telling those customers we couldn’t get them home for 5 

days. We were able to accommodate 25 customers the next day, 

and the other 23 we were able to voluntarily give them compensation to take a flight the next day. 

But it is an example where overbooking actually helped us take 

care of our customers. And at United, the vast majority of our involuntary denied boardings are driven by these operational restrictions, as opposed to overbooking. And we view overbooking, if we 

are particularly in situations where we can incentivize a customer 

to take an alternative flight, as a win-win for both the airline and 

for those customers. 

And 96 percent of the situations where we have overbooking, we 

are able to get the customers to be volunteers. And in today’s 

world, where we have increased the compensation limit to $10,000, 

we are hoping to drive that down to, essentially, zero. So we view 

overbooking as something that actually helps us accommodate and 

take care of thousands more customers than we would otherwise be 

able to. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank you very much, Mr. Kirby. I have exceeded 

my time, I am going to stay on message of the 5 minutes, but I 

wish you could in writing explain to me the refundable, nonrefundable tickets, and what the difference is in writing. That would be 

fine. 

Mr. KIRBY. Yes, sir. We will. 

Mr. SHUSTER. With that, I recognize Mr. DeFazio for 5 minutes. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try and do this 

very quickly. We don’t have much time. 

First, to United, American, and Alaska, how much does it cost 

you to change someone’s booking? Give me a number. I mean you 

are charging people $200, $300 to change a ticket. What is your 

real cost? And it seems like it really shouldn’t—you are really inefficient, if it costs that much. 

Mr. KIRBY. Well, sir, the cost is not about the actual changing 

the ticket. I don’t know what the actual changing of the ticket 

costs. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. So then it is about being very profitable. I 

would observe that United got $800 million in change fees last 

year, $800 million. That is a lot of money. 

Mr. KIRBY. Sir, the—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. And there is no real cost? I mean I realize—you 

said—and let’s go back to—well, first, how about—can you answer? 

Southwest does not do this, so can American answer? How much 

does it cost to change someone’s ticket? 

19 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. I would agree with Mr. Kirby. The cost is not 

about the processing—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right, it is for your operational concerns so you 

can get—— 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH [continuing]. It is about holding it in inventory—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO [continuing]. So you can get the planes absolutely 

full, or sell more than 100 percent of the seats. 

OK, let’s go to overbooking. On overbooking—now, Southwest, 

are you going to go broke, or something? I mean you are not going 

to overbook anymore? How can you do that? Quick answer. 

Mr. JORDAN. We are not going to go broke, I promise you that. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. 

Mr. JORDAN. So what happened, it is really basic. There are a 

couple of reasons that cause you the need to overbook. We have noshows. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. 

Mr. JORDAN. The no-shows at Southwest have come down materially over the years as we have had better technology. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right, sure. 

Mr. JORDAN. We actually have more no-shows than most, because we have very flexible rules, no change fees, no cancel 

fees—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK, OK. 

Mr. JORDAN. So those have come down. 

And then, second, we have just improved our technology to really 

understand who is going to show at the aircraft. 

And then, third, we did implement a pretty modest change, 

which is allowing—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK, I have only got 5 minutes. 

Mr. JORDAN. OK—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So I got it. 

OK, Mr. McGee, do you want to comment on the practice of overbooking? You said it was 1950s, 1960s, because in those days you 

didn’t get charged—you weren’t making $800 million on change 

fees. 

Mr. MCGEE. Exactly. At that time it was a burden for airlines, 

because business travelers, in particular, used to book five flights 

at once, and get one of them. And then those seats went empty. 

But for all the reasons that I detailed, which I don’t want to repeat 

for time’s sake, it is clear that that time has passed. And all of the 

language in the contracts, as I stated, favor the airlines here. 

If you are delayed getting to the airport because your taxi driver 

had an accident, and you have a nonrefundable ticket, you are out, 

regardless. There is no provision in the contract that accommodates 

for your circumstances. But yet there is a long list of accommodations for circumstances for the airline, or what they term ‘‘force 

majeure,’’ acts of God, which, in some cases, are, in fact, not acts 

of God. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. OK, thank you. So, back to Mr. Kirby. 

You said that, you know, you talked about how you can use overbooking to help people. How about just a policy that in routine reservations you would never, ever overbook, you would never sell 

more than 100 percent of the seats for routine, day-to-day booking? 

20 

Not to accommodate people because of a change of plane, or something else, but just on a day-to-day basis? Could you do that? 

Mr. KIRBY. Well, sir, we—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I mean Southwest is doing that. 

Mr. KIRBY. Well, sir, we still think that that helps us accommodate thousands—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Yes, but it also helps you make—you know, get to 

these load factors and then, of course, you have your change fees. 

Let’s go to contracts of carriage. How about a simple disclosure? 

I mean this is United’s contract of carriage [holds up a document]. 

This is just for fares [holds up a document]. And if you look at the 

print, here [holds up a document], very user-friendly online. Supposed to read this before you buy your ticket. 

So how about a—you know, distilled-down, simple-language disclosure? Would any of the airlines agree to do that, post that, make 

it available to people? I see Mr. Sprague nodding his head. 

Mr. SPRAGUE. Yes, we would acknowledge ours is too long. We 

recently acquired Virgin America Airlines. We found theirs to be 

much shorter. As part of our integration, we are going to move to 

a much shorter, and more efficient contract of carriage. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right, theirs is 20 pages, 8,000 words. Yours was 

67,037 words. United was 37,000 words with smaller print on only 

46 pages, but I don’t think that counts, because it doesn’t make it 

much more user-friendly. 

One other question. You know, as we observed, there is a lot of 

tension. The planes, you are jamming more people in. And yet, you 

know, is there a question about how many flight attendants there 

should be on planes, as opposed to the FAA requirement? 

Because they are being asked, essentially, to referee and do all 

sorts of things, and we have got terrorism—I mean everything has 

changed. But the number of flight attendants hasn’t changed, as 

required by the FAA for—per passenger for 20 years or so. Anybody think that maybe we are overstressing our flight attendants? 

Mr. McGee, you want to answer? 

Mr. MCGEE. Yes. There has been a lot of talk today about employees, and the term is used, and it has been used multiple times. 

But I think an important point here is that this is an industry that 

has massively outsourced so many functions, including functions 

that interface with the public. 

So I am not sure that many passengers are even aware that 

when they check in, or when they are speaking to a customer service agent—in fact, in many cases they are wearing a uniform of an 

airline, and they have a name tag from an airline, but they are 

outsourced. And what this means for passengers is that—and in no 

way are we denigrating the work of the people looking for jobs, but 

the fact is they are poorly trained, it is a transient workforce, and 

the airlines have outsourced just about everything that the FAA 

will allow in outsourcing. We are not here today to talk about aircraft maintenance, but that is one area that affects safety. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. Mr. Duncan is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just yesterday morning 

at the Knoxville Airport, the plane we were supposed to fly on to 

21 

Washington—a wing clipped a baggage truck with—damage that 

you couldn’t even notice, but we spent 31⁄2 hours there. They had 

trouble getting ahold of the proper person that—the manufacturer 

is in Brazil. And then they canceled the plane. And it caused me 

to miss votes last night, and I hate to miss votes. 

But I tell you this just to tell you that I have flown so much over 

the years that I have run into almost every kind of problem that 

you can think of. Yet I will tell you that we have the best aviation 

system in the entire world. You know, my dad told me years ago, 

he said, ‘‘Everything looks easy from a distance.’’ But you all have 

a very tough business. But I think what happens, when people 

have 99 good flights and 1 bad one, the one they tell everybody 

about is the 1 bad one. 

I am so thankful. I heard on NPR many years ago that the Russian Aeroflot system sometimes had delays as long as 4 days. I 

mean we get upset with a 40-minute delay. So I appreciate what 

you do for us. 

Let me ask you this, Mr. Munoz. Before this unfortunate incident 

with Dr. Dao, did your airline ever call law enforcement to remove 

somebody due to overbooking before that incident? 

Mr. MUNOZ. There have been a good amount of occasions where 

that has happened. It happened without incident. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Where you had to call law enforcement due to overbooking? 

Mr. MUNOZ. We call law enforcement for safety and security reasons when they happen. There have been occurrences in the past 

in this year where we have had to ask law enforcement to come 

in and help and assist. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Have any other airlines had law enforcement remove people from their airline, due to overbooking? 

[No response.] 

Mr. DUNCAN. Have you ever done that, that you know of, Mr. 

Jordan? 

Mr. JORDAN. No, sir, not that I know of. Again, I agree with 

Oscar. It is primarily in the cases of just safety and security, where 

you have potentially an intoxicated passenger, an altercation—— 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, I mean, if it is a disruptive person with law 

enforcement, that is a different situation. 

Mr. JORDAN. Yes, sir. But in the case of a—— 

Mr. DUNCAN. I am talking about due to overbooking. 

Mr. JORDAN. In the case of an overbooking, not that I know of, 

sir. 

Mr. DUNCAN. We were given statistics. There is something called 

the Airline Quality Rating that said that involuntarily denied 

boardings affected 6 passengers per 100,000. And I noticed that 

Mr. McGee’s testimony, he said that it is 40,000, or a little over 

40,000 out of the almost 700 million passengers. That comes to 1 

for every 17,500, roughly. It seems to me that is a pretty low—that 

is a pretty impressive figure. 

We also were submitted information from another airline that is 

not here that said that overbooking has been done as one of the 

many ways that ticket prices are held lower. Is that correct, Mr. 

Sprague? 

22 

Mr. SPRAGUE. Yes, Congressman Duncan, that is correct. In fact, 

for Alaska Airlines, in 2016 alone, there were 675,000 seats that 

would not have been available if we did not have an overbooking 

policy. So those are seats that would not have been available for 

last-minute business travel purchases, for accommodating guests 

that might have been disrupted, due to weather or downsized aircraft. And, frankly, having those additional seats available for sale 

allows us to keep fares low. 

Mr. DUNCAN. So more people are able to fly at lower prices because of overbooking. 

Mr. SPRAGUE. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Is that true? Would you agree with that, Mr. 

Kirby? 

Mr. KIRBY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DUNCAN. All right. All right. Well, thank you very much. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. And, with that, Ms. Norton 

is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I know you 

must have received messages from a number of us after the first 

incident about the need for more oversight by this committee of the 

customer service part of what the airlines do for us, as a Nation. 

I want to say to our witnesses you may think you are looking at 

Members of Congress, but really, you are looking at your customer 

base. Except for a few of us—perhaps me, chiefly among them, because I represent the people who live in the Nation’s Capital—most 

Members of Congress get on an airplane every single week. They 

are frequent fliers who conduct weekly monitoring of the airline industry. I can’t imagine why we haven’t had a hearing like this, 

based on what my colleagues have to go through. 

Now, when it comes to business in the United States, I expect 

and have seen competition solve most of our problems. But, essentially, you represent four regional monopolies. So you have been 

able to do anything you want to do: add on fees, basic services that 

we take for granted. It is as if you have to tip a corporation to get 

a business to do what they used to do for free, as a courtesy. 

So, over time, we do have such hearings as this, and people come 

up with notions—well, we have to have a passenger bill of rights, 

or whatever. Mr. DeFazio, our ranking member—in 1987, no less— 

entered a document that didn’t pass. But Ray LaHood, the U.S. 

Transportation Secretary—because this could be done by the administrative process, as well—indeed was successful in getting 

through that process. Rules having to do, for example, with lost 

baggage. 

So, what we have here, essentially, are a passenger’s bill of 

rights. Each of you have a contract. We have learned that, you 

know, you can find out what it is if you go on the website, or if 

you—you can look at the tens and tens of pages. I want to clarify 

whether—I believe was the response to Mr. DeFazio. Are each of 

the airlines here willing to boil down what the customer is entitled 

to to a one-pager that the passenger could receive, as part of getting on the flight, or could find by going to the website? Could I 

have answers from each of the airlines? 

[No response.] 

23 

Ms. NORTON. I only have 5 minutes. Speak up first, Mr. Munoz. 

Why point to him? Why not begin with you? 

Mr. MUNOZ. That is a—it is an excellent question. I don’t know 

that I have the proper answer with regards to a one-page document. I think simplification, clarity—— 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Kirby, do you think—since you—that that 

could happen? 

Mr. KIRBY. Ma’am, I am not sure if we could get it to one page, 

but I certainly think getting a simpler contract of carriage—— 

Ms. NORTON. Anybody else have people who can write, who can 

boil this down to one page? Could we go down— Mr. Sprague? 

Mr. SPRAGUE. That would be our goal, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Sir? 

Mr. SPRAGUE. That would be our goal, ma’am. 

Mr. JORDAN. Congresswoman, absolutely. We would love to continue to consolidate that. 

I would tell you we also have a customer service commitment 

document, which writes it in much simpler language. We already 

have that on our website, that describes what Southwest Airlines 

does. But the goal is to be completely transparent with the customer about what is available to them in any case. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. And we at American have been working to 

simplify our policies to make them clearer on our website for our 

customers, and we would also like to strive for a more simplified 

contract of carriage, and we have work underway for that, as well. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, we are going to hold you all accountable for 

that, and see who is best at doing something that you may have 

learned to do in college, if you had good writing instruction. 

Mr. Jordan, do I understand that Southwest Airlines—because 

this is my favorite way to do things in our country—has found that, 

using incentives, you can indeed solve problems that are otherwise 

solved by remedies such as overbooking? Your incentivizing approach, where you say you brought down the number of 

involuntaries where boarding does not occur? 

Mr. JORDAN. Yes, ma’am. Our goal, again, with this change—and 

not overbooking as part of the selling process—— 

Ms. NORTON. What was the incentive that was most important? 

Mr. JORDAN. The incentive was to eliminate this problem for our 

customers, and, to some extent, for our employees. 

Ms. NORTON. No, that you gave so that you did not have to overbook. 

Mr. JORDAN. Well, the—— 

Ms. NORTON. To the customer, so you didn’t have to overbook. 

Mr. JORDAN. Well, actually, it is on the airlines, that we have 

had better technology, those things that allow us to eliminate this 

process because of the value to the airline has simply gone down 

very, very much. 

But it would be our incentive to have involuntary denied 

boardings, in particular, be very, very rare. And it is also our incentive—and we do this every day to make sure that our employees 

are completely empowered to do what is right, involuntary denied 

boarding or voluntary denied boarding, to do what is right for our 

customers in the moment, so that we don’t have incidents that we 

shouldn’t. 

24 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. And I would just point out 

I think these contracts of carriage are far too complicated. And simplifying would be wonderful. But every member on this committee 

should look at each other and say part of the problem is us. Part 

of the problem is the overabundance of attorneys in this country 

that are sue-happy, so a little bit of tort reform may be able to let 

the industry—not just this industry, but every industry, to simplify 

what they put out there in contracts. 

Because it is—again, I am not going to get into it right now, but 

I am pretty sure it is driven by the damn lawsuits in this country 

that go forward. And so we have got to—Congress has to make 

sure we are simplifying the laws, so that we can get 1-page, 2-page, 

10-page documents on these contracts of carriage. 

So, with that, I recognize Mr. Crawford. 

Mr. CRAWFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You probably felt the 

eyes of a lot of attorneys on you at that point in time. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. CRAWFORD. Mr. McGee, you touched on this in your testimony—deregulation back in 1978. 

I am a limited-government guy. I don’t want the Government to 

get involved to solve problems in a competitive marketplace. But do 

you or any members on the panel—do you believe Congress should 

reregulate the airline industry? 

Mr. MCGEE. Consumers Union supported deregulation in 1978, 

long before my time—I was in high school at the time. But we have 

at no time in the 17 years I have been with Consumers Union recommended reregulation. What we have said is that it is clear that 

when you leave customer service up to the airlines on many issues 

over the years—tarmac delays and other things—they do not do 

what is best for their airlines. Excuse me, for their customers. 

And in answer to the congresswoman’s question about simple 

language and one page, actually, it is possible, to an extent, because the model already exists in the European Union. For 12 

years, there have been passenger rights easily accessible, easy to 

read, one page, on the EU’s website when you are traveling in the 

EU—— 

Mr. CRAWFORD. Let’s let some of the other members weigh in on 

this, just in the limited time that I have. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. We work in a very competitive industry, and 

we know that customer service is essential to retaining our customers. So that is our incentive to do better, and we will. 

The DOT today also exercises broad oversight in regulating airlines and protecting consumers, as well. 

Mr. CRAWFORD. OK. Mr. Jordan? 

Mr. JORDAN. While we are talking about very difficult issues 

today, generally, the performance of the industry has been very 

good. On Southwest’s sake, our net promoter scores are 11 points 

better in the last 2 years, our OTP is up 7 points, our bag rates—— 

Mr. CRAWFORD. So that is a no on—— 

Mr. JORDAN. Our bag rates are the best that they have been in 

our history—— 

Mr. CRAWFORD [continuing]. On reregulation? 

Mr. JORDAN. So no. No, sir. 

Mr. CRAWFORD. OK. 

25 

Mr. SPRAGUE. No, sir. I have been with Alaska Airlines for 17 

years. In that entire time, we have been competing hard against 

the rest of the folks on the—— 

Mr. CRAWFORD. Sir—— 

Mr. SPRAGUE [continuing]. Panel here today. And that competition has been our main motivation to improve our customer service. 

Mr. CRAWFORD. Mr. Munoz? 

Mr. MUNOZ. Agreed with most of those. So the answer for us 

would be also no. 

But my context and perspective is one—is having worked in 

heavily regulated industries, both in telecom and other transportation models in the railroad space, and having a chance to see this 

over the last year, I think there is always a delicate balance between the right things, as Mr. McGee writes—— 

Mr. CRAWFORD. I think that is right. And what we have heard 

today sort of demonstrates kind of the line we are walking here. 

And I don’t want to jump in to a competitive model and apply reregulation. But that means that the industry has to do some selfregulation to demonstrate that you don’t need interference from 

Congress. 

Mr. MUNOZ. I couldn’t agree more. And it is shameful that an 

event like the one that we had at United has to drive this kind of 

conversation. But again, it will accelerate and, at least from 

United’s perspective—and you heard from others—this will make 

us better. 

Mr. CRAWFORD. Let me ask you something. This was—Mr. 

DeFazio touched on this, and it was—I could see that virtually everybody in their chairs was uncomfortable, and the body language 

was evident this is not a topic anybody wants to talk about, but 

the change fees. And there is a relationship to overbooking and 

change fees, is there not? 

Mr. KIRBY. Yes, sir. I mean we have change fees, and they are 

mostly about our way of offering low fares to consumers. 

Mr. CRAWFORD. Sure. 

Mr. KIRBY. And they are about keeping our fares low. And, as 

was referenced earlier today, you know, fares have declined 24 percent since—in the last 20 years, in real terms. One of the great 

things about deregulation and about these kinds of policies—overbooking and change fees—is that we have driven prices lower for 

consumers, and there are more people traveling in the United 

States than anywhere in the world. 

Mr. CRAWFORD. Ma’am, you—I could tell you had some things 

you wanted to add when that conversation was taking place. Would 

you like to expand on that a little bit? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Sure. Thank you, sir. We strive to offer different fare products to meet the needs of varying consumers. And 

so, some customers will value flexibility and be willing to pay more 

for an unrestricted ticket, while others really just want the lowest 

fare. And that is why we sell a nonrefundable product. Even 

though customers have agreed to a nonrefundable product, the 

change fee is a way to allow some flexibility if circumstances arise 

that they didn’t anticipate. 

Mr. CRAWFORD. This sort of gets back to what we talked about 

with full disclosure on what you can expect, as the customer. And 

26 

all of you all are competing. I love a competitive model, because 

customer service generally thrives in a competitive environment. 

But we are not seeing that today. We have seen a sharp decline 

in the level of customer service that is related to the amount of 

consolidation that has taken place in the last 10, 12, 15 years. And 

I think that is probably an experience we have all had at some 

point in time in our air travels. Is that fair? 

Mr. MUNOZ. I will take it. Initially, I have experienced a lot of 

consolidation in my experiences over the history. And I think the 

customer has an infinite amount—a greater choice today than they 

have had in a long period of time. 

And Scott, who has been in this industry for 20 years, has been 

part of many integrations and consolidations, and could probably 

share insights, as well. 

Mr. CRAWFORD. Well, my time has expired, but I appreciate your 

comments. 

Thank you, I yield back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. Ms. Johnson is recognized 

for 5 minutes. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Let me ask, I guess, in general, but most especially for United. 

First of all, it is clear that we have so much air traffic. And the 

incident on April the 9th involving the forcible removal of a passenger on board a United flight 3411 has brought into question 

how airlines treat their passengers. And this, really, is not a new 

issue. In 2016 the Department of Transportation received 12,766 

consumer complaints against U.S. airlines. So it is impossible to 

say how many of these are legitimate, illegitimate, how many other 

incidences weren’t reported. 

But I guess what I need to ask first is what were the rules in 

place to determine who would be removed from the plane? 

Mr. MUNOZ. Thank you, ma’am. It was a simple, automatic process that dealt with—without all the complexity—what someone 

paid, and whether they were enrolled in our Mileage Plus program. 

It is a difficult choice when we get to that point. All of our policies 

that we have introduced are to prevent this situation ever from 

happening, because it is an impossible situation. How do you pick 

amongst all of you as to who sits where? You have a process for 

where you sit, and we have a process. 

And so, specifically, the policy that we have and continue to have 

is around the fare that you paid, and whether you are—what level 

you were in our Mileage Plus program. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. So this fare was cheaper than the rest 

of them. The cheapest, I guess. 

Mr. MUNOZ. It was one of the lower fares, yes. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. What about the rest of you? Is that the 

way you determine who to mistreat? 

Mr. SPRAGUE. Congresswoman, no. Our—in the case of an involuntary denied boarding, our selection criteria is tied to whether or 

not the customer had a seat assignment. And if there are multiple 

customers that have a seat assignment, it would be based on the 

last customer to check in for the flight. 

Mr. JORDAN. Congresswoman, same thing here. Being very egalitarian, it is basically the last person that checked in at the gate, 

27 

arrived at the gate, is—and again, our goal is to always not have 

any involuntary, but to treat all those folks as a voluntary denied 

boarding if we have to, and deal with that before boarding. 

But no, it is in the order of, basically, the check-in at the gate. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. So if someone checks in and is given a 

seat, and someone checks in later who paid more for a seat, they 

can unseat the person who is seated? 

Mr. JORDAN. No, ma’am. In the case, again, of Southwest, the— 

if the aircraft has 143 seats, for example, and the 144th person, the 

overbooked, checks in, they do not have a seat. So they would be 

the first person that we attempt to work with to involuntarily deny 

board them through compensation. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. OK. But I understand this person was 

seated, had been admitted by a ticket and was seated in a seat. 

And the person who they were trying to get on did not have to purchase a seat. So how do you make that criteria? 

Mr. MUNOZ. It was a mistake of epic proportions in hindsight, 

clearly, and our policies broke down in that regard. 

The situation, specifically, was that a crewmember trying to get 

to another flight, in essence, to, ironically, in a customer-serviceoriented fashion, to try and make sure that that crew arrived at 

the next aircraft so 150 people could get to their destinations. And 

it is a horrible calculus to put people in. Do you make the flight 

for 150, or you inconvenience—seriously inconvenience 2 or 3 on 

the current flight? 

And so, one of the policy changes we introduced last week is that, 

once you sit on our aircraft, and you are on a seat, other than for 

safety or security reasons, we will not take you off that flight. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. OK. Now, I understand there were four 

seats needed, three had been given. If that one person had not arrived at the next spot, would that have stopped that airline from 

taking off? 

Mr. MUNOZ. Yes, ma’am. There is a certain level of in-flight and 

flight ops crews that we have to have on an aircraft. And it would 

not have left. And we did try to find alternative aspects with regards to getting a different flight crew in there, but this is a fairly 

well orchestrated process throughout the world to get 700 flights 

in the air on any given moment. 

And so, flight crews are not readily available in all our different 

locations. So we did try to look at that process, but—— 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. So you have two groups of rules to look 

at. Is there—did you address the rule of what happens if a person—I am sorry, my time is out, but let me just finish this question 

for you to think about. If that person had not gotten to the next 

flight that you were trying to get there, what is the alternative if 

that person couldn’t get there, with three already—— 

Mr. MUNOZ. Sure, and we have a policy that we built in. I am 

happy to follow up with you. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentlelady. With that, I recognize Mr. 

Hunter for 5 minutes for questions. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

28 

First, to all of you, thank you for being here. I fly from San 

Diego. So I have got one of the longest flights, and I fly back every 

week, because I have kids. 

So I guess my first question I was going to ask only slightly in 

jest is why do you hate the American people, but I am not going 

to ask that. I was going to ask how much you hate the American 

people. I am not going to ask that, either. What I have heard a lot 

of you talk about is competition. Explain that to me, because I 

think that is a joke. It is an absolute joke that there is competition 

within the airline industry. 

If you just look at San Diego, it is United Airlines. I have no 

other options, unless I want to fly to San Francisco or L.A. or 

Texas or Chicago. There is only one straight shot to another 

United-owned hub, Dulles Airport. That is it. 

So, any of you, please, explain the competition for a layman like 

me, that must not understand it very well. Is competition, really 

quick, Jack-in-the-Box, McDonald’s, Wendy’s—that is competition. 

Hertz, Budget, Avis, that is competition. Having only one airline 

that flies one straight shot out of all the airlines? That is not competition. So please, explain it to me. 

Mr. JORDAN. Congressman Hunter, just speaking for Southwest 

Airlines, I can assure you the competition level that we are experiencing right now, which is defined basically in a couple of ways— 

how many of our routes are overlapped by other carriers where we 

have competition—and previously, we look at where we are overlapped by the ultra-low-cost carriers, the Frontiers, the Spirits—it 

has never been higher. And it is climbing at a rate every single 

year that is at a higher rate than the year before. 

So, we have never had more competition in our history. And the 

best measure is probably fares, because fares ultimately are tied to 

competition, and they were down in the fourth quarter of 2016, 3 

percent from 2015, and they are down 6 percent from 2014. So 

fares have continued to fall. Our average fare today is $152, which, 

inflation-adjusted, is below a decade ago. 

Mr. HUNTER. You wouldn’t describe competition as options? 

Mr. JORDAN. The—again, I would describe it as where we are 

overlapped with other carriers, where we do have competition. And, 

of course, you are going to have routes where there are very few 

options, and you are going to have routes where there are many, 

many, many options. It differs, route to route. But I can assure 

you—— 

Mr. HUNTER. Well, let me interrupt, really quick. 

Mr. Munoz, at your Houston hub, what percentage of the flights 

are operated by United? 

Mr. MUNOZ. I would think in the 60 to 70 percent. 

Mr. HUNTER. So, 60 or 70 percent, if you are in Houston, you are 

going to fly a United flight, most likely. 

Mr. MUNOZ. And it is infinitely less than our six other hubs. 

Mr. HUNTER. Ms. Philipovitch, same question for you about the 

Dallas hub. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Yes. One thing I think it is important to note 

is that the purpose of hubs is to build factories that can manufacture connections. And more than half of the customers flying in 

and out of our hubs—or, in some cases, like our Charlotte hub— 

29 

70 percent of our customers are connecting there. So it is not just 

about the origin and destination market, because there are a lot of 

different ways that we build routes across the country. 

Mr. HUNTER. OK. So would any of you concede, even in the 

smallest way, that there are—in some hubs, in some airports, there 

aren’t a lot of options, except for just one of you? Would you not 

concede that in a small way? 

Mr. MUNOZ. I think, from a commonsense perspective, absolutely. 

And it does occur in certain markets, but we all have broader aspects. 

But with the concept of competition—and again, a different perspective from other industries—if you think of when I used to work 

at both Coke and Pepsi, those are two options that have consolidated over the years to provide two offerings to the American public. That seems to work OK. 

I used to work in the telecom space, and between AT&T and 

Verizon, you have that—in both those areas—a lot of product offerings, a lot of additional things, and a lot of continued healthy competition. But that is the perspective that I bring from the outside. 

I would let Scott talk a little bit about the competition dynamic inside this industry. 

Mr. KIRBY. Representative, our—— 

Mr. HUNTER. And, by the way, this is different than any other 

thing because we don’t have a choice. I have to fly. The American 

people have to fly all the time. We don’t have a choice. You have 

a choice to not buy a Pepsi, you have a choice to not go with 

Verizon or you can go with T-Mobile or Sprint, because that is 

highly regulated by this Congress, telecommunications, more so 

than it is with you all. 

But there is no option to not fly is the big difference here. 

Mr. KIRBY. Yes, sir. I would say that this is a highly, highly competitive industry. You can see it in the fares declining, you can see 

it in the different kinds of product offerings that you can get across 

the airlines. There are markets where there is only one nonstop 

carrier, although north of 90 percent of our customers are flying in 

markets where there either is nonstop carrier competition, or we 

are carrying connecting customers. So half our customers are flying 

in connecting markets, which obviously have lots of competition. 

And even in those markets, like Dulles to San Diego, you know, 

more than half the people that fly between Washington, DC, and 

San Diego choose to make a connection. So they are choosing to 

take a connection on someone other than United Airlines, even 

though we are the only nonstop carrier in that market. And in a 

market like Washington Dulles to San Diego, there is nothing to 

prevent another airline from coming in and flying in that market. 

So it is a hugely competitive market. There are instances 

where—they are unusual—where there is only a single carrier in 

the market, but it is still a hugely competitive market. And there 

almost always are connecting alternatives for customers. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. JORDAN. And I would quickly add, too, again, it is a routeby-route thing. You can find exceptions, but the vast majority of 

routes have a great deal of competition on them. 

30 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. We anticipate this to be a 

long hearing, so we are going to take periodic breaks. This is our 

first 5-minute break. This is only for the witnesses and the Members. Those of you in the audience can go after the break, because 

I don’t want a mass rush to the restrooms, if necessary. 

So, Adam, start the clock, 5 minutes. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. SHUSTER. The committee will come back to order, please. Everybody take their seats. Everybody get settled in. Thank you very 

much. 

I now recognize Mr. Larsen for 5 minutes. 

Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Munoz, I am not quite satisfied with an answer you gave to 

Mr. Duncan earlier, so I just want to explore it. The question asked 

of you was whether—I believe it was whether United had used law 

enforcement at all to remove a person for overbooking, and then 

you talked about safety and security twice in response to the question. 

So it seemed to either be a pat answer, or—I don’t know. So let 

me just be specific. Has United this year removed anyone using security personnel, strictly on an overbooking issue? 

Mr. MUNOZ. I am not aware of any specific instance where law 

enforcement has removed someone for that particular oversold situation. 

Mr. LARSEN. Yes, sure, OK, all right. That is clear. 

Can I ask you—are you free to—are you able to tell us what 

United management or the site manager communicated to law enforcement that day on the—regarding the customer on United 

3411? Was this person—did they say this person is disruptive and 

needs to be removed, or did they say this person won’t take $800 

and needs to be removed? 

Mr. MUNOZ. It wasn’t nearly as specific as that. I think the failed 

policy and procedure that we have is that, after the attempts to 

incentivize a customer with that amount and other amounts, the 

protocol, the policy, calls for asking for assistance from local law 

enforcement. And that is wrong. 

Mr. LARSEN. And so then, what change have you made? Can you 

let us know what change you made in your policies with regards 

to that? 

Mr. MUNOZ. Well, first of all, the $800, for instance, can go up 

to $10,000. Offering alternative solutions for that passenger to 

fly—because it is not just about money for some folks. We had kids 

on that flight, people—it is—how do you get to my destination? 

And then, of course, what we did is we will no longer have law 

enforcement deboard anyone that has already been boarded on our 

aircraft. 

Mr. LARSEN. Yes, OK, thanks. I think part of the concerns that 

we have and a lot of us have is that—and sometimes we are guilty 

of this, too, I will say this—you made your problem the customer’s 

problem, and in this particular case. So I think hearing from you 

all how you are not making problems you have about, you know, 

getting your staff somewhere and making it a customer’s—putting 

the solution on the customer to solve your problem about getting 

staff somewhere is important. And that goes to, I think, everybody. 

31 

Mr. MUNOZ. I couldn’t agree with you more, absolutely, which is 

why our crewmembers, unless they check in 60 minutes before 

check-in, they will not be allowed to do what happened, what actually triggered this whole event. So I absolutely agree with you. 

Mr. LARSEN. Yes. Mr. Jordan, can you help me understand a little bit what we can expect to see from Southwest on May 8 or 9 

with regards to One Res? You know, last year we had the meltdown in your IT system that—maybe not as directly to the subject 

of this particular hearing, certainly didn’t trigger this hearing, but 

this is certainly a customer service issue. 

So what is—what is going to happen in this roll-out that is going 

to make it—I think you called it—bigger and better than what you 

have now? 

Mr. JORDAN. Yes, sir. It is the largest technology project we have 

ever undertaken. We have—we have been putting in pieces for, literally, almost a year now to ensure that they work as they go. 

There is extensive testing. We have put in hundreds and hundreds 

of thousands of hours of training. We will have hundreds and hundreds of employees in airports on the day of implementation to 

handle any issues that come up. The testing and all have gone 

flawlessly, so far. 

Like any big software implementation, I expect some small problems on May 9, when we implement. But I think we are extremely 

well prepared, and I expect it to all go very, very well. 

Mr. LARSEN. Well, I found that small problems in the industry— 

in your industry, when it comes to IT, result in delays through an 

entire system. So what—so even saying ‘‘small problems’’ doesn’t 

give me a lot of assurance. Can you help give me some—a little 

more assurance? 

Mr. JORDAN. Again, we have tested this product more than any 

IT implementation we have ever done. We have implemented those 

pieces in phases, so that we are not doing a—usually, what happens with an airline is you put in something in a big bang implementation overnight, you wake up, and it doesn’t work very well 

the next morning. That is usually what goes wrong. 

What we have done is implement small pieces almost every week 

for literally almost a year now. Second, the—when we began to add 

international destinations, they are actually running on the new 

system, and have been for more than a year. So we have been running it in production in a small way for a very long period of time. 

And then the—— 

Mr. LARSEN. That is good. I—just one last question for the record 

for United Airlines. 

I just—if you guys could get back to us, explain to us why this 

particular issue on April 9 was not an overbooking issue. You keep 

saying it wasn’t an overbooking issue. The customer, and every 

customer, and everybody who watched it online saw it as an overbooking issue. So just—— 

Mr. MUNOZ. Happy to get back to you. 

Mr. LARSEN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Farenthold is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Thank you very much, Chairman Shuster. 

And, much like Mr. Hunter, I am a pretty frequent flier. I am elite 

32 

status on every airline up there, except for Alaska, and that is 

probably just because you don’t fly to Corpus Christi, Texas—hint, 

hint. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. But what I am seeing is a growing level of 

frustration, both on the passengers and from your passenger-facing 

crew in the airport. Everybody is in a rush, we have had to deal 

with the TSA, we have got to go buy a—you know, some liquid to 

take on, because you can’t take that through security. You want to 

get some food, or you are stuck having to pay $12 for a TV dinner 

or $7 for a Lunchable on the airplane. Passengers are frustrated. 

Another piece of it is we are all rushing to get what limited bin 

space there is. Several years ago, the airlines all said the fuel costs 

are up, so we are going to start charging for checked bags to make 

up that revenue. Well, now the fuel costs are down. Are there any 

plans to remove the checked baggage fees, Mr. Munoz and Ms. 

Philipovitch? 

Mr. MUNOZ. I will let Scott answer that. 

Mr. KIRBY. Thank you, Congressman. And we view charging for 

checked bags as one of the ways that we keep all the other fares 

low. In 2016, at United, we spent about $1.9 billion carrying 

checked bags. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. OK. 

Mr. KIRBY. And we collected about $900 million—— 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. All right. So no, the answer is no. 

Ms.—what about American? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Same. We put our fees in place to give customers more options and more choices, and to pay for just the services that they intend to consume. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. All right. So let’s talk a little bit about Southwest. No checked bag fees. 

Mr. Kirby, you said you had to overbook flights to keep fares low. 

I can’t remember the last time the United fare was lower than a 

Southwest fare. 

How are you all able to do it at Southwest? 

Mr. JORDAN. Well, just a couple of things. And we appreciate 

your business in Corpus Christi, by the way. The—we try to make 

policies that just make sense for the customer. We feel like, if you 

are going to travel, it makes sense that you can bring your clothes 

along with you. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. JORDAN. And so—and specifically regarding the overhead 

bins, the no-check bag fees allows people to check their bags. And 

so we actually have more bin space because they are checking the 

bags. 

And again, we strive to keep costs low. It has always been a 

tenet of our airline, all the way back to Herb. And keeping costs 

low allows us to do things like having no bag fees. 

And finally, we believe that we get more business overall because 

we do not charge fees. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Great. And, Mr. Munoz, in the very-much-publicized incident that probably led to this hearing, the reason you 

had to get people off was because you were trying to move a crew 

to get to their other flight. United is my primary carrier. So one 

33 

of the things I see a lot, when I get delayed, it comes up on my 

app saying, ‘‘Awaiting inbound crew.’’ 

What I don’t understand is why don’t you just keep the crew 

with the airplane? Why do the crews have to connect? Why couldn’t 

you put the same crew with the same airplane, and take that one 

issue off the table? 

Mr. MUNOZ. I think it is a great thought, but there are rules and 

safety implications of making sure people get rest. And so, the ability to keep crews on the same flight for an extended period of time 

is just not something that is easily doable. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. All right. And then I had one other question 

for Ms. Philipovitch about American. 

We are seeing reports in the media now about your new uniform 

having adverse reactions with over 3,000 flight attendants, and 

now with pilots. My concern is not only with the safety of the crew, 

but also, if there are toxic fumes or something that is released as 

a result of the circulating air or the heat on the airplanes, there 

is a potential risk for passengers. What is the airline doing to address the uniform issue? Or, if you are not in a position to answer 

that, could you get somebody who can to give me the info? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. No, I am happy to give you info, or information. And first, I just want to make sure to state that the safety 

and comfort of both our customers and our employees is absolutely 

our top priority. 

We launched a new uniform last fall and—for about 75,000 of our 

team members. And the vast majority of them really like the product that we launched. And team members were involved in developing it, as well. 

Shortly after launch we did start getting some reports that some 

of our employees were experiencing some reactions to the uniform, 

despite the fact that we had put it through a couple of rounds of 

testing to ensure that it meets and exceeds industry standards. 

We have been working with those team members, to make sure 

that they have alternative uniforms that they can wear, both different fabrics from the initial manufacturer of our program, and 

then also recently we just announced an additional manufacturer 

that can provide uniforms for our employees. 

So we will continue to work with team members. It is an issue 

that we take very seriously, and we are putting a lot of attention 

on. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Thank you. I hear, from the tapping, that my 

time has expired. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman and I also point out—as I 

said, made a little comment earlier—sometimes we put these rules 

and laws into place that—these situations occur because the airlines are living with them. And it is not just the airlines, it is industries across America. So we have got to pay close attention to 

what we do and what response from the industry is. 

With that, I recognize Mr. Capuano. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen 

and lady, for being here. 

Here is the problem, is that the flying experience—and again, we 

all do it on a regular basis—the flying experience is like everything 

34 

else in life. The truth is, my flying experience is reasonable 90 percent of the time. But it has a lot to do with lowered expectations. 

When I was a kid, I grew up in a neighborhood that every single 

playground was full of broken glass, broken basketball hoops, and 

no swings. And everybody just accepted it, because it was the way 

it was. Now, it is not like that any more, but it took us 20 years 

to change the attitude. People today in the same community that 

I grew up in would never accept that, because the level of expectations have been risen. 

A problem with the flying experience is, across the board, we all 

know it is a terrible experience, starting from the minute I go on 

the computer to try to figure out which flight I want to take. I have 

to go to several different websites. And, even when I do that, I have 

to go into the depth of the websites to get truly comparable prices, 

because some don’t charge fees, some do charge fees. Some charge 

fees for baggage, some charge fees for oxygen. Who knows? I can’t 

get comparable prices. 

So the very—before I buy the ticket, I am frustrated. I personally 

have shut that computer down repeatedly for many years, because—I got to go back to it, because, you are right, I got to fly. 

And you got to go back and you got to dig your way through it from 

the very start. But we all expect it to be a miserable experience. 

And then, when I get to the airport, I have to go through the 

TSA lines which, now, being a regular flier, I go through the express lines. But now the express lines are full of people that don’t 

know to take their keys out of their pocket. Frustrating. Then I get 

to the gate. Plane is late, plane is not late, never explain why. 

Now, honestly, up until last week, bumping was not a problem. 

I have been bumped on occasion, but it has been handled reasonably. By the way, Mr. Munoz, I want to know how to get that $10,000 

thing, because, believe me, I will be flying United a lot more. You 

can figure that out. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. CAPUANO. Here is the problem. And, even with these fees, I 

kind of—it is interesting. I get the airlines coming in, complaining 

about the facilities we have, and yet I see that in 2015, the latest 

year we have, $3.8 billion in fees, which don’t pay the ticket tax, 

which means almost $300 million that could have been put into improving those facilities didn’t, because you don’t want to tell us 

what your tickets cost. 

It is all—to me, we are kind of sick of it, as the consuming Americans. We got to fly, you got us. You got us. And if you want to 

keep treating us this way, fine. I guess we can only do so much. 

But there will come a day when Congress won’t accept it any more 

on behalf of the American people, and that shouldn’t happen. 

Mr. Munoz, you had a particular problem last week. I accept 

your apology. I think it is genuine, I think you mean it. But here 

is the problem. Your apology is a beginning, and the policies seem 

reasonable, the ones you have now. And I am not—I don’t mean 

to pick on you, but, you know, it is your turn. 

The problem is every year I say, you know what? I am going to 

the gym, I am going to lose 5 pounds, I am going to get in shape 

again. By February, I am kind of out of it. I give up on it. Every 

35 

person I know that has ever committed a crime has basically apologized for it. Didn’t mean to. And the apology is good. And again, 

I do accept it. I hope and believe it is sincere today. But I hope you 

all know that this doesn’t stop today. And you will be judged on 

how it is implemented. 

And it is not just you, Mr. Munoz, again. It happens to be you 

today, but it could be any one of you tomorrow. And I presume you 

have all rechecked your own rules and regulations about how you 

do it. I am sure you don’t want to be in the hot seat the next time. 

So the truth is I don’t really have any questions because, again, 

I do think you have addressed the immediate situation. But if you 

walk out of here thinking that the immediate situation is the only 

problem the American public has with the flying experience, you 

would have missed the point. We have a problem that shouldn’t be 

as bad and unpleasant as it is. And you are the only people that 

can fix it. And I would encourage you to do so, so that we can get 

back to the point of—nobody is against you making money. 

I don’t want to yell at you. I just want to be able to go to the 

airport and get from point A to point B with a more pleasant experience. And if I do, believe me, I will go back to your airline more 

often when that happens. 

Mr. Chairman, I apologize for not having a question, but I think 

all the questions I had have been answered. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Well, my only response to that is well said. Thank 

you. And, with that, I yield to Mr. Gibbs. 

Mr. GIBBS. Thank you, Chairman. You know, I was thinking 

about this. The—you really have a cultural problem for the incident that happened on United with the doctor. I mean it is unbelievable to me that the pilot or the crew or anybody would have let 

that happen when you have a person on there forcibly removed 

that is not a security risk, or whatever. 

So I am glad to see that United is putting in the policy of the 

compensation. And that is—I think we saw the problem. I think 

overbooking, we have heard today, has its positives. And I think 

if—also one big positive, it helps keep fares down for everybody. 

But when overbooking does happen, we ought to let the market 

forces work. And I think that $10,000 deal, there will be a stampede to get to that gate person to take benefit of that, so they have 

another issue, but that will be a positive issue, I think. 

But the cultural issue, I think, as leaders of your respective airlines, it is your job as leaders to improve the culture, because it is 

definitely a cultural issue. 

And instances—I fly basically weekly. You know, there are times 

where we could be out on the tarmac because of weather and whatever, and delays, and it is really nice when the pilot comes on and 

says, hey, we just heard from air traffic control. We are going to 

be delayed 20 or 30 minutes because of issues here in DC, or whatever. And there have been times we have been parked out on the 

tarmac and they say, you know, it is all right to—if you have to 

go to the restroom, use the restroom, or, you can turn on your 

phone and we will tell you when to turn it back off, versus, you 

know, somebody standing over you like a gestapo, you can’t do anything. 

36 

And so there—that is just the whole cultural thing, but I am 

really glad to see—I think, you know, the market has to function 

to work. 

My question I have—and I don’t know the answer—do airlines 

still have reciprocity agreements or not? 

Mr. KIRBY. At United Airlines we have interline agreements to 

carry customers on most of our competing airlines. And, in fact, 

certainly with American, with Delta, with our big—— 

Mr. GIBBS. I just wanted to make sure, because I know, in years 

past, when I was flying, when issues come up you go to the gate 

and they say, well, here, XYZ Airline we can get you on. That still 

happens? 

Mr. MCGEE. Congressman, can I address that? 

Mr. GIBBS. Yes. 

Mr. MCGEE. Prior to deregulation in 1978, as I stated earlier, 

interline agreements, as they are called, were ubiquitous, so that, 

basically, the burden was on the airline, not on the passenger. 

So, if airline A had any kind of a situation with overbooking 

delay, cancellation, the passenger would be accommodated for the 

face value of the ticket at another carrier. Those interline agreements post-deregulation were sustained on the part of the airlines 

in some cases, and not in others. 

And when there was an influx of low-cost carriers in the 1990s, 

major carriers started using interline agreements as a competitive 

tool, at the expense of passengers, by not interlining with startup 

and newer, smaller airlines. And now we have a situation where 

even some major airlines don’t interline with each other. 

Now, their feuds are one thing. But the fact is this affects passengers in a very negative way. 

Mr. GIBBS. Anybody else want to respond? 

Go ahead, Mr. Sprague. 

Mr. SPRAGUE. Yes, I would just say broad generalizations are one 

thing. But I think most all major airlines have interline agreements with all other major airlines, and that is certainly the case 

with Alaska Airlines. 

Mr. GIBBS. Yes, I was just going to say I think that is part of 

letting the market work, you know, some agreement. I think competitive pressures, we need competition. But when situations arise 

that are completely out of your control, whether it be weather or 

mechanical failure, you know, we need to put the customers first. 

And that is how you keep Congress off your back, I mean, put the 

customers first. 

Let’s make sure that you are expounding a culture out there that 

puts customers first, because that incident that happened, if the 

culture was right, it was coming from the top, that—I don’t believe 

that would have happened, because it would have been—you can’t 

tell me there wouldn’t have—there aren’t other paying customers 

on that flight that wouldn’t have jumped at the chance for $1,000 

or $2,000 or whatever, to take a flight a couple of hours later. I 

mean it is just hard to believe that that is the case. 

And so, I guess that is where I—my criticism is, that there is 

definitely a cultural problem. And I am glad to see that in your 

written testimony and your oral testimony you are fixing to address that, because I think that is really where it starts. And I 

37 

think if your—all your team members understand that the customers come first, and make it work the best, this is how we solve 

this problem and let the market forces work. 

So I yield back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. I am going to have to step 

out for a little bit, and I think I will be back before this is over. 

But I just want to make sure that I say this, because I think it 

is so important that—you know, in every bad situation there is a 

silver lining. We could usually find a silver lining. 

And if the airline industry doesn’t find a silver lining in this is 

to get together collectively and to figure this out—because if you 

don’t, just like Mr. Gibbs said, like Mr. Capuano said, we are going 

to act. And if we act, it is going to be one size fits all. And it might 

be OK for United and American, but it is not going to be good for 

Alaska or Jet Blue, or whoever the case is. 

So, again, I am pretty sure I will be back, but I just want to 

make sure—that should be the takeaway from today is seize this 

opportunity. Because, if you don’t, we are going to come, and you 

are not going to like it. 

So, with that, I hand the gavel over to Mr. Duncan, and I recognize Mrs. Napolitano for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

One of the things that you mention, this self-regulation that you 

are going to ensure that you pay attention to it, but I would wonder whether it is going to be a regular or inconsistent. How often 

will you review yourselves to be able to ensure that there are problems being addressed? 

Mr. MUNOZ. I think, as a regular course, certainly at United, between ourselves internally, to our board—— 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. How often? 

Mr. MUNOZ. Our boards meet five times a year, so at least that 

many times. 

But internally and to the open public, we have, you know, 86 

million customers out there every day. And to everyone’s concerns 

and thoughts, we hear from them very frequently with regards to 

this. 

And so, I have an old saying from a long time ago that it is about 

proof, not promises. And so, what you have seen from United in the 

18 months I have been there, anyway, is everything we have said 

we were going to do we have delivered upon. And so it will be a 

constant stream of new announcements that enhance what we have 

already talked about, but also a followup on the issues. 

And again, with regards to the policies we put in place, everyone 

will have—will be a—— 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. And the rest of you? 

Mr. SPRAGUE. Congresswoman, in the case of Alaska Airlines, we 

are constantly holding ourselves accountable from a customer service and a customer satisfaction standpoint, so much so that we actually have customer satisfaction metrics as part of our employee 

compensation, as part of our employee incentives. And those are 

watched very closely by all employees, all 19,000 of us. And those 

are addressed every single month. 

Mr. JORDAN. Congresswoman, I would say the same thing for 

Southwest. Customer service measures are part of the way our— 

38 

in particular—our leaders are compensated. So we review those 

often. 

And then, second, with the change where we will no longer overbook as part of the oversale, and we expect that to go down—our 

denied boardings—80 percent. We will be watching that every single week. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. We receive customer feedback in multiple 

forms, and we pay attention to all of it and take it all seriously. 

We have a team at American that we call our customer advocacy 

team that consists of senior leaders from every department around 

the airline, and we meet monthly to review feedback, review our 

policies, and make changes to continue to improve. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. But are they implemented immediately? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. They are implemented as quickly as we can. 

If it is a simple policy change, yes, immediately. If it is something 

that requires a technology change, it may take us a little longer to 

get it done. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Mr. McGee, do you have any comment? 

Mr. MCGEE. Yes. Thank you, Congresswoman. We have heard a 

lot today about, again, retraining and improvements. And we certainly want to give credit where it is due for that. But I do think 

that there is an underlying issue here, and that is it really 

shouldn’t take a media event and a viral social media, you know, 

outcry to make executives in this industry rethink how they treat 

their customers. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

Mr. McGee, do you have any comment in the training that is afforded the employees insofar as mental health is included? Anything to help the employee deal with customers who are acting 

odd? Or on the personal basis for self-improvement? 

I have had—I fly twice a week, so I have seen it all. Yet I have 

encountered every now and then a very rough attendant. Would it 

be because of stress? Would you indicate that any training is given 

to them to be able to deal with mental health problems, if they 

arise? 

Mr. MCGEE. I think it is an excellent question, Congresswoman, 

because, as I stated earlier, this is an industry that heavily 

outsources. 

I am a former airline employee, myself. So I should point that 

out. I am an FAA-licensed aircraft dispatcher. I spent 7 years 

working in airline flight operations and ground operations management. And I was very proud to work at PanAm, an airline that was 

renowned for passenger service. 

But right now we have a situation where employees are under 

tremendous strain. I think it is the executive decisions that are 

putting flight attendants in the front lines of so many of these situations. Flight attendants have a primary responsibility to ensure 

safety and evacuation and things like that and, of course, customer 

service. But we have asked them to be bouncers and police officers 

and all kinds of other things. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Right. 

Mr. MCGEE. And so there is no question that there is an issue 

of training, as well. 

39 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. I will ask any of you to quickly reply. I am 

running out of time. 

Mr. MUNOZ. Simply put, we agree and, in fact, supporting United 

today in the audience are several of our pilots and flight attendants. And I think we work with them constantly to ensure that 

what their needs—what they see and that constant back-and-forth, 

so that we do put in policies, training, and other things that—— 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Does it include mental health training? 

Mr. MUNOZ. We do have a policy and a practice that we are implementing, particularly for our pilots. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Well, May is Mental Health Month, so I urge 

you to take a look at it and ensure that that is taken care of. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. DUNCAN [presiding]. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Davis? 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. McGee, thank you for your comments that were just made 

about this industry hoping to fix some of the customer service problems themselves. 

Last—you know, like many Americans, I was disturbed by the 

video we saw of Mr. Dao, and also other videos subsequent to this. 

It is why I, along with my colleague, Mr. Lipinski, sent a letter to 

Secretary Chao, asking for answers to questions about the incident, 

including maybe what specific guidelines, if any, Department of 

Transportation provides to airlines in a situation where an airline 

asks seated passengers to exit a plane in order to accommodate a 

flight crew. 

Mr. Munoz, thank you for taking responsibility, as the CEO, for 

that disturbing video, and making sure that there are policies now 

in place to ensure that doesn’t happen again. That is the customer 

service solution that we here in this committee are looking for. 

I don’t believe Government can solve your problems. I don’t believe this committee ought to solve any customer service problems. 

Frankly, that is something that you should do for your customers. 

And we are your customers. We fly a lot. So we interact with many 

of them at many different airports. And, let me tell you, I personally witness better service in certain airports and worse service in 

others. And I think each of you ought to do a deep dive into where 

the customer service issues may be in your existing system, in your 

hubs, and also in the small regional airports. And also, if there are 

any issues with TSA, let us know, so that we can help correct that 

situation, too. 

Mr. Munoz, I had a question for you but, trust me, you would 

have answered it probably 10 times already today, so I am not 

going to ask you that question, although a simple yes or no—do you 

also agree with me that United is better able to make customer 

service changes versus us? 

Mr. MUNOZ. I believe so, yes. 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, thank you. I—you know, representing 

central Illinois, I—when this happened, when we were going to 

have a hearing, I did what I like to do, I sent a survey out to my 

constituents. I actually have 29 pages of responses, over 2,000 responses to our survey. And overall, my constituents rated their cusVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:29 Nov 13, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\5-2-20~1\25311.TXT JEAN
40 

tomer service experiences with the airlines a C. That is passing, 

average. 

On a positive note, the vast majority said that—73 percent of 

them said they did not feel as though they had ever been mistreated by an airline employee. So that is good news. However, 

when asked if they felt the airlines were focused on good customer 

service, 60 percent said no. 

Mr. Jordan, one of the most consistent responses in our survey 

was an overall satisfaction with your airline. Did you hack my system? 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. JORDAN. I do not believe we hacked your system. 

Mr. DAVIS. All right, thank you. Beverly from Glen Carbon said, 

‘‘Southwest employees and flight attendants are friendly.’’ Mary 

from Staunton, ‘‘Southwest employees, from start to finish, are professional and friendly.’’ Winona from Springfield said that Southwest really cares about their passengers. 

In all seriousness, is this a common trend on how customers feel 

about their experiences? Are you seeing that with your airline? 

Mr. JORDAN. Congressman, yes, sir. Our NPS scores, our net promoter score, which is really how we measure customer service, are 

very high. They are in the high 60s to 70 range. So they rank in 

kind of the Nordstrom, Google, Apple kind of NPS scores. And we 

find that across all airports, we find that across all parts of the 

customer experience journey. And I think that is due to not just 

changes that we have made, but it is due to the wonderful employees at Southwest Airlines. 

Mr. DAVIS. You do have good employees. I fly your airline from 

DCA to St. Louis a lot. But I also fly American Airlines. That is 

the one I fly most. And I will tell you an overwhelming majority 

of the time every airline employee is very respectful, does their job 

extremely well, and provides great customer service. 

But it is just like in our business. Sometimes they don’t remember the good service. Sometimes it is that incident that leads to all 

of you sitting in this hearing room today, talking to us and answering questions. 

I tried working with many of the airlines to address a customer 

service problem that I saw and have witnessed many times. It is 

parents flying with children, getting to the airport, and being told 

that they are not sitting by their young children on the airplane 

before they even get there. And I asked many of you, many of your 

airlines, ‘‘Can you maybe devise a way to fix this?’’ You didn’t do 

it on your own. 

So I had to actually write language called the Families Flying 

Together Act that is part of the FAA reauthorization that would require anybody who is purchasing an advance ticket and a seat, and 

if they have young children—maybe there is a popup on that reservation that says, ‘‘You know you are not sitting by your child,’’ 

because trusting the gate agent and the flight attendants to make 

that decision is not providing the passengers the customer service 

that they deserve. And you know, as well as I do, that that is something that needs to be addressed. 

I was hoping we wouldn’t have to address it here, but that is a 

shining example of when you don’t act, we have to. And that is exVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:29 Nov 13, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\5-2-20~1\25311.TXT JEAN
41 

actly what Chairman Shuster just said. Don’t make us have to act 

and put a one-size-fits-all approach to fixing problems that we obviously see exist. They may be the exceptions. They may be. And we 

know they are, because we see it. But, in the end, those exceptions 

will bring a lot more rules from us if it is not addressed. So thank 

you. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Good comments. 

Mr. Lipinski? 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just this morning the 

Bureau of Transportation Statistics came out with a report that 

said in 2016 the passenger airlines recorded a profit of $13.5 billion—$4.2 billion of that was from baggage fees and $2.9 billion 

from change fees. And it is the seventh straight year of profit for 

the airlines. 

Now, I have nothing against profit. We do not want to go back 

to the days where all the airlines were failing, because we need the 

airlines to be able to function. But I think it is an important context, the position that the airlines are in right now, financially. 

I want to commend United and Southwest for some of their policy changes that they have made in recent weeks. And I encourage 

the other airlines to follow suit with those changes, and in others. 

But these changes are not enough to protect airline passengers, 

and I think, as Ranking Member DeFazio said, we need to prod, 

regulate, or legislate, so that passengers are better protected. 

Sixteen years ago on the House floor the then-ranking member 

of the Aviation Subcommittee—Mr. Duncan was chairman of that 

subcommittee at that time—he said, when discussing airline mergers, ‘‘If there are only three or four mega-carriers serving the U.S. 

market, the Federal Government will once again have to regulate 

the airline industry.’’ That was my predecessor, who is also my father, Bill Lipinski. 

Now, I am not saying we need to go back to pre-1978 and go back 

to complete regulation. But perhaps there are some things that we 

may need to bring back. Mr. Gibbs raised the interlining issue. Mr. 

Kirby said that United does interline, but I want to read from 

United’s contract of carriage. It states, ‘‘Upon United’s sole discretion and the passenger’s request,’’ meaning the passenger has to 

know this is in the contract of carriage and request it. 

And I actually think this is one of the better interlining statements about interlining or—one of the better things in the contract 

of carriage of any of the airlines. So maybe we have to go back to 

rule 240, that said that an airline with a delayed or canceled flight 

has to transfer a passenger to another carrier if the second carrier 

could get the passenger to a destination more quickly than the 

original airline. 

And let me say this. I know that you will gouge each other in 

this type of situation. So maybe we put in there that some sort of 

restriction on how much one airline can charge another in that situation. But it seems to me, if we want to help passengers out and 

protect passengers—and this is not to go after the airlines, but if 

we want to protect passengers, to have these types of agreements, 

require perhaps these types of agreements, that this is a way to 

make sure more people get to their destination at a closer time to 

when they were supposed to get there. 

42 

Now, I want to open it up to each one. I don’t have much time, 

so be quick. Is there a problem? Could you—would this be a problem for you to do this? Let me start with United, whoever wants 

to answer. 

Mr. MUNOZ. I think we are an active user of interline agreements. I think we have used them less and less as we became more 

reliable. And I think an important note is to have those fees and 

that money to reinvest in our business, so that we can improve reliability. And that has been the first trick. 

But with regards to interline alliances, we are strong believers. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. How often do you use them? How often does a passenger—— 

Mr. MUNOZ. We use them a lot less than we used to, because we 

don’t need to. It is not a function of wanting to—— 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Would you be willing to make this more—change 

the contract of carriage, where it doesn’t say the passenger has to 

request it? 

Mr. MUNOZ. I will leave that language discussion to someone 

that is more versed in it. I think the way we put it into practice 

is pretty customer-oriented, and we also don’t gouge for—our agreements with our fellow—like others. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. That is good to hear. 

Mr. SPRAGUE. Congressman, I think ultimately what you are 

suggesting is finding better ways for us to accommodate customers 

in these situations, and we agree with that. And, as I said previously, we do maintain these agreements with other airlines. 

Mr. JORDAN. Congressman, with the change to no overbooking, I 

expect the percentage of this happening to go down to .001 percent. 

So it is going to be a very small number of customers that need 

to be accommodated. 

We do not have official interline agreements. We have informal 

interline agreements at the airport. And a lot of times what we actually do is we empower our employees to actually buy tickets on 

other carriers to move our passengers to their destination. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Given the disruptions that are sometimes inevitable in the airline industry, service recovery is one of our top 

customer service priorities at American, and we are constantly 

working to improve the tools that we use, both behind the scenes 

and that are available to our employees, and self-service tools for 

our customers, to make sure that we provide customers with the 

best options to get them to their destination when they have disruption. And sometimes that does involve booking them on other 

carriers, and we will continue to do that, as well. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. I don’t want to regulate, if we don’t have to. I prefer not to. But I now know that I will ask every time. I have been 

told at times by Southwest, well, we don’t have any interline agreements, we can’t put you on another airline. So I want to make sure 

people know—I will know—make sure people know to ask if this 

ever happens to them. And maybe that—we can solve this problem. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DUNCAN. All right. Thank you very much. Mr. Babin? 

Dr. BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Brian Babin 

from the State of Texas, and I was a small businessman for over 

30 years. I know the importance of customer service and courtesy, 

43 

running your business according to the Golden Rule, and know how 

significant it is if you have disgruntled customers. If you treat everybody like you would want to be treated, I think this world would 

be a lot better place. 

Some of you have—may have already answered this question, because I would like to address this customer service. Does your airline gather and analyze customer service data? And if not, why 

not? And if so, does your airline identify customer service issues 

and address customer dissatisfaction? 

I know Ms. Philipovitch, I think you said that you—American is 

already doing that. But I would like to know, because I fly United 

most of the time into Houston, although I did fly Southwest—I do 

fly that occasionally. And I would like to know what you guys do, 

in terms of keeping data and customer service. 

Mr. MUNOZ. At United we have actually pivoted from what used 

to be a very arduous survey that you received with 100,000 questions that took you forever, and we did that for a long period of 

time. And the fact of the matter was that, simply, the things that 

you kept telling us, you just kept telling us again. We weren’t getting it—to fixing it. 

We pivoted away from some of the more fancy measurements, 

and just went to a simple survey that says, ‘‘Did you like the flight, 

yes or no?’’ And, if you didn’t, why not? And we put pictures, to 

make sure, whether it is luggage or customer service—and the importance of that, it is clarity and specificity. And then, more importantly, we take that data immediately, as opposed to a week or a 

month later, and provide it to, oh, yes, the people that actually run 

that airport, so they can actually fix it. 

So that is the level of information we correct, but it is more 

about the action that supports it, versus just gathering of data and 

your support. 

Dr. BABIN. OK, and I would like to ask Mr. Jordan the same 

question. 

Mr. JORDAN. Yes, sir. We measure every single day on every single flight the customer satisfaction around not just the flight, but 

every point in the journey. How was your buying experience, your 

boarding experience, your gate experience, your in-flight experience? And then we use that to provide feedback to constantly improve. 

Dr. BABIN. I appreciate that very much, and I am going to run 

out of time, so I have some other things I would like to address. 

In terms—we have talked about ticket change costs. I think the 

other side of the aisle had mentioned the amazing differences in 

cost between changing a ticket. Some is either free, $15, and some 

of them $200 or $300. And I am very disappointed in the differences between that, especially with some of the airlines that I 

fly most frequently. And I would hope that would be a more uniform cost to the passengers. 

As a former private pilot myself—used to love airplanes, and I 

love airports, but it has gotten to be a very onerous task, since I 

fly about 6, 7 hours a week. And I would like to see a little more— 

I don’t want to regulate—I am a conservative Republican. I don’t 

like regulation, if we can get away with it. But something has got 

to be done, in terms of customer service with some of you airlines. 

44 

Also, frequent delays because of lack of a gate agent. That has 

been another problem we have seen, where your aircraft pulls up 

to the gate. You may be 10 minutes early, or whatever. You have 

to sit there and wait on the tarmac for a gate employee to come 

out and hook you up. That seems to be a frequent problem that I 

have seen and also heard complaints. So what is going on there, 

if you don’t mind, with United? I fly you most of the time. 

Mr. KIRBY. Well, thank you for the business, Congressman. At 

United, that is one of the things we are focused on, is how we can 

run a more reliable operation, including turning aircraft. And one 

of the things we have recently started is measuring every single 

step in the process, including what you just described as a gate 

agent should be there to meet the airplane. Not just a gate agent, 

but the crew, as well. And that is one of the things that we are 

measuring, and now have available to every one of our stations. 

And any time we fail in that, we will have data to be able to go 

back and figure out corrective actions or policy changes or staffing 

changes or anything that we need to address that. 

Dr. BABIN. Thank you very much. You know, the biggest concern, 

I guess, of any transportation service—and that goes for the airlines above all—get your passengers there safe. And I think all of 

you are doing a fantastic job there. But there are differences between customer service and satisfaction. And I think airlines are 

at a low ebb right now, in the public opinion. And some of you are 

doing quite a bit better job than others, and I would hope that 

would be standardized without any kind of regulatory reform and 

changes. 

So my time is up, Mr. Chairman, so I will yield back. Thank you. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much. 

Mr. Cohen? 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. Mr. Munoz, you have apologized and made compensation for Dr. Dao. I appreciate that. It was 

awful to watch that. It reminded me of a Trump campaign rally. 

People shouldn’t be treated that way. 

But the problem we have got is overbooking of airlines. And the 

reason we have the overbooking and having to take that man off 

the plane, or have somebody come off the plane, is because the airlines are beyond the realm in getting profits, profits, profits, higher 

salaries for executives, and less for customers. 

Part of that can be seen in the size of the seats that you have 

for the customers. Now, American and Delta are a tiny bit better 

than United on pitch. Spirit is the worst. I think Sky Blue is good, 

but probably Alaska is OK. It has been shown that passengers can 

get problems with their veins and thrombosis from long flights 

when they are so close together. Seats have gotten smaller, pitch 

has gotten less. Safety is a factor, as well as comfort. 

Mr. Munoz, can you tell me what United has done, if anything, 

to try to have seats, size, and pitch that is safe for an evacuation 

of an airplane if an emergency should occur, which I believe is supposed to be 3 minutes to get everybody off? 

Mr. MUNOZ. If I could, Scott is our seat expert, and has been 

doing this for quite some time. If I could yield to him—— 

Mr. COHEN. If you could, briefly give me the answer. 

45 

Mr. KIRBY. Yes, sir. Safety is our number one priority, as it is 

at all of the competing airlines here today. And we test all of our 

aircraft for evacuation in the case of emergency. And that is done 

under the guise of the FAA. And so all of our aircraft, not just at 

United Airlines, but at every airline in the country, is—— 

Mr. COHEN. And can you get everybody off in 3 minutes? 

Mr. KIRBY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. COHEN. And has the diminution and pitch and width not 

made it more difficult? 

Mr. KIRBY. Sir, we still meet those standards. And the—— 

Mr. COHEN. Do you have a film of that which my staff and I can 

view? 

Mr. KIRBY. We actually do have films of that. 

Mr. COHEN. Great. If you would let Mr. Fulton know, I would 

love to see it, because I find it hard to fathom, with those seats. 

Particularly, Ms. Philipovitch, American has become the number 

one carrier in Memphis. We thank you for filling the void that 

Delta left after Mr. Anderson testified before this committee that 

Cincinnati and Memphis would not be hurt, there would still be 

hubs, and there wouldn’t be any changes with the merger. So 

American has come in and filled up that. 

But yesterday I flew on Air Wisconsin, and that is the worst seat 

I have ever had in my life. I have been there before. I refuse it. 

I made a mistake. I am going to start coming earlier and getting 

the Embraer Air, which is a good plane. The Air Wisconsin planes 

are, you know, buses with propellers. Why do you use Air Wisconsin and put passengers in those teeny-tiny, awful seats with 

the—probably the worst pitch, worse than Spirit, and the worst 

width? Why do you use those? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Well, first of all, thank you for your business 

in Memphis. We are glad to be able to welcome you on board. 

We work with regional partners to allow us to have different size 

aircraft, so we can serve small and medium-sized communities 

across the country. And we are really proud to do that. We know 

that we need to work to standardize the products and services, because when a passenger buys a ticket on American Airlines, they 

expect American Airlines’ level of service. So we have—— 

Mr. COHEN. That is what I expected. I thought I was going to get 

an Embraer Air, and instead I got on, you know, Air 1941. It was 

like a civil rights bus from the 1960s that had been preserved and 

had propellers put on it. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Well, I apologize that you had an uncomfortable flight. And please know that we are working to improve and 

standardize the experience that our customers have, regardless of 

who operates the flight when they buy an American ticket. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you. 

Mr. McGee, do you believe that the pitch and the width have 

hurt customer safety, as well as maybe imperiled—diminished comfort? 

Mr. MCGEE. Yes, absolutely. It is not just a comfort and value 

issue. It is a safety issue, in terms of evacuation. It is a health 

issue, as you noted, in terms of DVT. Consumers Union has researched this and advocated about it and written about it, and we 

46 

found, when we reached out to the Federal Aviation Administration, that there are unanswered questions. 

When the FAA conducts its evacuation drills, that they are outdated in many cases, A, because they don’t reflect real-world load 

factors, which now are often at 100 percent—they are at less than 

100 percent. B, they are often with employees and things like that, 

so often they are people that know how to evacuate a plane. And 

the third reason is that they often don’t reflect accurate, real-world 

seat pitch, as you have pointed out. 

So there are unanswered questions here about the most primary 

issue of all, which is safety. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, sir. My time has expired. But to the airlines, think Memphis. We need more flights. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Smucker? 

Mr. SMUCKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There has been a lot 

of discussion today in regards to competition and regulation of the 

industry. And I, myself, prefer a free enterprise system, prefer to 

keep Government out of the way whenever we can possibly do that. 

But I think the real question for us today is whether additional 

regulation will be needed, whether there is enough competition to 

prevent that. And I think, Mr. Munoz, you said it best. You said 

the best way to avoid the need for that is for the industry to do 

self-regulation. And I think what we are looking for is to be able 

to have the confidence that the industry will provide the customer 

service that our constituents deserve without the Federal Government stepping in. 

So we had a horrific incident. Unthinkable, to see what we saw, 

the images that we saw on those videos. And I think our job is to 

determine whether this is a one-time incident, or whether it is indicative of a culture that could lead to additional incidents like 

this. And I believe, in many ways, that the top of the organization, 

the CEO, sets the tone. 

I was a small business owner, admittedly much smaller, only had 

a few hundred employees. But the tone of the CEO is absolutely 

critical to drive the customer service throughout the organization. 

Mr. Munoz, you ask us to trust you today to make the changes 

that will be needed here for United. I must tell you, if I am a member of the general public, seeing your reaction, seeing the reaction 

of United initially and in the few weeks after the incident, there 

is a lot of work to be done to convince us that you are responding 

properly to this horrific event. 

The day after the incident—and I will quote—you said, ‘‘I apologize for having to reaccommodate these customers.’’ And then, later 

that evening, you said to your employees, ‘‘While I deeply regret 

this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, 

and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond.’’ 

Mr. Munoz, could you tell us what you were thinking at that 

point? 

Mr. MUNOZ. Sir, with regards to the initial response, I think it 

was—there is no excuse. It was an act based upon me trying to understand facts and circumstances, and it is on me. It was the 

wrong thing to say at the wrong time. 

47 

The second comment, after we gathered more facts, and we understood a little bit more of the facts and circumstances, what had 

caused the event, who had been involved in the physicality that 

you saw, it was my point to make sure that our 87,000 employees 

understood that we had—— 

Mr. SMUCKER. I am going to interrupt you, and I am sorry, I only 

have 5 minutes. I was appalled at your comments the first day, 

sent a letter the morning of the next day, April 11th, which, Mr. 

Chairman, I would like to submit into the record, if I could do so. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Without objection. 

[Congressman Smucker’s letter to Oscar Munoz follows:] 

48 


Insert offset folio 6 here 25311.006
49 


Insert offset folio 7 here 25311.007
50 

Mr. SMUCKER. There were simple questions in regards to policy 

that had led to this in regards to what United was doing to change 

that policy. 

Mr. Munoz, it took you 2 weeks to respond to that letter. The response did not fully address the questions. You did send a review 

and action report. I was amazed that report did not even mention 

that your passenger was physically harmed. I think that is an important part of the investigation. It is not mentioned in your report. Would you care to respond to that? 

Mr. MUNOZ. Sir, we prefer, given the video was indeed so visible 

to so many people, to just stay with the basic facts of the situation, 

and not further sort of elaborate on those things. And again, the 

document, as we have laid out, was, in fact, to get as much information out there as possible. 

Mr. SMUCKER. I have 46 seconds. You do—I commend you for 

some of the changes that you are making in regards to policy for 

your employees. I am very disappointed that you are not changing, 

or at least not mentioning a change to the policy of how you would 

select a passenger for removal. That is unbelievable to me, that, 

after that has occurred, you would not take, for instance, the very 

last passenger that shows up at the gate, rather than some other 

algorithm to choose an employee. So I am very disappointed about 

your response in that regard. 

Mr. MUNOZ. Thank you. The situation is a difficult one, because 

if someone arrives late because they were delivering a baby or 

something—it is a difficult choice. Our policy, our practice, our goforward sort of situation would be, as much as possible, to ameliorate the possibility of those actual events happening. And in regards to reducing our overbooking, making sure crews get there on 

time, and, most importantly, once you are on board one of our aircraft, you will not be removed, and certainly law enforcement will 

not be allowed, other than for safety or security. 

So I think we have covered most of those issues. And, of course, 

we will offer incentives and financial remuneration, along with alternative solutions to get to your destination. 

So it is a start, sir, and I think we will move forward. You will 

see us do that, and I hope I do earn your trust. 

Mr. SMUCKER. Thank you. I am out of time. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Sires? 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, first of all, the— 

what happened is awful for your industry. And I know you are uncomfortable sitting before us. But you know what is more uncomfortable? When you have friends that travel your airline and they 

have a lousy flight, you jerk them around, you send them—they 

miss the flight, and then they call you up and say, ‘‘What are you 

going to do about it?’’ These are lifelong friends. 

And last summer I had friends of mine that traveled to Europe 

out of Newark, which—I represent part of it. And 9:30 they were 

supposed to take off, 1:30 they cancel the flight, put them in a 

hotel, no luggage. Next day you send that to the wrong city. They 

had to get a van to go and travel to meet the schedule that they 

had in Europe. And I had to listen to all that from my friend, 

‘‘What are you going to do about it?’’ 

51 

My question to you is are you too big to manage your industry? 

Have you grown so big that you can’t manage—I mean you are 

moving 186 million customers a day. Do you consider yourself too 

big to manage? Because I was listening to the former Virgin Air 

founder Richard Branson. And one of the things that he suggested 

is that this industry is getting out of control, just getting too big 

to manage. 

Mr. MUNOZ. I think the value of the large footprint that we and 

other airlines at this table have is the ability to really connect customers to all parts of the world through our various networks. The 

large—— 

Mr. SIRES. You can do that with smaller airlines and still, you 

know—one big, humongous airline—— 

Mr. MUNOZ. With all due respect, sir, it is a little bit more difficult than that. The handoffs that we do have today can be difficult, and are continuing another concern that we have of ours. 

But I think the large-scale certainly provides and allows for some 

more freedom of choice. But also the complexity is something that 

we have to better manage. 

We are an organization that—around policies and procedures on 

safety that work very well, and—but again, to your point, it is important that we localize that customer service, not in a broad perspective. And every one of our stations, every one of our folks are 

very keen and focused on that. 

Mr. SIRES. Mr. Kirby, I assume you are responsible for the size 

of the seats in your airline? 

Mr. KIRBY. I can certainly answer questions about them. 

Mr. SIRES. Well, you know, I would tell you to consider that people are getting larger in America. And the idea of making the seats 

smaller is not safe. 

Mr. KIRBY. Well, sir, safety—— 

Mr. SIRES. Three minutes? I don’t think I can make it out of a 

plane in 3 minutes. 

Mr. KIRBY. Safety is our number one concern at United Airlines, 

and we are focused on safety. 

As to seat size, we are trying to offer our customers more choice, 

and—— 

Mr. SIRES. Well, that brings me to another question. Every time 

you want to do something, you have got to pay extra. I mean if you 

want a window with a—you got to pay extra. If you want a little 

extra seat in the front, you want extra. 

Mr. KIRBY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SIRES. I know you are saying that it is—you know, that it 

has to do with the price of the ticket and everything else. But pretty soon you are going to charge to use the restrooms. 

Mr. KIRBY. Sir, we are never going to do that. But it does have 

to—— 

Mr. SIRES. You are not going to do that? 

Mr. KIRBY. We are not going to do that. 

Mr. SIRES. I appreciate that. 

Mr. KIRBY. But it does have to do with the price of the ticket. 

It costs the same to fly an airplane, whether you have 150 seats 

or 138 seats on board, essentially the same. And if you take 12 

52 

seats off to create more room on the airplane, you are going to have 

to charge more. 

Mr. SIRES. If you take up more room. 

Mr. McGee, can you respond to that a bit? 

Mr. MCGEE. Yes, absolutely. Congressman, today we have heard 

an awful lot about pricing. And we hear this sort of charge over 

and over again, that prices are lower than ever when adjusted for 

inflation. We have heard it several times today. 

The fact is that that obscures several key things. One, of course, 

is the fees, as you pointed out. Years ago we didn’t pay to sit by 

a window, we didn’t pay to bring a bag on, et cetera. 

Mr. SIRES. Do we have any idea how many fees the companies 

charge? 

Mr. MCGEE. We see that every day they are not only higher and 

higher fees, but new fees. And now, for the first time, admittedly—— 

Mr. SIRES. The airlines are making money. It is not as if the—— 

Mr. MCGEE. No question about that. There is no question they 

are making money. There is no question that the price of fuel has 

gone down. So, you have apples to oranges comparisons there, but 

in addition, even just within a given route, the fluctuation in fares 

is so great. 

We have seen, time and time again—the DOT puts out a quarterly airfare report four times a year that shows where there is 

competition from low-cost carriers, from Spirit, from JetBlue, et 

cetera, fares go down. 

In fact, there was even—as Mr. Jordan well knows, the DOT 

called it the Southwest effect to address this back in the 1990s. 

When there is no low-fare competition and the majors are competing with each other, or not competing with anyone, effectively, 

in many markets, fares—disproportionately—when we talk about 

average fares, the disproportionate rate between the lowest and the 

highest is so great that passengers all over the country are getting 

gouged. There is no competition. 

If you would allow, if I had a moment, I can just tell you—this 

is on a low-cost carrier, mind you—coming here yesterday—I received the invitation last Wednesday, and flying from Connecticut, 

where I live, I went on last Tuesday night at midnight, 43 minutes 

after midnight. I found a fare of $398.40. Unfortunately, my credit 

card had a problem, which we don’t need to get into today, but— 

I am a consumer advocate, not an airline executive. 

I went back on 7 hours and 36 minutes later. That price was now 

648.40 on a low-cost carrier. That is $250. That is a 61-percent increase in 7 hours and 36 minutes. There are not too many businesses that charge such a wide variance in price for the exact same 

product. Luckily, my credit card worked the second time. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry I took so long. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Sam Graves. 

Mr. GRAVES OF MISSOURI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

We have certainly heard a lot today about everything that has 

gone wrong, and I am going to give you the opportunity—and we 

will start with Mr. Munoz. So, what is going right? 

53 

Mr. MUNOZ. Sir, thank you for asking that question. What is 

going right, at least from the United perspective, that over the last 

18 months, our operational reliability has improved to a degree 

that, in this month, we are finishing first in the four publicly reported metrics. 

So, we have learned—I have learned over the course of my time, 

when it comes to customer service and customer needs, there are 

three basic things that people want. 

First and foremost, despite what they say about all of the other 

important items like food and seats, reliability is the most important one. Get me where the heck I asked to get to. 

So, we have been investing in our people and our business and 

our resources to ensure that reliability has improved, and it has 

improved mightily. 

Second, an issue of concern with customers is flexibility. We are 

almost a 100-year-old company. Safety is a main driver for us, and 

safety is so important that the rigorous application of policies and 

procedures is a discipline that has carried over into our customer 

service area. 

That is where we have to make the changes. That has been our 

next sort of approach. 

Then, lastly, with regards to information, if something is going 

wrong, tell me the hell what is going wrong and tell me as quickly 

as I can so you don’t sort of upset my timing and schedule. 

So, that is what—we have been working on those things, and the 

incident of a few weeks ago was a horrible incident that we are 

never going to repeat, but the trajectory of our company in that regard has been doing very well. 

Mr. GRAVES OF MISSOURI. Mr. Sprague? 

Mr. SPRAGUE. Congressman, thank you for the question. 

I think I would lead with, at Alaska Airlines, our employees— 

employee morale is high, and they are very focused on doing a good 

job for the customers, and they are working very hard in that regard. 

I had a bit of a complaint when I flew out here yesterday on 

Alaska Airlines. The inflight Wi-Fi was slower than I would have 

liked, and yet, when we think about it, it wasn’t that long ago that 

the notion of being able to do your email onboard a flight at 30,000 

feet would have been unheard of, and yet, we are taking that on 

as an opportunity to do even better, and we will be installing satellite Wi-Fi across our fleet so that we can improve that part of our 

customer experience. 

I think that is an example of—to answer your question very directly, one of the things that is going right in the industry is the 

innovation. Airlines are investing in their product, and they are 

doing it with innovative new approaches to technology and service 

to make the customer experience as good as it can be. 

Mr. GRAVES OF MISSOURI. Mr. Jordan? 

Mr. JORDAN. I think—I am speaking for Southwest—so many 

things are going right, particularly on the customer service side. 

The NPS scores, how we measure service, are the best that they 

have been in the last 3 years. They are 11 points higher. OTP is 

7 points higher than 2 years ago. The mishandled bag rates are the 

lowest they have ever been in the history of our company. 

54 

The complaint ratios, even though we enplane 12 percent more 

customers than 3 years ago, they are nominally lower today. 

So, I think a lot is going very well on the customer service side, 

and just briefly, you mentioned seats. We are in the middle of retrofitting quite a bit of the fleet with a new seat, and that seat is 

actually wider and with better effective pitch, so the personal room 

for the customer is actually getting better. 

So, I think there are a number of things that are going better 

for the customer in terms of customer experience. 

Mr. GRAVES OF MISSOURI. Ms. Philipovitch? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Thank you for the opportunity, Congressman. 

It is a time of great optimism at American Airlines, and just in 

the past 3 years, we have added more than 10,000 new team members to our American family. We have increased our team members’ compensation by an average of more than 35 percent. We 

have added 100 new routes, and our team members have delivered 

amazing results, improving our reliability, and we have seen customer satisfaction scores going up, and this is all at a time where 

we are making unprecedented investments in our product and our 

customer experience. So, we are really excited about what the future holds. 

Mr. GRAVES OF MISSOURI. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much. 

Ms. Titus. 

Ms. TITUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I represent Las Vegas, and this is a place that knows a thing or 

two about customer satisfaction and hospitality and service. 

We welcome over 43 million visitors to my district every year, 

and many of them come through McCarran International Airport, 

which is also in my district. 

Now, I have often heard my friend, Jim Murren, who is the head 

of MGM Resorts International, say that people talk about their experience from the moment they leave their home, all the way 

through the trip, to the time they check into his hotel, and that 

leaves a lasting impression on them about the quality of the visit 

they have. 

Now, he doesn’t want to have to buy breakfast for some angry 

customer like Mr. Capuano here when they get there because they 

have lost their bag or they had to wait for an hour to get a cab 

or they had an unpleasant flight experience, and I am sure you do 

not want to deal with that same kind of customer either, but it is 

no wonder that they exist. 

We have heard all these stories about ticketing systems crashing 

that leave passengers stranded, long lines passing through security, baggage fees that push customers to take their suitcases onboard, and despite the fact that you say one goes up and one goes 

down, they are cramming them all up there, bumping into people 

while they do it. 

You know, add that to the xenophobic policies of the administration who are doing this extreme vetting and checking your 

Facebook or email or whatever when you get on the plane. 

It is no wonder that people come kind of girded for battle. 

So, I have some sympathy for what you are having to deal with, 

but this is my question. We have heard all this kind of ranting 

55 

about how bad the airlines are and all these unfortunate experiences, and yet, pretty soon, this committee is set to consider a proposal to privatize air traffic control and hand over billions of dollars’ worth of investment and assets to a private corporation that 

is going to be controlled by you all, by the airlines, and then you 

will be able to run it as you see fit. 

Now, I am opposed to that for a number of reasons, primarily because of how it is going to leave customers kind of in the lurch, but 

my question is, what do you have to show that means you are 

going to be able to take over this corporation and do well by your 

customers from that angle any better than you do from your angle 

that you are now? 

For example, there are questions like, how much is the traveler 

going to have to pay to this corporation? What kind of things have 

you done at your airlines in terms of routing that might be better 

that you will do through this corporation, in terms of investment 

in technology, management decisions? What have you done about 

your own scheduling? 

All of those questions that have seemed to be criticized today— 

how are they going to translate into your being able to control the 

air traffic control system through a private board? 

So, maybe you all could just tell me some of the things you are 

doing that would make an argument for why you should control 

that aspect of airlines, as well. 

Mr. KIRBY. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman, and we 

believe that one of the ways we can actually help our customers is 

through ATC privatization. The worst thing we do to our customers 

is the long delays and cancellations, and those lead to customer 

service problems. They lead to the customer that gets to McCarran 

and is upset, and we want to fix that, and the FAA is a fantastic 

partner, and they want to fix that, as well, but they are handicapped today by the model, by the model where they do annual 

budgets, where investing for the future and the kinds of investments we need to make for the future are hard for the FAA to do 

in the normal course of business in the Government, and the kinds 

of things that we could do to make the process better is, for example, you know, getting—you know, you have more sophisticated 

GPS technology in your car than we use in aircraft today. 

We have the systems, and we could fly straight line routes, but 

we still fly zigzag highways in the sky to get from Washington to 

Las Vegas. 

We could do things like continuous descent approaches. So, 

today, we are at 35,000 feet. We step down in each one. It is like 

driving your car and slamming on the accelerator, then hitting the 

brake, and slamming on the accelerator, and we burn gas, and we 

take more time. 

All of that could allow us to fly shorter paths and get our customers there quicker, and we believe that it is one of the best 

things we could do for customer service, is to reform the ATC program, and one of the best ways to do that is FAA privatization, not 

because the FAA is doing a bad job. They do a wonderful job, but 

the process is designed to be difficult, particularly for making longterm investments. 

56 

Ms. TITUS. What guarantee does the customer have you will do 

any better job at that than you are doing now with just getting 

them on the plane or dragging them off? 

Mr. KIRBY. Well, we are—while we do have bad incidents like 

what happened 3 weeks ago on United Airlines, we are carrying 86 

million people safely this year. 

As all of us talked about in the last question, we are getting better at running reliable operations, and in this case, we have the 

exact same incentive. What is better for our customers is better for 

the whole air traffic system. It is better for our economy, and we 

have the same set of incentives. 

If we can fly more efficiently, that is good for our customers to 

get in there faster, but it is also good for fuel burn. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I am sorry. We have to take a 5-minute recess at 

this time. We will be in recess exactly 5 minutes. 

[Recess] 

Mr. DUNCAN. We will go ahead and start back, if everyone will 

please take their seats, and the next Member to ask questions is 

Mr. Lewis. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I do not want to go down the road here, in my 5 minutes, of telling you how to run your business. We get far too much of that from 

Capitol Hill, it seems to me, and you know more about running 

your business than probably most of us here. 

I do want to come to you, though, as a consumer, a consumer 

who just spent, two weekends ago, 30 hours getting from Washington, DC, to Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

I and another colleague were stranded at Reagan for a day-anda-half, without, frankly, adequate communication from an airline. 

We had our flights delayed for 2 days, delayed for an hour, delayed for an hour, delayed for an hour, then at the end of the day, 

canceled. It would have been much easier had the flight been canceled right from the get-go. This was due to the weather disturbance in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago. 

So, as I say, I understand the constraints with which you run 

your industry, and it has got to be somewhat gratifying, given the 

good financial health you appear to be in, to prove Warren Buffett 

wrong. That is a good thing. 

When a guy that said the industry was a death trap for investors 

is now investing in the airlines, I think that is a good thing, a lot 

better than bankrupt airlines. 

So, I want to make certain that we can arrive at some solutions, 

potentially, today to make the flying experience better for people 

like me and my constituents and everybody across the country, 

while also maintaining profitability and operating at full capacity, 

which has been the goal for quite some time. There is no other way 

to run the business. 

You can go back to 1978, but in those days, of course, travel by 

air was reserved for upper middle income. Today it’s every man’s 

way to travel. 

So, having said all of this—and I don’t want to focus on—well, 

let me start with this—and I will open it up with Mr. Munoz, and 

that is, there has been a lot of talk about air traffic control reform, 

and since we are operating at full capacity, which is the best way 

57 

for the airline to remain profitable, would air traffic control reform 

have an effect on the flying experience? 

For instance, my situation, when—when you have got capacity so 

constrained and there is one hiccup, whether it is weather or 

whether it is crew or whether it is anything, you are going to have 

a ripple effect. 

Would reforming ATC have an effect, and what kind of an effect? 

Mr. MUNOZ. It is an incredibly outdated system, as you may well 

guess, which led to some of those events. We think it would have 

a lot of improvement. 

Mr. Kirby just answered a question a few minutes ago. I would 

ask him to, just for continuity purposes, I invite him to answer, as 

well. 

Mr. KIRBY. It would lead to dramatic improvement, we believe, 

over time, for customers to be able to fly faster and get to the destination faster, which does put more slack and more capacity into 

the system. 

It probably would not have—given what happened at a different 

airline for that weekend, it probably would not have had much effect on that, but it would lead to overall improvement for customers, because we could spend less time with the airplanes in the 

air and parked on the ground, and more time getting the customer 

there quickly. 

Mr. LEWIS. If it increases capacity, would you then just—supply 

and demand tend to meet—would you just increase loads again? 

Mr. KIRBY. Well, it is likely that it would increase flying at that 

point, over time, and that, I think, would still be—that would be 

really good for customers. As we increase flying, you know, fares— 

supply and demand on that side, as supply tends to go up, fares 

tend to come down, and we could carry even more customers every 

year. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you. 

Mr. Jordan, Southwest came out of the airline deregulation, 

great success story. There is one thing you do that a number of the 

other airlines operating on the a la carte system don’t do, and that 

is you put the bags within the ticket price. 

It seems to me, again, there has been a lot of talk about stress 

from this panel today, flying, and one of the stressors seems to be, 

in some cases, it takes longer to board the plane and deplane than 

it does to get to my destination once we are in the air, and some 

critics suggest that is because we have separated—or the excise tax 

doesn’t apply to baggage when you separate it out, when you go a 

la carte. 

You haven’t gone down that road. Are the critics right? Is there 

a problem with boarding? I know we’ve got zones now and executives are trying to figure out the best way to board, the best way 

to deplane, but that is—it does seem to be a problem, when you are 

behind the person that is trying to put their hope chest in the overhead bins. 

Mr. JORDAN. Thank you for the question. 

Just generally, I think we think what is the best for the customer, just doing what is right for the customer, is to let them take 

a bag for free, bags for free, not charge change fees, not charge cancellation fees, et cetera, et cetera. 

58 

On the operational side, yes, if a customer can check a bag for 

free, they are going to check more bags, which that results in a 

smaller number of bags that are brought onboard, because they can 

check, which allows us to board more efficiently and allows for the 

overhead bins to be less crowded. 

Mr. LEWIS. I see my time is up, but I would like to continue this 

at a later date, I hope. Thank you all for coming. It takes a lot of 

courage to show up here given the recent events, and we appreciate 

it. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Esty. 

Ms. ESTY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the endurance of the panel, but our constituents have to endure, and that 

is why we are here. You are not just in the transportation business. 

You are in the customer service business, and we have seen some 

rather noteworthy and disturbing failures in the last few weeks. 

With the bad weather a couple of weeks ago, I had many calls 

in my office, and people who see me on the airline every week, 

talking about how they had been stranded. I had to help a passenger who was in a wheelchair, who was left for 3 hours, just sort 

of abandoned at a gate, and nobody was keeping track of her, letting her know what was going on, checking to see could she get to 

the bathroom, could she have any help, and that—on customer 

service, frankly, no low ticket price makes up for a miserable experience. 

With the consolidations that we are seeing, with four of the airlines controlling 85 percent of the traffic—when I fly from Hartford, Connecticut, I don’t have a lot of choices, and that is true for 

my colleagues, and it is, more importantly, true for our constituents. They have very little choice. 

You are in a near monopoly position, and I think that is why so 

many of us are concerned and you are hearing this linkage to FAA 

privatization. 

If the market were functioning well, this could never have happened, Mr. Munoz, never have happened, and we know well that 

that was a shocking and, thankfully, rare event, we don’t want to 

see violence on airlines, but unless we figure out a way to guarantee that customers are coming first, you are going to see more 

of that. 

My colleague, Richard Blumenthal, is introducing legislation in 

the Senate today to deal with raising what those required offer 

prices are, putting in new standards, and I know there has been 

well drafted—and you know, hats off to the PR folks who helped 

you draft the response, belatedly, but you can understand why we 

are skeptical that the market is going to solve it, because it should 

have prevented this from happening, and so, genuinely, what kind 

of assurance can we have that there shouldn’t be legislation in 

place, that I don’t have constituents telling me about having been 

diverted to Dulles because of snow and left on the tarmac for 4 

hours, standing in sight of stairs, and they just sat there, with no 

update, for 4 hours. 

Now, I understand there are snowstorms, but why couldn’t someone roll stairs over? I was getting calls from the plane to my office, 

59 

saying can’t you do something? We can see the stairs. No one will 

tell us what is happening. Then they started to run out of fuel. 

That bespeaks a focus on the bottom line and having lost the customer. 

If the customer is really king or queen, you have forgotten that. 

So, how do we fix this? How do we fix this other than folks here, 

folks here having to draft legislation for you to treat our constituents with the respect and safety that they deserve on the airlines, 

with the consolidation that has happened, because I think it is 

really important. 

You know, we talk about the importance of customers being able 

to vote with their dollars. My constituents do not have that choice. 

When I am looking at flights, I don’t have that choice. If I need 

to go to be here in time for votes, I don’t have that choice. I don’t 

have that, and I can no longer take, like, a 3 o’clock flight and 

think I am going to get here on time. I have to back it up, because 

I can’t count on that, and the lost productivity is billions and billions and billions of dollars of Americans right now who face the 

same choice that our colleagues all face, and say, well, I guess I 

have got to take that really early flight, make sure I get there in 

time, I might get bumped. 

How are we going to fix this? What are you going to do? Not a 

press release, but what are you going to do in changing your policies, among them, can I suggest, I never want to see a paying customer pulled off a flight to move a crew. You charter a plane if you 

need to do it, but that should never happen. 

You need to move your crews. I get that. We all get that, but it 

should never be at the expense of a paying customer, ever, and that 

is going to be the first thing, you know, on a bill I am signing onto, 

because that is the ultimate—the ultimate indication that you have 

not managed your system well, and you are asking customers to 

pay for your failure to manage. 

So, genuinely, please come to the table with us and figure out 

how we are going to set standards in place and ability to hold you 

accountable, and again, I know none of you want to be here. Frankly, we don’t want to be here either. 

We want our constituents to be happy. We want them to get 

there safely and get home safely on time, and we do, too, but it has 

got to be more than press releases. It actually has to be change and 

policies and practices and, most importantly, priorities. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. LaMalfa. 

Mr. LAMALFA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, panelists, for being here today and enduring this. Indeed, we have a lot 

of controversy about air travel recently and over the years. 

I think a great point was made about sitting on a tarmac in a 

plane for several hours. I hope that can be something that could 

have a lot more attention to that in the future. I think some 

changes have been made, but to be sitting in an airplane waiting 

for an undetermined outcome, I would hope they could find ways 

to allow people to at least deplane during an unknown delay like 

that, but I am a frequent flier, too. 

60 

I fly from the west coast to the east coast. It is about a 5-hour, 

on average, flight, and so, by and large, it goes pretty well, you 

know. 

I mean, we note that there’s 700 million customers that fly successfully every year, and I think that is pretty remarkable. 

We have a very tiny percentage that do have, indeed, some of the 

problems that are being talked about here, but what we also know 

about flying 35,000 feet or so in the air, you have zero margin for 

error, OK, not like a land-based vehicle where you can just pull 

over. 

You don’t just pull over in a plane. I mean, your options are a 

little more limited. 

So, you have a lot of things you go through to ensure safety before you take off. We have all sat there when they are reprogramming the computer, something doesn’t quite go right, they have a 

mechanical issue they have got to look at, because you know, I 

would rather they do than they don’t. 

You also have constraints from competition to keep your planes 

full. 

You know, I use a major airline in my travel, and the first 3 

months of each year, my direct flight isn’t available, because I don’t 

think the airline can keep the seats full, therefore—I don’t want to 

lose the flight completely having a direct, so I have to hop through 

Denver or Chicago or something like that for the first 3 months of 

the year, till the tourist season comes in. 

So, we all get there’s economic restraints, and that is important. 

As a businessperson, I get that, too. 

So, I guess what it gets down to, though, is that we did have this 

recent incident here, and you know, legislators, when they read 

something in the newspaper, they want to legislate, and you all are 

taking your beating here in the committee here today, and United, 

especially, and what I have seen United do is take steps, take remedies towards that, and so, my quick question down the whole 

panel is that—and I think I understood—sorry, I have been in and 

out of the hearing a little bit for a competing hearing. 

Mr. Munoz, you did mention that you no longer have a policy of 

pulling somebody off the airplane, where you did before, right, that 

was already seated. 

Mr. MUNOZ. That is correct. 

Mr. LAMALFA. That is abolished. OK. For the rest of the airlines, 

would you just quickly on that—did you ever have that or have you 

since abolished—since this issue? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. We have recommitted that we will never remove a seated passenger to accommodate another passenger. 

Mr. LAMALFA. Thank you. 

Mr. JORDAN. For Southwest, same thing. It is our intent to never 

involuntarily deny somebody who has already boarded onto the aircraft. 

Mr. SPRAGUE. I am not aware of us having done it at Alaska Airlines, and same, it is our intent to avoid that situation altogether. 

Mr. LAMALFA. OK. All right. So, I think a very big lesson learned 

very graphically on Twitter and video and everything else, so—I 

don’t always think that there is a legislative remedy from people 

that aren’t in business that deal with it day in and day out, so I 

61 

am not quick to think that legislation is needed from Washington, 

DC, on this issue. 

I think let’s give the airlines a chance to carry that out. 

I did go through the United carriage of contract over the weekend. I had a real slow moment there, and I did not see in rule 25, 

denied boarding, anything about pulling people off the airline. 

Was there ever anything in print about pulling them off the aircraft? 

Mr. MUNOZ. No, sir. That is an internal policy. 

Mr. LAMALFA. OK. All right. So, that appears to be in the past. 

So, I think that what we can also do is we can learn from other 

people and how they do things, so some of the major airlines versus 

some of the not quite as big airlines. 

So, what would Alaska Airlines, for example, be able to impart 

to United or to Southwest, and what could Alaska Airlines learn 

from United or Southwest or American, the bigger ones versus the 

more midsize ones? What would you be able to share with each 

other on how you would do things? 

Let Alaska go first, Mr. Sprague. What is it you would advise 

and what would you like to learn from them as a way to do better? 

Mr. SPRAGUE. Thank you, Congressman, for the question, and I 

will be a little cautious with my answer, because this is an industry that has an ability to humble an airline and its employees in 

a hurry. 

There are a number of things at Alaska Airlines that, even with 

some of the customer accolades we have received, that we need to 

improve on, and we know that and we are focused on that. 

I think that one thing we have found is that giving our employees, our customer-facing employees that deal with our guests every 

day, as much empowerment as possible—we have a stated company 

value to do the right thing, and we believe that if we empower our 

employees and we talk to them about empathy and the Golden 

Rule that they will do the right thing, and that usually leads to the 

best outcome for all involved. 

Mr. LAMALFA. I appreciate that. 

I will yield back in a second, and also, I had a very good experience watching a lady at the counter with Southwest when in Baltimore, during a delay. 

She handled things like a pro, but also, she was assertive enough 

with obnoxious customers to be able to get the job done for the rest 

of us. 

So, there is a very talented line that has to be there with that, 

and also, Alaska—I like your tail logo the best. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Frankel. 

Ms. FRANKEL. Thank you, sir. 

I want to first thank the panel. You know what, you probably 

feel today like a lot of fliers, very claustrophobic and waiting for 

something bad to maybe happen. So, thank you for your patience. 

My colleagues have done a very good job, I think, in pointing out 

some problems, and I am not going to pile on. I want to start by 

thanking the thousands of professional flight attendants and pilots 

and the counter people that work in this industry, who do very 

62 

good jobs and work very hard, and I think what we all can agree, 

that policies and training make a difference so that they can do 

their job. 

So does having a good civil justice system so people can have private recourse, and it doesn’t hurt to have a good cell camera when 

you need one, right? 

I am from Florida, south Florida. We had 100 million visitors 

last year. Many of them took planes. The airline industry creates 

1.3 million jobs with a $44.5 million payroll in our State. So, we 

have to get this right. 

I have three questions, and just so that you can answer them, 

maybe if one of you would try to answer each of these questions. 

I don’t need all of you to answer them, OK? 

First of all, I would like to know whether the Consumers Union 

folks ever meet with you all and you could sit down and discuss 

these issues. 

Number two, we have talked a lot about overbooking. I would 

like to understand what might be the unintended consequences, if 

any, and how it would affect especially customers if we did not 

allow overbooking. 

Then I think a policy that I know really irritates most of us is 

the rigid change policies, how expensive it is, and I don’t understand why, in this digital age, they have to be so rigid. 

So, if you want to take a shot at those three questions. 

Mr. MUNOZ. I think United will take the overbooking one, since 

we have been answering, and Scott’s been doing this. I will let him 

do it. 

Mr. KIRBY. Well, first, Congresswoman, thank you for thanking 

our employees, who, you are right, do a phenomenal job in tough 

conditions all the time. 

On overbooking, we use overbooking to take care of thousands of 

customers that we would otherwise not be able to accommodate. 

One of the most common uses is in a situation where someone 

has a delayed or canceled flight, and we will then overbook them, 

those customers, onto another flight that is currently booked full. 

Ms. FRANKEL. What is the number of people who are bumped 

compared to the number of people who are accommodated because 

of the overbooking? 

Mr. KIRBY. So, we, from an over—most of our oversales, where 

we don’t—where we can’t accommodate customers come from operational issues, like a weather issue where we can’t take a full load 

of passengers. 

We at United, about 15 percent of the time, when we actually 

overbook a flight, do we actually have more customers show up 

than are on the airplane, and in that situation, 95.6 percent of the 

time, we are able to solicit volunteers. 

So, it is really unusual that overbooking creates an involuntary 

denied boarding, and particularly now that we’ve gone up to a 

$10,000 limit on denied boardings, I think we are going to be able 

to drive that number close to zero, but if we stopped overbooking 

entirely, there are thousands of customers that we either couldn’t 

sell a ticket to or that, when there is an operational disruption, we 

couldn’t give them another option for how to get home. 

Ms. FRANKEL. Next question. 

63 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. I can take your question about consumer 

unions. 

As you know, the Department of Transportation has a robust 

consumer protection division that oversees airline issues. They also 

host a panel with both consumer union members and airlines to get 

together to discuss issues, so that is a good way that we are able 

to connection. 

Mr. MCGEE. Congresswoman, could I add something to that? 

Ms. FRANKEL. Yeah. But I want to get to the rigid change policy 

if somebody could, yeah. 

Mr. MCGEE. Just a quick aside on the issue that has come up 

several times, legislation versus self-policing. 

It should be noted that, during the tarmac delay discussions that 

were so robust a few years ago, I participated on behalf of Consumers Union at a meeting organized by Senator Boxer, and every 

airline in the United States was invited, as well as the largest airline trade organization, and not one representative showed up. 

For me, that was a turning point for Consumers Union. We were 

invited to discuss a serious consumer issue, and they didn’t even 

come. 

The chairman today noted that some of the airlines that were invited to this hearing didn’t come. 

So, I think that speaks volume. 

Ms. FRANKEL. On the rigid change, the rigid change policy. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. I can take that question. I had answered it 

earlier, as well. 

Airlines offer a variety of products to meet differing needs of consumers, and some consumers put a priority on buying the lowest 

fare and are willing to buy a restricted ticket in order to get that 

fare, while other customers know they need more flexibility and 

they prefer to buy a nonrefundable fare. 

So, the change fee is something that is basically a way to offer 

some measure of flexibility when people buy a nonrefundable ticket. 

With the change fee, we do allow some flexibility there. So, that 

is the purpose of the change fee. 

Ms. FRANKEL. Thank you, and I yield back. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Woodall. 

Mr. WOODALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

You know you are having a bad day when the group that is going 

to lecture you on customer satisfaction is the United States Congress, right? That is a low bar to get over. 

I just want to see a show of hands. When somebody gets stuck 

for 3 hours in the snow in Dulles Airport, whose airline makes 

more money because those passengers are trapped out there on the 

runway? Nobody does? 

Well, let me ask a different question, then. When the stairs fail 

to get rolled over to my plane so I can climb down, which one of 

you has operational control over that airport and is preventing 

those stairs from getting rolled over to my plane? None of you do? 

Well, let me just ask the other question, then. Who is it that is 

controlling the airspace there on that runway that is not letting 

planes come and go? Is it the profit-seeking airlines, or is it the 

64 

consumer-friendly Federal Government that is controlling those 

airways? 

Can someone help me with that? 

I know the answer to this question, and I just cannot believe that 

we have been sitting in this hearing, again, as if we have the customer satisfaction approval ratings to do it, talking about how if 

only the Government were to regulate more, we would do better. The $1,350 maximum bumped passenger fee that is in DOT regs 

today—I am sure folks intended that to be a floor, but it is, in fact, 

a ceiling that developed in the industry. 

If you can’t roll the stairs to your plane, if you can’t take off, just 

because you want to take off, I want to understand, if we are in 

the safest aviation environment we have ever been in—as we go 

back historically, have we been in a safer aviation environment, 

historically? No. 

Well, as we go back, have we been in a more affordable air travel 

environment ever in our Nation’s history? 

So, we are the safest we’ve ever been, we’re the cheapest we’ve 

ever been, and we want to figure out how to do better for consumers, and we are thinking it might be more Federal regulation 

that will do it. 

Now, I did a quick back-of-the-envelope count on how many 

flights take me back and forth to Georgia each and every day, and 

Atlanta is a different case, and I understand that we have Spirit 

going back and forth, we have Southwest going back and forth, 

American takes us direct, Delta is going back and forth. 

We don’t have any shortage. About 36 flights a day take folks 

back and forth from Atlanta to the region, and competition sorts 

out the issues. 

Does anyone’s airplane model allow me not to purchase a bigger 

seat if I would like one? Has anybody eliminated the larger, more 

comfortable seats from the model? Nobody on this panel has done 

that. 

So, we haven’t eliminated the larger, more comfortable seats. 

Whose model has added smaller, cheaper seats? Has American 

added smaller, cheaper seats in the last 10 years? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. We have changed density on aircraft in some 

cases where we have added seats, but we haven’t changed the size 

of the seats. 

Mr. WOODALL. Has Southwest added smaller, cheaper seats? 

Mr. JORDAN. We have moved to a new seat, but it’s actually 

wider and a more effective pitch. 

Mr. WOODALL. I just can’t—I just can’t understand who it is on 

this panel that believes we care more about your customers than 

you do. 

I will ask my friends from United. Mr. Kirby, you are crunching 

the numbers day in and day out. How much has United been advantaged in this past 3-week episode? 

Mr. KIRBY. Well, we certainly—this was not—something we regret, and it didn’t help us financially, but it is going to help us, by 

the way, be better in the future, because we are going to learn and 

be a better airline. 

Mr. WOODALL. I regret that I spent so much time on my previous 

round. 

65 

Think about the burdens we place on you. My flight attendants 

today say, Rob, we are not even going to pay that close of attention 

to whether or not your bag is tucked up under the seat, whether 

or not your cell phone has been turned off, because folks are so 

angry and passengers are pretty tough. 

We put these responsibilities on you. Every flight I get on says 

Federal regulations requires you to follow the flight attendant’s instructions. 

Your flight attendants had instructions. Folks don’t follow those 

instructions. 

What is it—what would the enforcement mechanism be if the 

Federal Government was not regulating in this place, if it was not 

true that Federal regulations require you to follow flight attendant 

instructions? What tool would you use to have a rowdy group of 

passengers follow your flight attendant instructions, which we need 

to do in the name of safety? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. We appreciate the role that the FAA plays in 

ensuring that policies are in place to make our aircraft and our 

customers safe. 

Mr. WOODALL. I don’t believe that there is anyone in this town 

that cares more about your customers than you do. I don’t believe 

the lesson of United’s experience is that customers don’t matter. 

I think the lesson is that customers do matter, and folks are 

going to change extraordinarily policies in order to serve their customer base. 

We have never been safer. It has never been easier to get on an 

airplane. 

I would tell you, Mr. Chairman, the challenges that we face may 

not come from the private sector. They may come from right here 

on this committee and right down the road on Independence Avenue. 

Mr. DUNCAN. OK. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Payne. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

You know, I have been listening for the last several hours, and 

let me just associate myself with the comments made by my colleagues on this side of the aisle. So, I won’t be repetitious and 

browbeat the issue. 

We are clear where we are in this regard, and also, let me state 

for the record that, you know, I oppose the privatization of the air 

traffic controllers. 

With that, I have been flying for a while. I am a little older than 

I look. Well, that is what I am told, so—I remember People’s Express, who then became Continental, who then became United, and 

their hub in my district, Newark Airport, for quite some time, and 

so, I have seen the evolution and the consolidation, and in some 

ways, it is positive, in other ways it has been negative, but to me, 

it appears that Southwest is really setting the standard here in the 

industry, and I would hope that some of the practices of that airline would be incorporated across the industry. 

But with that said, you know, I have had the opportunity to meet 

with Mr. Munoz on several occasions, as United has really given 

back to the community where its hub there in Newark, New Jersey, each year, students in my district are interns from Newark 

66 

and East Orange and Jersey City, and it’s an opportunity to expose 

young people to careers in aviation at that airport. 

These communities are tremendously appreciative of these opportunities. 

So, I just wanted to put that on the record for my district. 

Mr. Munoz, the incident, you know, obviously, with flight 3411 

really has kind of blemished United’s reputation, but I am glad to 

see your company has responded in the changes that it’s made to 

create a more positive experience for your customers. 

You know, unfortunately, a lot of times—my colleagues on the 

other side have talked about regulation, regulation, but there are, 

unfortunately, sometimes in the industry, a lot of things are reactive instead of being proactive, but I am sure, if it wasn’t clear before, this episode has highlighted some issues that the industry 

needs to come to grips with. 

So, how can Congress, the Department of Transportation, and 

the airlines work together to improve the flying experience for customers, because in the end, that is what we want. 

We don’t need to sit here and, you know, rehash—we understand—we know—everyone knows what happened. How can we all 

work together to make the experience more positive for customers, 

because that is what we want to do as Members of Congress, as 

well, help you and help the industry, as well, make this a positive 

experience. 

Mr. MUNOZ. Sir, thank you for your comments, and we love our 

intern program at EWR [Newark Liberty International Airport] 

and have actually expanded that to other places in the country. 

I think—I am new to this industry. I have worked in many other 

industries, and I have had many a debate and a discussion on all 

of these matters, and I think, at the end of the day, in open discussion, any more proactive conversation, rather than reactive, is always helpful to us in business. 

The problem with introduced legislation or regulation at any 

point in time is that it is so reactive, and it doesn’t really apply 

to the business needs, and if there is some way we can do a more 

open debate and conversation between aisles, between the different 

companies, I think it is important. 

It is the old how-can-we-all-get-along aspect of that, and I think 

it is an important one to note. Just as we govern the country, as 

you govern us, I think it is important, but the end all has to be 

the customer at the center of the universe for us, and I think what 

you have heard from this panel is just that focus. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. 

Chairman, I will yield back. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. 

Mrs. Comstock. 

Mrs. COMSTOCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I guess we have gotten to that point in the hearing where all the 

questions have been asked but not everyone has asked them, and 

also, you know, many of the questions that we have already heard 

from, I would associate myself with, and you know, genuine concern, and really, you know, it was appalling for everyone to see 

this, as I think has been expressed, and I do appreciate, Mr. 

Munoz, your recognizing that and your very strong statement on 

67 

the initial—the whole incident, responses, and the detailed plans 

that you have come here to outline for us, and I hope we will continue that dialogue, and as I heard Mr. Davis earlier talk about the 

survey that he took, I hope you will take into mind, you know, 

focus groups, surveys, reach out more to the flying public to hear 

from them, and in that regard, this is a little different than some 

of the questions we have had before. 

I wanted to point out something that we have highlighted in a 

working group that we have on women in the workforce and that 

studies show—I know it’s a little off what we have been talking 

about, but studies show that companies with three or more women 

in senior management functions scored higher in key factors of 

leadership, accountability, and innovation, and more than companies with no women that are the top, and I know, you know, when 

I look in the transportation industry, in general, and in aviation, 

it is very male-heavy, and you know, the boards also are that case. 

So, I would ask, as you are looking at this and making improvements and taking into account all of the things that we have discussed here today, sort of the diversification of boards and taking 

that opportunity, I think technology is something we can use much 

more, but also technology that really takes into account the lives 

of your flying public. 

I recently, you know, was—you know, I go online. I do a lot of 

my things online. I was recently flying, and I wasn’t alerted, as I 

normally would be, that the flight was canceled, and when we got 

there, quite a few of us—it wasn’t United, so I won’t say who, but 

quite a few of us were not informed of this cancellation that had 

been canceled fairly—you know, several hours—I could have 

changed flights. 

So, I hope you will have board members who really sort of understand the on-demand economy, understand the diversity of the flying public, and the needs, and use technology and communication 

to improve, you know, letting people know, because in the case that 

I was in, if I had known beforehand, you know, I might have been 

able to be that one, OK, no, I will stay here a little longer, adjust, 

let me know, and then, also getting people, you know, when you’re 

there in line and you’re in that frustrating situation, all of us have 

our devices. 

It is a lot easier to do that than be standing in line, and oftentimes, you just need to have a person there saying go here, do this, 

so really having that consumer service mentality that we have 

talked about today. 

So, I just wanted—maybe all of you could maybe highlight some 

of the ways that you are using technology and efforts that you are 

making to diversify your management, diversify the boards, and 

having who is working in our airlines more reflective of the flying 

public. 

Mr. MUNOZ. I will start. With regards to women in the workforce, 

I have five sisters and two daughters, and so, I can tell you that 

my focus is keen in that regard. 

In our organization at United, we probably have one of the most 

diverse management teams, certainly in the industry, if not the 

country. 

68 

Our chief technology officer happens to be a woman, our chief 

customer officer, my chief of staff, and so, we are very cognizant 

of that. 

We have two women board members. Our board in total needs 

some work. 

Mrs. COMSTOCK. How many? Two out of—— 

Mr. MUNOZ. Fifteen. 

Mrs. COMSTOCK. OK. 

Mr. MUNOZ. We had a proxy situation, so we have an oversize 

board. 

With regards to the technology application, that is one of the 

most exciting things, and we don’t have enough time to really walk 

you through it, but I mentioned an in-the-moment application. 

We have rolled out 60,000, 70,000 iPhones with applications that 

actually assist our employees assist our customers, information and 

data about who is flying, where they are flying, connections, and 

now we are going to have an additional application or a capability 

that allows you to solve—allows our front-line folks to solve issues 

right on the spot. 

So, it is a whole broad aspect. I could talk about big data and 

personalization and some of the things that we are doing in the future, but I will yield some time to somebody else that may want 

to answer. 

Mr. SPRAGUE. Congresswoman, I might just comment on the 

Alaska Air Group board of directors. It’s 40 percent female and has 

other elements of diversity represented on the board, as well, and 

we believe we are one of the most diverse boards of any Fortune 

500 company in America. That sort of sets the tone for us. 

I would tell you that our senior officer group at Alaska does not 

have quite that same good percentage, but we are working towards 

that, because we do recognize the benefits that you spoke to of having that diversity throughout not just the leadership of the company but throughout the entire company. 

I would also say, on the technology front—I mentioned it in my 

prepared testimony, but we have outfitted our entire customer-facing employee group of flight attendants, as well as airport customer 

service agents, with mobile devices, so they have readily available 

information on all of our customers, and importantly, our empowerment tool kit is available to those airport customer service agents 

in the moment on that device so that they can address problems 

quickly. 

Mrs. COMSTOCK. Thank you. 

Mr. JORDAN. Congresswoman, we all have a long ways to go. 

Mr. DUNCAN. We will have to do that very quickly for the next 

two. 

Mr. JORDAN. I am proud to say that, at Southwest, to just take 

a few examples, our CFO, our VP of inflight, diversity, our controller, our VP/internal audit, our VP/communications, VP/revenue 

management, VP/technology—and I could keep going—are all female, and so, we have got a very targeted activity there, and not 

just to increase diversity but because they are the right people for 

the right positions. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Diversity and inclusion is a core value at 

American, and we have a number of females on our senior leaderVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:29 Nov 13, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00076 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\5-2-20~1\25311.TXT JEAN
69 

ship team, myself included, and I am proud to represent American 

today. 

Also have been focused on building diversity within our leadership team and our board, and to your point about technology, I 

wish we had more time to talk about it. We have a lot of exciting 

changes coming. 

As I mentioned before, service recovery is one of our most important customer service initiatives, and that really includes being 

better able to communicate timely and accurate information to customers, particularly during disruptions, and giving both our employees and our customers the tools in order to provide options and 

solve problems. 

So, we have a number of new pieces of technology coming out 

this summer, and I would be glad to tell you more about them 

later. 

Mrs. COMSTOCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would appreciate having some more along those lines, discussion on the technology. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. 

Mrs. Lawrence. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Thank you so much. 

To everyone that is here today, thank you for coming. 

There is, I feel, a very direct need to address the term ‘‘overbooking.’’ It implies lack of efficiency. 

You have X amount of seats, and then you have X amount of customers. 

We keep using a term that is automatically perceived as being 

inefficient, and I think we need to look at that from a marketing— 

you all are in customer service. 

I don’t want to be overbooked anywhere. When I—when you take 

my reservation, I expect for you to honor that. That is just a whole 

marketing piece that I think this industry needs to look at. You 

need to relabel it or call it something else. 

I want to know from the panel that is here—because I have 

found every time there is a correction—let’s give an example. We 

validate the enormous amount of fees on luggage because of fuel 

costs, and now we’re saying—now I heard today that we are able 

to give lower passenger fees, because we charge more for luggage. 

Are we going to now see an increase justified by the fact that, 

now, if I take you out of a flight, I will give you up to $10,000. 

So, can I expect a justification for an increase in travel based on 

these new policies that you all are touting, because to give me 

$10,000 for kicking me off a flight is a lot of money, because I don’t 

know too many tickets that cost $10,000. 

So, am I now going to hear from my customers that the prices 

of our plane tickets have gone up as a result of this enormous response to something that was totally inappropriate? 

Then the last thing I want to put—and then you can answer. 

I am always so frustrated by the frustrated staff when there are 

delays. I have had the counter clerk be so hostile to the—she says 

don’t ask me any more questions, I am telling you everything I 

know, and she or he are overwhelmed, and I had an example—and 

it was none of you that’s here—where the flight attendant stopped 

the line of boarding because he wanted to take the orders of the 

70 

first class for their drink orders and said would you please wait 

here and stretch for a minute, I need to take care of them, and 

backed up the loading. 

We need to understand, and some of you seemed a little frustrated by the questions. 

We are customers, myself, all of us, and customer service is 

something that—I don’t know why Southwest is so darn happy 

every time you are on their flight. I don’t know what they give 

them, happy pills or what, but they’re just like happy, come on in, 

we are so excited, and then some of them are so uptight, and I see 

these flight attendants running to get on a flight because they are 

holding the flight for them to get there. 

So, please, in the few minutes that’s left, those are the concerns 

I have, and I would like some answers. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. We, as leaders of airlines, we own the morale 

and the mood of our teams, and we know that, and we accept that 

responsibility, and it is our responsibility to take care of our teams, 

make sure they know we care about them, that we have provided 

the right tools, the right resources, the right support to deliver—— 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Do you recognize you need to improve in that 

area? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Absolutely, we recognize that we need to improve, which is why that we are here today. I apologize if we have 

seemed frustrated with questions, because it is really my honor to 

come and reiterate American’s commitment to serving our customers well. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. I am glad to hear that. I am glad to hear that. 

Can someone address—will there be an increase as a result of 

this new policy? 

Mr. KIRBY. No, ma’am, and in fact, we think that, by the new— 

not just this policy but the new policies we have put in place, which 

really do allow our employees to have the tools to use their common sense to solve customer problems, by leading to better customer service, will actually help us and will lead to a more profitable airline. 

We don’t view this as a cost or something that is going to cause 

us to drive ticket prices up. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Mr. McGee. 

Mr. MCGEE. Thank you, Congresswoman. 

There has been a lot of talk about cost today, and price, but I 

think when we dig down into the weeds on these issues, we find 

that there is not always a correlation between an airline’s costs and 

the fares that they charge. 

Just last week the Economist noted that jet fuel prices had fallen 

by half since 2014. The profit per passenger for airlines in Europe is $7.84. 

The profit per passenger for airlines in North America is $22.40, 

three times more, and they stated, when costs fall, consumers in 

America fail to enjoy the benefits. So, you have hit on a very key 

issue. 

We are told that if we don’t check a bag, we are going to see a 

lower fare. Well, I didn’t check a bag yesterday, and as I pointed 

out earlier, on my flight from Bradley International Airport, it was 

a $250 differential in 7 hours. 

71 

It is very hard to tell consumers that, you know, they are going 

to see a lower fare when they do certain things and then they don’t. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Thank you all. 

I yield back. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Sanford is next. 

Mr. SANFORD. I tell my boys all the time that life is a series of 

course corrections, and what you don’t get right in one day, you 

may get right the next, and to err is human, and I guess, with that 

in mind, you know, what happened on the United flight was a disaster, just cutting to the chase, and there is no getting around it, 

and some of what my colleague, Mrs. Lawrence from Michigan, just 

mentioned in terms of the way in which a passenger is handled at 

times is equally disastrous, but I would go back—it was actually 

Churchill who said never let a good crisis go to waste. 

Rahm Emanuel actually changed just one word in that phrase. 

He said never let a serious crisis go to waste, but in essence, he 

was paraphrasing Churchill, and what he was getting at is Government has a tendency, in the wake of any disaster, to react, at times 

to overreact, at times to overregulate, and at times to fight yesterday’s battle, and so, what may be supposedly a remedy turns out 

yet to produce another consequence that the people didn’t see coming in terms of higher bag pricing or whatever else, and so, I guess 

my question to each one of you all is to follow up on what my colleague from Georgia was getting at, which is, you know, in some 

cases, Government creates some of these problems, given the conduit that you’ve got to work through on a daily basis. 

If you were to pick three regulations that cause you either to not 

give some of the service that the customer would expect or to price 

things a bit differently, what would be the three regulations that 

you would choose to erase? 

Mr. MUNOZ. I am going to let Scott, who has been in this industry quite a while, across other airlines—he probably has a good 

view on that. I have my own. 

Mr. KIRBY. I am not sure I would call—they aren’t necessarily 

regulations. 

High on our list would be for our partners at the TSA and the 

Customs and Border Protection to have more ability to plan in the 

future and respond. 

You know, some of our worst—some of our hard customer experiences at long TSA lines—it has been mentioned by a number of 

Members today—and Customs and Border Protection, where we 

will have situations where we have hours long backups at Customs 

and—— 

Mr. SANFORD. OK, but that is a Government action. I mean, you 

punted on my colleague’s question, and I want to bore back down. 

Are there a couple of things that Government, you think, ought 

to do different from a regulatory standpoint that would help you 

to serve customers better? 

Mr. KIRBY. Well, you know, high on our list would be FAA privatization, because we believe it would really—that is one of the 

biggest thing that we could do to ultimately serve customers better, 

because—— 

72 

Mr. SANFORD. OK, but that’s a big broad umbrella. I want to get 

down in the weeds. Are there three specific, small things that are 

pint-sized, measurable, specific, and achievable in nature that 

would help you to better serve the customer? 

Mr. JORDAN. I think one would be just our—the full fare advertising regulation, just the ability to make it very transparent, because it includes just the taxes today, but just to put us all on a 

level playing field. 

Mr. SANFORD. OK. That’s one. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. That would be one that I had on my list, as 

well. We don’t have the ability to—— 

Mr. SANFORD. OK. I’ve got that. That’s one. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Then also just regulation around GDS, the 

global distribution systems, in how we display and sell our products—relaxation there would be helpful. 

Mr. SANFORD. OK. We are at two. 

Mr. MUNOZ. Sir, I would add in—we talked about the carriage 

and the charter and the thick documents. I think that Chairman 

Shuster is correct. A lot of that verbiage is driven by things that 

have happened in these rooms, and as we move to a more streamlined approach, it would be helpful to be able to work back and 

forth on how we can reduce some of that density. 

Mr. SANFORD. You’re general. Could you be more specific? 

Mr. MUNOZ. You all place a lot of stuff on us. 

Mr. SANFORD. Like what? I am trying to get to three. 

Mr. MUNOZ. I haven’t been in the business long enough to understand, but I know it from other—— 

Mr. KIRBY. Well, I agree the consumer-facing rules are the ones 

that are most frustrating for us, because we feel like we are not 

adequately—there’s a number of rules within advertising where we 

would like to actually more clearly communicate to customers, and 

we would like our partners who sell tickets, people like Expedia, 

to clearly communicate to customers, and there’s a host of specific 

rules in there. I don’t know the specific—exact rules now, but we 

just have a whole set—similar to what my two colleagues referred 

to—of rules we have a bunch of requirements to communicate to 

consumers, and we wind up confusing the issue. We would much 

prefer clear communication. 

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. McGee, would you see that from a different 

vantage point? Again, I am trying to get really specific. 

I just saw a note passed to Mr. Jordan. Did you have a good one 

that he just handed you? Then I will come to you, Mr. McGee. My 

staff does that to me, so I get it. 

Mr. JORDAN. Yeah, this is an old one, revenue diversion, so taxes 

and fees should stay within the aviation system. 

Mr. SANFORD. Yes, sir, Mr. McGee. I’m sorry. 

Mr. MCGEE. Thank you, Congressman. 

We have just heard from several airlines that they are looking 

for less regulation on fares and fees and how that is translated to 

consumers. 

From our perspective, yes, we have an absolutely different perspective. 

The airlines are the ones that are imposing these ancillary fees. 

They say they are optional, but as has been pointed out here today, 

73 

for many people, not taking a suitcase is not an option, it is necessary, and yet the transparency on getting a full and complete 

fare, inclusive of mandatory taxes and fees that we all have to pay, 

and ancillary fees that the airlines impose at their will—that has 

become more cumbersome and more difficult from a consumer perspective both on airlines’ own branded websites and on third-party 

sites than it’s been. 

Mr. SANFORD. Thank you. 

I see I have gone over my time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I am required to call a 5-minute recess at this 

point, 5 minutes. 

[Recess] 

Mr. DUNCAN. Let’s go ahead and have the witnesses and others 

take their seats, and we will go at this time to Mr. Nolan. 

Mr. Nolan is next. 

Mr. NOLAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank all 

the witnesses for being here and being candid and straightforward, 

and I am particularly grateful for your assurances that what has 

happened to some passengers in recent weeks and months and 

other times when they didn’t necessarily get recorded on video—we 

appreciate your assurances that that will never happen again, and 

I am sure everybody in the country will be watching to make sure 

that those assurances are fulfilled, and we are grateful and thank 

you for that. 

I am going to just, quickly as I can, relate a recent incident, and 

then ask you to respond. My colleague, Congressman Lewis, and I 

were at the airport a couple weeks ago on a Thursday, and because 

of weather, our flight was delayed and delayed and then delayed 

again and delayed again, and nobody was able to get any opportunity to discuss with anybody on the airline any alternatives that 

might be made available. 

Our distinguished acting chairman, Mr. Duncan, pointed out 

that, some years ago, people in Russia had to wait as many as 4 

days to get an alternate flight. Well, that is exactly what happened 

to us here in our Nation’s Capital. 

After the flight was finally canceled—again, no opportunity to 

talk with anybody to get any information about anything, nobody 

offering compensation for hotels or food, or nobody offering to put 

anyone on another airline—everybody was just unilaterally informed that they wouldn’t be able to get a flight out until the following Monday, and of course, it was Cherry Blossom Festival, and 

hotels are running $500 or $600 a night, and needless to say, there 

was a lot of very upset people, and understandably so. 

Mr. Lewis and I were able to get a couple of tickets to a nearby 

city, and through a number of efforts, including my granddaughter, 

able to get back home, but there was—because the airline was 

overbooked in every flight, there was no place in America we could 

fly to and catch a connecting flight to get back to Minneapolis, Minnesota. I never would have believed that was possible. For crying 

out loud, we could have flown to London and back and, you know, 

gotten home in a timely manner. 

So, my question of each of you—and I know we have only got 5 

minutes here, but what kind of policy does each of you have for 

compensation for people that are caught in those circumstances? 

74 

I understand weather caused the initial—but you know, can we 

extend the cause of weather to the second day, the third day, the 

fourth day, the fifth day? I mean, what kind of compensation do 

you offer—what kind of alternatives do you offer for other airlines, 

and what kind of communications do you offer to your customers 

in a situation like that, which is so troubling and confusing and difficult for so many airline passengers? 

Please. 

Mr. KIRBY. Thank you, Congressman, and I hope that wasn’t 

United. I think it probably wasn’t, but—— 

Mr. NOLAN. It wasn’t one of the airlines who is represented here 

today. 

Mr. KIRBY. It was Minneapolis, so I guess I know who it was. 

Mr. NOLAN. Yeah. 

Mr. KIRBY. At United, those follow-on cancellations—our policies 

will be to take care of the customers and treat them as if they are 

cancellations that are caused by us, and so, to try to provide accommodations in follow-on cancellations that are occurring. 

Mr. NOLAN. Would you put them on another airline? 

Mr. KIRBY. We put several hundred thousand people on other 

airlines, and in those situations, our focus in any of those situations is to take care of the customer first. Our operating people are 

not concerned with a P&L. They are focused on taking care of the 

customers. 

Mr. NOLAN. All right. Thank you, Mr. Kirby. 

Mr. SPRAGUE. The same, Congressman. One thing I would add 

to your question is communication is incredibly important in those 

situations, and so, we have minimum guidelines for intervals between communication updates that we ask our staff to adhere to, 

and we have also started asking our captains, who we know our 

customers have deep respect for, in certain irregular operation situations, to also provide an update. 

Mr. JORDAN. Congressman, really, the same thing. We treat 

those follow-on cancellations the same way. We provide vouchers 

for hotels and meals and those kinds of things, but the desire is 

constantly to take care of the customer. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Likewise for us at American, and as I have 

mentioned before, service recovery is really one of our top priorities, and I think your experience is illustrative of the importance 

of that, and when we get into irregular operations, making sure not 

only that we are communicating with customers but we are providing options and providing compensation, so that is something 

that will always be our focus, as well. 

Mr. NOLAN. Mr. McGee? 

Mr. MCGEE. Thank you, Congressman. 

Your joke about flying to London and back may not have been 

as absurd as you would think, because 2 years ago, I was on a 

Delta Airlines flight, of course a U.S. carrier, out of Brussels. There 

was a mechanical delay for 4 hours. It was handled beautifully, it 

was textbook, and my companion said how would you rate Delta in 

how they have handled this, and I said A-plus, but then I pointed 

out that had the exact same delay, the same mechanical problem, 

same aircraft, same crew, occurred not in Brussels but in Atlanta, 

Delta’s hometown, the results would have been very different. 

75 

The reason was that we were flying on a U.S. airline and the 

reason we were treated the way we were and it was handled so 

beautifully, with the meal vouchers, with the updates, with accommodations, was because the EU rules were in effect, even for foreign airlines in the EU, and when left to their own devices, unfortunately, situations like yours are not as rare as we would hope. 

Mr. NOLAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield the balance of my 

time. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Katko. 

Mr. KATKO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank everybody on 

the panel for your testimony. I know you’ve been here for quite a 

while, and it’s almost over, so hang in there. 

I was just thinking back to when I first started traveling, back 

in the 1980s, on airlines, and just how much has changed since 

that time, and I just wanted to kind of highlight a few things and 

then ask you a few questions. 

Reservations. It is very difficult to get a human being, many 

times, calling airlines nowadays, whereas before it was very easy, 

and there is much more you have to go online for. 

Food. You used to have a decent meal. It got to a snack, and now 

it’s nonexistent on many flights. 

Seats. I am 6 feet 3 inches. I am not the tallest guy in the world, 

but it oftentimes where I can’t even sit up straight in the seat, I 

have to stick my legs out in the aisle, because the seats are so 

crammed together. The comfort of them is very difficult. 

The baggage fees. 

The overbooking, which we have talked about. 

Frequent flier miles. There was a time when you had frequent 

flier miles where you could actually use them and you could take 

a short flight or a flight somewhere and it was a set amount. Now, 

the miles are getting less and less powerful and less and less able 

to be used. 

Flight cancellations. Planes sitting on runways for hours. You 

know, lack of instructions or information when people are sitting 

at the gates or sitting in airplanes as to what is going on, and frustration just searching for tickets online or trying to figure out what 

a ticket price should be. 

You come to a conclusion after all this—and I understand what 

the shakeup has been in the industry in the last several decades, 

but it really has come to this culture to basically commoditizing the 

passenger, and this culture seems to be one of indifference towards 

the passengers at times, and I looked at—when I was sitting here, 

just out of curiosity, to see how the airlines are doing, and you can 

correct me if I am wrong, but this is what I pulled up on Google. 

United made a profit of $2.9 billion this year or last year. American, $2.7 billion. Southwest, $2.24 billion. Alaska Airlines, $911 

million. So, you are doing good. 

Now, I understand there were times when you weren’t doing 

good, I understand that that is business, but now that you have 

this financial stability again—and you know the next crisis could 

be right around the corner, but now that you do, you know, I started thinking about the changes you announced today, and let’s face 

it, and let’s be honest with ourselves, you wouldn’t be here anVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:29 Nov 13, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00083 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\5-2-20~1\25311.TXT JEAN
76 

nouncing some of the changes were it not for reacting to a situation. 

I am wondering if any of you, any of these airlines, have taken 

a step back to really look at what has happened to the culture of 

service and the culture of making it a much more pleasant experience. 

I think one of my colleagues on the Democratic side tells you basically how much of a hassle it is to fly. It is no longer pleasant 

to fly. There was a time when it was. It is no longer there. 

So, do any of you ever take a look at the big picture? I don’t want 

to hear about small programs here and there. Do you ever take a 

look and involve passengers in trying to think about how to make 

it a better experience and not wait for instances like this to happen 

with United or what happened with American, maybe stop and 

think and look back and say, OK, how can we get back to a time 

where there was more—passengers were treated with more appreciation, passengers were treated with more professionalism, and 

the overall experience was far more pleasant, because I can tell 

you, you know, I fly American a lot, and it is a fine airline, it gets 

me where I need to be, but it is not pleasant. It is hard. 

You can’t even be comfortable in the seat when you sit down, and 

you are paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a ticket. That 

is difficult for me, and I think that that is a larger problem, and 

again, you are reacting. 

I am asking you—don’t react. Take a step back and look at the 

larger picture. 

So, if anyone wants to respond to that, I will be happy to listen. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Well, Congressman, first of all, thank you for 

choosing American for your travels. We appreciate that. 

I think that the recent incidents certainly have put us in the 

spotlight and, as you said, are the reasons that we are here today, 

but the fact of the matter is that we have been focusing on improving our customer experience ever since we have had the financial 

wherewithal to do that. 

As you noted, we are kind of, in the last few years, coming out 

of a time of decades of turmoil, and I think what we lost during 

that time was, while we were changing our business model, in 

ways that, as you noted, were not always popular for customers, 

and really just trying to survive, that was the time when other industries were really investing to form more customer centric cultures, and so, our customers’ expectations are not only formed by 

the experiences they have with us but also experiences they have 

with other industries, and we know that we have some catching up 

to do. We are very focused on that. 

As we noted in the opening remarks, American is investing billions of dollars in new aircraft, new product and amenities for customers. We are investing in service training for our people. We are 

adding team members. We are growing service, and alongside of 

that all, we have significant efforts invested across our leadership 

team in finding ways that we can do better for our team members 

and do better for our customers. 

So, you have our commitment. We are gratified to see customer 

satisfaction scores improving, and we will continue to work towards 

that goal. 

77 

Mr. KATKO. Thank you very much. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Wilson. 

Ms. WILSON. Thank you. 

Let me welcome everyone here today. I am an American Airlines 

traveler. I travel American Airlines twice per week, every Monday 

or Friday or Tuesday or Thursday, I am on an American Airlines 

plane, and I just want to sum up what I see happening. 

It seems to me as if this whole scenario is like sororities and fraternities, and you have people hazing all the time, and everyone 

who is in charge of these sororities and fraternities know that this 

hazing is going on, but no one does anything to stop the hazing 

until one day it is exposed on social media, and when it is exposed 

on social media over and over again, then panic reigns throughout 

the industry and throughout the whole Nation that this is what is 

happening on our airplanes today and this is what is happening in 

airlines. 

So, I am just wondering if now, all of the sudden, we have had 

these difference scenarios where we see customer service just 

breaking down, everyone is going to be trained now. We are going 

to start training. 

Well, what was happening prior to this incident becoming such 

a publicity phenomenon? Are you connected at all with a university 

or someone to train your employees the day they are hired, or is 

this something you hire and put them to work without any training, and then you wait 6 months, until you have maybe 30 people, 

and then you train all of them? 

Explain to me—I would like for each of you to explain to me, especially American and United—explain to me how the training 

process takes place for new employees coming in, and I have some 

real reservations about the baby with the stroller. 

I have four little grandchildren, and whose responsibility is it to 

stop a lady from getting on a plane with a stroller? 

Isn’t there someone there at the door to say let us take this 

stroller, because it can’t get on the plane, and whose decision is it, 

and how did you make the decision? How did you make the decision that this gentleman should be the one to be removed from the 

plane, and he was traveling with his wife. 

So, was she not a part of the equation? You were just going to 

separate him? 

I couldn’t get my arms around what was going on. Those are the 

two things that slapped me in the face from TV. So, help me with 

this, in this frat house. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. First, I just want to take the opportunity to 

apologize for what you saw onboard the American flight from San 

Francisco to Dallas with our customer and her stroller. 

We did not handle that situation as it should have been handled, 

and we take responsibility for that. 

To your question of who should—we should have helped her to 

gate check her stroller before she brought it onboard. The fact of 

the matter is the aircraft that she was boarding didn’t have storage 

capacity for it, and so, that should have been resolved before she 

got in the aircraft door, and we are taking steps to make sure, in 

the future, we do better. 

78 

To your question about training, all of our employees work in 

safety-critical jobs, and so, they absolutely receive training before 

they start working at American. Nobody starts doing their job 

without receiving training. 

Our initial training for customer-facing employees does include 

some measure of customer service training and training how to deescalate complicated situations, but we know that we need to provide that training more effectively and more frequently, and we are 

working to do that. 

Ms. WILSON. Thank you. 

Mr. MUNOZ. I would echo the same sentiments on training. 

With regards to your specific question with regards to how Dr. 

Dao was—Dr. Dao and his wife were selected as a couple, so we 

weren’t going to—— 

Ms. WILSON. Were they both ejected? 

Mr. MUNOZ. Yes. They were both selected for de-boarding. 

Ms. WILSON. Did she leave the plane? 

Mr. MUNOZ. She did with Dr. Dao, eventually, and with regards 

to how they were selected, it is an automatic system that simply 

applies some logic to the fact that the fare that you paid—how 

much you paid for the ticket—and your status as a Mileage Plus 

member, across other dimensions—those are the two basic ones 

that we work through. 

Ms. WILSON. Let me see. In the last 5 years, has anyone ever 

been ejected from your airlines for other than security or health 

reasons, physically, any of you? 

Mr. MUNOZ. There are instances, more often than we would care, 

with regards to—well, for safety and security. With regards to the 

specific process with Dr. Dao and his wife, we can’t remember a 

time when that happened. So, it was an incident that was one—— 

Ms. WILSON. What about Southwest or—— 

Mr. JORDAN. I don’t know specifically. My guess is very few, if 

any, but with the exception of just safety and security reasons, no. 

Ms. WILSON. American? 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. I am not aware of anybody being physically 

removed from a plane other than for a safety or security reason. 

Ms. WILSON. Alaska? 

Mr. SPRAGUE. The same. 

Ms. WILSON. OK. And thank you for flying American. 

Mr. DUNCAN. We are getting very close to a vote. So, Mr. Rokita, 

please. 

Mr. ROKITA. I thank the chair, and I thank the witnesses for 

hanging in there. I appreciate—it looks like I am the last one. I 

hope I didn’t jinx us. 

I had some other hearings and whatnot going on this morning, 

so I couldn’t be here in person, but I watched a lot of this on the 

closed circuit TV and C–SPAN, and I felt I wanted to come down 

here, because I think your flight attendants, I think your employees, generally, ought to be commended. 

I think that you generally do a great job. I do fly a lot, in this 

job and doing other things, and I appreciate the attention to safety, 

number one, which is why a flight attendant is there, let’s not forget, and the attention to detail that your employees generally provide, and I commend United and Southwest for—and perhaps other 

79 

airlines—for what they have learned from this incident that did go 

viral. 

You know, I think the response has been appropriate, and I appreciate each of your leadership in that regard. 

I also wanted to say that this is a bit of a two-way street. I 

mean, what happened on that United flight shouldn’t have escalated to where it was, and it has been acknowledged, and steps 

have been taken, but a grown man assumedly saying, when approached by law enforcement on an aircraft, should abide by the 

request being made, and I do not know that that, Mr. Chairman, 

has been said in this hearing, or generally in the conversation, so 

I wanted to make a record of that, because it deserves to be said. 

Mr. McGee, in your testimony, from what I read, you proposed 

to put the risk of overbooking on the air carrier, and I do not think 

that has been discussed here yet in much detail. 

Can you, within 30 seconds or a minute, go into more detail on 

that proposal? 

Mr. MCGEE. Certainly, Congressman. What we are saying is that 

there should only be voluntary denied boardings—— 

Mr. ROKITA. OK. 

Mr. MCGEE [continuing]. Not involuntary denied boardings. 

From our perspective, we don’t really see a downside to a passenger being offered compensation to take a later flight. I have 

done it myself with my son. 

You know, from a passenger perspective, that is fine, but we 

have called today, and in my opening remarks, I said—— 

Mr. ROKITA. What happens in a situation—and I am not trying 

to be argumentative with you. I am just trying to respect the time 

here, so we can all get on votes and lunch and whatnot, and bathrooms, for that matter. What happens when no one volunteers? 

Mr. MCGEE. The compensation is raised. 

Mr. ROKITA. Theoretically, if that doesn’t happen—like it was 

going to be happening on United, off that United flight. I mean, the 

plane just doesn’t move at the end of the day. 

Mr. MCGEE. Well, United has said now there is an offer of 

$10,000. I mean, statistically, if 100 people are offered $10,000, I 

have a feeling there is going to be an empty seat pretty quickly. 

Mr. ROKITA. OK. I guess. Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. I just 

didn’t know if you had any data around that or if you had a failsafe measure if you got to that point. I guess the plane just doesn’t 

move, right? 

Mr. MCGEE. Unfortunately, a lot of this is opaque. We are still 

not clear, just as we were talking about transparency with fares, 

we are still not clear, although we have—you know, it has been 

asked several times—about those algorithms of how people are selected. 

Mr. ROKITA. Fair enough. 

Mr. Munoz, regarding denying passengers boarding or removing 

them from seats or whatever, involuntary or otherwise, what is the 

trendline? Is this a growing problem or something you feel the airline—or the industry, I should say—has a handle on? 

Mr. MUNOZ. I am not exactly sure of the industry trends, but I 

obviously have watched and monitored ours as a regular course. 

80 

Our involuntary denied boardings, year over year, have dropped 

44 percent as we operate more reliably, invest in the business, and 

so on, and in fact, it is 1 in 23,000 that actually get affected by 

this, and so—and that involuntary denied boarding is often, if not 

a majority of the time, caused by more operational issues, not necessarily this oversold conversation. 

Mr. ROKITA. Do you have percentages on that? You say more 

often than not. I don’t know if there are statistics around that or 

not. 

Mr. MUNOZ. Scott was looking at this. 

Mr. KIRBY. We don’t have exact statistics, but roughly two-thirds 

of our involuntary denied boardings come from operational. 

Mr. ROKITA. And by operational, you mean—could that be anything from mechanical to weather to—— 

Mr. KIRBY. It is almost always—weather is the biggest, and the 

second one is we have an aircraft downgrade, which is usually— 

can be because of weather or because of mechanical. 

Mr. ROKITA. An aircraft downgrade meaning less seats of some 

sort? 

Mr. KIRBY. Fewer seats on the airplane. 

Mr. ROKITA. That would occur because the original airplane had 

a mechanical—— 

Mr. KIRBY. Either a mechanical or it has got weather in a station 

and hasn’t made it back to where it needs to be to fly its next 

flight. 

Mr. ROKITA. OK. Again, I thank the witnesses, I thank your employees, and I would be very hesitant, Mr. Chairman, to have this 

committee go down an avenue of regulating this, and I, in that 

vein, would associate with the comments that former Governor 

Sanford made. I yield back. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much, and I am going to turn 

the chair back over to Chairman Shuster, but before I do, I do want 

to say that, for one, really appreciate what I consider to be significant actions taken by all of the airlines in regard to these unfortunate incidents that have happened. 

Thank you very much, and Chairman Shuster is back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentleman from Oregon is recognized. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Kirby, I want to get something straight. When you were 

asked by Mr. Cohen about—you were saying you had films of evacuation drills. The last time I am aware of a physical evacuation 

drill was the certification of the 777, and it is done by the FAA. 

Your airline doesn’t do evacuation testing on the planes. 

Mr. KIRBY. Yes, sir, we do. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. You do. 

Mr. KIRBY. We do do evacuation testing. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Physically. You load a plane up and you get everybody off in 90 seconds, because he also said 3 minutes, and I understand the standard is 90 seconds. 

Mr. KIRBY. Yeah. We do evacuation testing. We do it in concert 

with the FAA, but we actually do the testing. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. That is interesting, because that’s not our impression. So, I would like to follow up on that. I would love to— 

because I have always wanted to watch one of these drills. 

81 

Now, Dan Reed, in Forbes, pointed to something that I think is 

fairly obvious that we haven’t discussed here in terms of performance, and that is that everybody wants to schedule their planes to 

take off and land at the same time, and the FAA just says sure, 

fine, whatever you want to do. There are no rules. 

I mean, for instance, I just looked. There are 17 flights scheduled 

at Chicago O’Hare at 12:15. 

Now, can 17 planes take off in 1 minute? 

Mr. KIRBY. At O’Hare, about five, on five parallel runways, and 

we schedule—at United, we call it sloping the schedule. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. What I am getting at—so, what Mr. Reed, who is 

an advocate of privatization, says—he says don’t overpromise, and 

he says, you know, only airlines can make their planes back off 

their gates in the right order, right times, reduce congestion in airport taxiways. They can only schedule flights in such a way they’re 

neither delay-prone nor excessively long. 

Now, you talked about RNAV versus radar, and I, you know, 

again, looked on Flight Aware and looked at a bunch of your planes 

that are in the air now, and they are all doing climb-outs, straight 

lines, long distances. 

For instance—this is just one of many I saw—Houston to San 

Francisco, it’s flying an RNAV GPS-based departure route. It 

climbed directly to its cruise altitude. It is flying a straight-line 

GPS-based route called the Q route and then descending into SFO 

using RNAV, GPS-based arrival routing. 

So, what percent of your flights—your mainline flights—I am not 

talking about United Express—are using RNAV now and GPSbased? 

Mr. KIRBY. I am not sure, Congressman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK, but there are—— 

Mr. KIRBY. There are some RNAV routings. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right, because you were talking about the zigzags. 

I mean, again, just in looking at this, I mean, it seems to me the 

most frequent cause of that now is inadequate capacity. 

For instance, everybody wants to land about the same time, and 

so, then you’ve got to start flying zigzags to get there on a radar 

approach versus, you know, using RNAV, because you just can’t 

land more than one plane at a time when you have only got one 

runway or two planes if there is enough separation. 

I recommend the article to you, because I mean, I know you are 

advocating privatization and others advocating it, but you really 

should read this article, and he says don’t overpromise, and he is 

particularly, you know, critical of Mr. Cohn. 

Mr. McGee, do you have any comments along those lines? I 

mean, right now, we are hearing about customer issues. We are 

hearing about concentration of the industry, very little choice for 

people, particularly in the 55 or so airports that are 1 and 150 that 

are 50 percent more than 1 airline. 

So, the question would be, now, if we give control of the air traffic system to the airlines, effective control, 4 seats on a 13-person 

board, what do you think that means for customers and efficiency? 

Mr. MCGEE. Well, it is going to be particularly hard felt in the 

high-density airports and the busiest airports in the country. 

82 

Now, I mean, what you just said is obviously a critical enough 

issue, 17 flights scheduled at the same time, but underlining that 

is another problem that hasn’t been really discussed and that is the 

outsourcing—and it is outsourcing, the airlines call it partnering, 

but outsourcing of mainline flights to regional carriers. 

Up until recently—I don’t know if it is still on there, but the Regional Airline Association, on its home page, boasted about the fact 

that not only are more than 50 percent of all domestic departures 

operated by regionals on behalf of major carriers, but in addition, 

they boasted of the fact that most of the departures every morning 

between New York and Washington, two of the busiest airports not 

just in the country but on the planet, LaGuardia and Washington 

National, are operated by regionals. 

So, we have to ask ourselves, is that the best use of those slots 

to use smaller aircraft on some of the—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So, you are saying that, just because it is—you 

have got a small aircraft, and basically maybe you can follow it a 

tiny bit more closely, a little bit more closely, but—because of wake 

turbulence, but you are taking up basically a slot with 60 people 

onboard versus a slot with 180 people onboard. 

Mr. MCGEE. Absolutely. I am rusty on some of these issues. It 

has been a long time since I worked as an airline dispatcher, but 

the bottom line is that, you know, as they used to say, you know, 

all metal requires X amount of space between it. 

So, whether it is a large aircraft or a small aircraft—there are 

differences with wake turbulence and things like that, but the bottom line is, again, are we using—these are public resources, let’s 

remember. These are not airline resources, the slots. They belong 

to the public. 

They are treated as if they were private domain, but are we 

using them to the best ability, you know, in many ways, not just 

in terms of safety and efficiency but also in terms of the carbon 

footprint. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Just one last observation from the Bureau of 

Transportation Statistics. On time in 2016, 81.42 percent. Air carrier-caused delays, 5 percent. Weather delays, .5 percent. National 

Aviation System delay, 5 percent, same as triggered by air carriers. 

Security delay, .03 percent. We are doing a little better there. Aircraft arriving late not due to the National Air System, 6.22 percent. 

Canceled, 1.17 percent. 

So, I mean, again, let’s talk about the reality of what the problems are with the system, and I think that was a very good point 

you made, which is if you substitute regional carriers and they 

need two or three planes to land the same number of people and 

it is SFO or it is here at National, then we have just used up a 

lot of airspace, and they are all trying to land at the same time 

anyway. 

Mr. MCGEE. I think we also want to ask, well, why would they 

do that? 

Now, the response often comes from the airlines that customers 

prefer high frequency, you know, to consolidating flights, but there 

is also another factor that doesn’t get discussed as much, and that 

is the competition factor. In other words, if you have scarce slots 

at LaGuardia and you are trying to, you know, prevent the comVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:29 Nov 13, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00090 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\5-2-20~1\25311.TXT JEAN
83 

petition from low-cost carriers, then, you know, you use more frequencies out of those airports, and again, these are the most highdensity airports that we are talking about. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I would congratulate United. They brought back 

real United to Eugene, and the flights actually go, versus fake 

United, United Express, where we had seven flights a day but not 

so dependable, because they are the first thing canceled when Chicago fogs in or delayed, whereas your mainline flights aren’t. 

So, we have now three flights a day, and people, I think, are 

much happier with three, as opposed to, theoretically, seven with 

these commuter airlines. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. DeFazio. 

Again, I appreciate our witnesses being here today, but I have 

a couple of final questions. 

One—and we talked about this a little bit earlier—contracts of 

carriage. I think Mr. Sprague said your goal is to get to one page. 

Is that like an executive summary, because I can’t imagine, with 

all the legalities, with all the things that swirl out there, that you 

could actually get to one page. So, can you tell me, can you really 

get to one page? 

Mr. SPRAGUE. I think, Mr. Chairman, the one-page objective was 

offered by one of the committee members, but what we did commit 

to at Alaska Airlines is, firstly, acknowledging that ours is too long. 

We do want it to be a usable document for our customers. So, getting to a much more concise summary or contract of carriage. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I appreciate that, but is my observation correct— 

anybody, yes or no, disagree with me? Part of the reason it is so 

long is because of the litigious society we live in today, so you are 

trying to cover everything from A to Z just in case. Is that a fair 

observation? Just a yes or no. 

Mr. MUNOZ. That is a fair observation, and there was a reference 

to the EU, and I think the legal system in the EU is drastically 

different than the U.S. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Very different. In many places, it is. 

Mr. SPRAGUE. It is a fair observation. 

Mr. JORDAN. Yes, sir, that’s correct. 

Ms. PHILIPOVITCH. Agreed. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. McGee, what are your thoughts? 

Mr. MCGEE. Well, again, I think, you know, when you held up— 

it is very visual, when you held up documents that are 78 pages 

long. There is no question that there—you know, that there are litigation issues here, but that really doesn’t speak to the fact that 

they are so hard for consumers to read. 

I have researched this and written articles for Consumer Reports 

where I have spoken to aviation attorneys, and I have said, look, 

I am reading a clause to you, because I genuinely can’t figure it 

out, I am not an attorney, and I have said I am going to read you 

a clause, and they have said I am not sure, I am not sure myself, 

and those are attorneys who work in the aviation industry. So, 

what hope do the rest of us have, even assuming we do the due 

diligence and read it in the first place? So, there is no question that 

there are issues here. 

84 

Mr. SHUSTER. I don’t take issue. I agree with Mr. DeFazio, they 

are way too long. I just—for me to fathom they can get down to 

one or two pages is just unbelievable to me. 

Finally—— 

Mr. MCGEE. Actually, if you don’t mind, Mr. Chairman, you mentioned an executive summary. That may not be a bad idea in some 

cases, to at least have a brief two-page thing saying, well, you 

know, here are the most frequently asked questions, that type of 

thing. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Sure. I get that. 

Mr. MCGEE. Thank you. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Finally, just another observation I would like to 

make, because there has been some talk—I am glad the focus of 

this hearing was on customer and, you know, what you folks are 

doing to make sure we treat them better, fair, but there were some 

things brought up about forming an out-of-government, not-forprofit corporation, and it is my view that when we talk about all 

the congestion we see on the ground, if we make the system more 

efficient and drive down costs, that gives everybody more money to 

spend on taking care of those problems, because—airport runways, 

not having enough of them, not having spaces, not having the 

places to pull planes off—that all costs money, and if we have a robust, profitable industry and the Government is able to drive down 

its cost, everybody benefits by that. So, that is kind of where we 

are going with my proposal, is let’s have as efficient a system as 

we can, everybody saves money, and also, if we look at the airline 

industry over the last—I think Warren Buffett said—somebody 

said the airline industry is in the hole over the last 30 years, and 

Warren Buffett said the airline industry has 80 bad years. 

I mean, you are finally getting to a place where you are making 

money, so from our standpoint up here, we expect to see some of 

those profits driven back into the company to make sure the customer experience is better, because as I said in my remarks before 

I left—I am glad I got back here in time. I am just going to reiterate them. 

If you don’t take this as a silver lining, if the industry doesn’t 

sit down together, collectively, and figure out how to move forward 

in a positive way, put aside your marketplace differences where 

you do what you have to do, but come together, because the last 

thing in the world you will want is this committee and this Congress to put out things out there that, as I said, it’s going to be 

one size fits all, and it is not going to fit anybody at the end of the 

day. 

So, again, I appreciate you being here, I appreciate you taking 

the time, and we look forward to hearing from you and watching 

as you move down the road and watch these things take hold. 

So, thank you very much, and with that, I ask unanimous consent that the record of today’s hearing remain open until such time 

as our witnesses have provided answers to any questions that may 

be submitted to them in writing and unanimous consent that the 

record remain open for 15 days for any additional comments, information submitted by Members or witnesses to be included in the 

record of today’s hearing. Without objection, so ordered. 

85 

Once again, I want to thank everybody for being here today. 

Thank you so much. 

Adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:54 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

86 


Insert offset folio 8 here 25311.008
87 


Insert offset folio 9 here 25311.009
88 


Insert offset folio 10 here 25311.010
89 


Insert offset folio 11 here 25311.011
90 


Insert offset folio 12 here 25311.012
91 


Insert offset folio 13 here 25311.013
92 


Insert offset folio 14 here 25311.014
93 


Insert offset folio 15 here 25311.015
94 


Insert offset folio 16 here 25311.016
95 


Insert offset folio 17 here 25311.017
96 


Insert offset folio 18 here 25311.018
97 


Insert offset folio 19 here 25311.019
98 


Insert offset folio 20 here 25311.020
99 


Insert offset folio 21 here 25311.021
100 


Insert offset folio 22 here 25311.022
101 


Insert offset folio 23 here 25311.023
102 


Insert offset folio 24 here 25311.024
103 


Insert offset folio 25 here 25311.025
104 


Insert offset folio 26 here 25311.026
105 


Insert offset folio 27 here 25311.027
106 


Insert offset folio 28 here 25311.028
107 


Insert offset folio 29 here 25311.029
108 


Insert offset folio 30 here 25311.030
109 


Insert offset folio 31 here 25311.031
110 


Insert offset folio 32 here 25311.032
111 


Insert offset folio 33 here 25311.033
112 


Insert offset folio 34 here 25311.034
113 


Insert offset folio 35 here 25311.035
114 


Insert offset folio 36 here 25311.036
115 


Insert offset folio 37 here 25311.037
116 


Insert offset folio 38 here 25311.038
117 


Insert offset folio 39 here 25311.039
118 


Insert offset folio 40 here 25311.040
119 


Insert offset folio 41 here 25311.041
120 


Insert offset folio 42 here 25311.042
121 


Insert offset folio 43 here 25311.043
122 


Insert offset folio 44 here 25311.044
123 


Insert offset folio 45 here 25311.045
124 


Insert offset folio 46 here 25311.046
125 


Insert offset folio 47 here 25311.047
126 


Insert offset folio 48 here 25311.048
127 


Insert offset folio 49 here 25311.049
128 


Insert offset folio 50 here 25311.050
129 


Insert offset folio 51 here 25311.051
130 


Insert offset folio 52 here 25311.052
131 


Insert offset folio 53 here 25311.053
132 


Insert offset folio 54 here 25311.054
133 


Insert offset folio 55 here 25311.055
134 


Insert offset folio 56 here 25311.056
135 


Insert offset folio 57 here 25311.057
136 


Insert offset folio 58 here 25311.058
137 


Insert offset folio 59 here 25311.059
138 


Insert offset folio 60 here 25311.060
139 


Insert offset folio 61 here 25311.061
140 


Insert offset folio 62 here 25311.062
141 


Insert offset folio 63 here 25311.063
142 


Insert offset folio 64 here 25311.064
143 


Insert offset folio 65 here 25311.065
144 


Insert offset folio 66 here 25311.066
145 


Insert offset folio 67 here 25311.067
146 


Insert offset folio 68 here 25311.068
147 


Insert offset folio 69 here 25311.069
148 


Insert offset folio 70 here 25311.070
149 


Insert offset folio 71 here 25311.071
150 


Insert offset folio 72 here 25311.072
151 

Æ 


Insert offset folio 73 here 25311.073