BEFORE THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

WASHINGTON, D.C.

________________________________________________ ) Motion of ) ) AIRLINES for AMERICA (A4A) ) Docket No. OST-2013-0 084 REGIONAL AIRLINES ASSOCIATION (RAA)) ) For a temporary exemption from ) 14 CFR 259.4 ) ________________________________________________)

ANSWER OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF TRAVEL AGENTS

Communications with respect to this document should be addressed to:

Paul M. Ruden, Esquire Senior Vice President Legal & Industry Affairs American Society of Travel Agents, Inc. 1101 King Street, Suite 200 Alexandria, Virginia 22314 Tel. (703) 739-6854 Fax (703) 684-9185 pruden@asta.org April 26, 20132 BEFORE THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

WASHINGTON, D.C.

________________________________________________ ) Motion of ) ) AIRLINES for AMERICA (A4A) ) Docket No. OST-2013-0 084 REGIONAL AIRLINES ASSOCIATION (RAA)) ) For a temporary exemption from ) 14 CFR 259.4 ) ________________________________________________)

ANSWER OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF TRAVEL AGENTS

The American Society of Travel Agents (“ASTA”) res pectfully submits this Answer to the Motion of Airlines for America (A4A) and Regional Airlines Association (collectively the “Movants”) for a temp orary exemption from 14 CFR.

sec. 259.4. It appears that Congressional action is imminent t o resolve the problem of furloughed air traffic controllers which was the fa ctual predicate for the relief sought by Movants. Such action cannot be completed until sometime next week at the earliest. If such legislation is enacted and r esolves the problem of flight delays alleged, then either the Movants should withdraw th e application or it should be denied outright. If, however, the legislation is n ot finally enacted or is judged not to resolve the problem, leading the airlines to mainta in the motion for exemption, then ASTA responds as set forth below. ASTA believes that the situation described by the Movants is largely the responsibility of two entities: (1) the Congress th at created the sequester in the first3

place and could largely cure it with respect to the issue raised here through passage of S. 724, the Essential Services Act of 2013, whic h would give federal agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Tran sportation Security Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection the flexibility to determine which employees are essential personnel as they manage sequester requir ements, including the vital services of control tower operations and border security, or si milar legislation ; and (2) the FAA, which could do much more to manage the situation through planning and provision of information to the airlines and engagement in true collaboration regarding the likely course of events under the sequester. FAA’s engagement with the airlines in this manner would better enable flight flows to be matched to expected available resources. The messages being received by the trav eling public now (“expect long delays”) are neither informative nor confidence bui lding. They imply that no one has any real idea what is going on so “just hunker down and prepare for the worst.” As the old aphorism suggests, “this is no way to ru n a railroad.” Nevertheless, the problem is here and now and it ma y affect millions of

travelers before it is resolved. With extreme relu ctance, ASTA believes the Movants

have made a case for some relief from the Tarmac De lay Rule embodied in 49 CFR sec. 259.4. However, as serious as the situation i s, we do not believe it prudent or justified to simply give the airlines carte blanche to hold travelers on aircraft indefinitely while they wait out delays induced by the manpower shortages of the sequester. There is also the difficult question of how to distinguish between tarmac delays that are driven by sequester-related manpowe r shortages and other reasons.4 A reasonable solution would be to expand, temporari ly, the hours of permissible holding of aircraft on the tarmac befor e a mandatory gate-return from the regulation’s current three and four hours for d omestic and international flights to five and six hours, respectively, while keeping in place other elements of 49 CFR sec. 259.4 such as provision of water to passengers and code-share responsibility. This expanded window would help avert massive seque ster-induced flight cancellations while preventing the worst-case situa tion of passengers being stranded on aircraft for the very long periods that induced the Department, rightly, to adopt the rule in the first place. We also believe that the exemption should be more t ailored, to prevent its application to airports where there are no discerna ble sequester-induced manpower shortages in the flight management system operated by the FAA, provided, of course, that it is possible to isolate such situations in a manner that enables the airlines to plan appropriately. Under no circumstances should a situation be created in which pilots have to guess whether they are covered by the exemption. That, it would seem, is a sure road to more chaos. We further submit that any exemption should be spec ially conditioned to require explicit notice to consumers at the time of boarding that the flight is subject to exemption from the Tarmac Delay Rule and may be held on the runway for up to five hours domestically and six hours on internatio nal flights. Finally, the Department should make clear that it w ill closely monitor the airlines’ handling of operations under the exemptio n and reserves the right to5

terminate the exemption or otherwise condition it i f it is abused or if the conditions that justified it are corrected through Congression al and/or administrative action.

Respectfully submitted,

Paul M. Ruden Attorney for American Society of Travel Agents

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE I hereby certify that I have this 26 th day of April, 2013, served, by electronic transmission, a copy of the foregoing Answer of the American Society of Travel Agents upon counsel for Airlines for America (A4A) and Regional Airlines Association as set forth below: David A. Berg Roger Cohen Senior Vice President, General President Counsel & Secretary Regional Airline Association Airlines for America 2025 M Street NW 1301 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036 Suite 1100 Telephone 202-367-1250 Telephone 202-626-4234 Fax 202-367-2170 Fax 202-626-4139 cohen@raa.org dberg@airlines.org

___________________________________ Paul M. Ruden