Capitol Hill has its own March ritual

Sports fans across America are familiar, of course, with a special time called March Madness. On Capitol Hill, however, March brings a less well-known but even more sacred flurry of activity, legislative conferences and citizen lobby days.

You may have noticed from the blog that I've been addressing a number of different organizations that have come to the DC area this week and last.

Well, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution explicitly speaks of five freedoms: religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. So every spring, associations from all over the country invite their members to come to Washington and petition their members of Congress.

This is a great tradition, where ordinary people get an opportunity to meet their legislators and educate them about the issues that matter to their constituents. And it is a hallmark of our democracy.

Transit advocates talking about operating costs. Bicyclists talking about complete streets. Firefighters talking about smother, safer roads and better hazmat training.

Ordinary Americans, traveling from all over the country at their own expense, knocking on their legislators' doors, explaining to decision-makers about what matters to them and how they want to be represented.

That is democracy. And we have preserved it for over 200 years.

I loved it when I was a junior high school civics teacher in Peoria. I loved it when I was a Congressman representing Illinois. And I'm loving it now.

So, if it's March in Washington, DC, then it must be the season of legislative conferences. Not exactly the lilacs or forsythia many of you are waiting for--or the cherry blossoms Washingtonians celebrate; still, a terrific sign of spring that makes me proud to be an American.

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[S Clark]

DOT: If We Screw Up, It's Never Our Fault

That's sort of the approach we're seeing from the DOT under the Gilligan-esque leadership of Secretary Ray LaHood. (As a sidebar, any doubts about that were quashed last week when he called for a nationwide ban on cell phone use in automobiles - including hands-off Bluetooth use. Take that to it's logical conclusion, and LaHood has decreed that talking while driving is unsafe.)

At hand we have the "Tarmac Rule" that was proclaimed by LaHood. Any on-ramp delays more than three hours will result in a $27,500 per-passenger fine. "Chronically delayed" flights would also be fined.

Finally! Those evil airlines are getting what they deserve. No more passenger abuse! Now there's a consumer crusader running the DOT!

No, all we have is a pandering incompetent running the DOT.

"Goodness! Please we can't say that, even though it's true!" will be the immediate reaction from a lot of folks in the aviation world, including some alphabet groups who are even now maybe ordering the plaque they're planning to give LaHood at their next conference. "Hey, we gotta work with this guy, and he can make our lives miserable if we call him on his dimbulb actions. We have to be nice to him."

Memo to those folks: wake up and smell the stupidity. LaHood is already making your lives miserable with amateur acts like this, and there will be more. So get some backbone and stand up for what's right, not what's politically-expedient.

It's Not A Rule. It's A Cheap Political Stunt. There probably has never been as dishonest a dictum as this "Tarmac Rule." Notwithstanding the fact that even the word "tarmac" is a bit misleading: it's a term used by media types trying to look like they're "in the know" - but it's been out of use in the airline business since well before Gregory Peck bombed Berlin in 12-O'Clock High.

But if anybody in the media - particularly the aviation media - would take a hard look at this rule, LaHood would be identified as the laughingstock he really is.

It's dishonest because it implies that 3-hour ramp ("tarmac") delays are routine. Airports across the country, LaHood would have us believe, are littered with winged Sing-Sings, trapping hapless passengers without food, water, or sanitation. That implication is a flat out lie. (Yes, panderers-to-the-Washington-elite, it's a lie, because LaHood knows better.)

It's dishonest because it implies that airlines intentionally trap passengers on airplanes for hours. Think about it, veneer journalists. Do you really think Delta or American want to tie up their airliners for hours on the ground, with unhappy passengers, overflowing lavs, and cabins turned into what looks like Woodstock the day after?

It's dishonest because it assumes that there's always an easy fix when a flight gets delayed. In a particularly glaring bit of political sleaze, a DOT spokesman made the following statement

"Carriers have it within their power to schedule their flights more realistically, to have spare aircraft and crews available to avoid cancellations and to place passengers on other carriers' flights when there are cancellations..."

That comment, coming from a DOT official who should know better, is another blatant, bald-faced lie intended to mislead the public. It is completely at odds with air transportation realities, and one of the most egregiously-inaccurate comments ever to come out of that agency. Memo to some in the media: if you're going to report on the airline industry, try to get some knowledge of it before you file stories that contain comments from DOT officials who are lying to the public.

Let's use just one of many potential examples. At times when Denver's All-Weather Airport (remember the one that "can land three streams of aircraft, no matter how bad the weather") goes down due to weather, there might be a dozen or more flights diverted to Colorado Springs. There aren't enough gates to handle that over-flow. Unbeknownst to the ethically-challenged hacks at the DOT, not all airlines that might find it necessary to divert have staff at COS. There aren't a dozen extra airstairs to simply deplane passengers. There may by issues with security. And there likely aren't "other carriers flights" available. Planes could be stuck for hours. So, rather than risk breaking LaHood's law, airlines will comply, and cancel more flights if there's a reasonable chance of diversions.

It's dishonest because it implies that it's entirely the airline industry's fault. Here's some truth, which is in short supply in LaHood's DOT: airlines schedule flights to meet the air travel demands of the nation. It's the DOT's consistent incompetence over the past 30 years that has resulted in a situation where airlines must fly more minutes to get from A to B, and sit on ramps for hours waiting to take off. It's the DOTs long track record of ATC upgrade failure that needs to be addressed.

What that appallingly-dishonest DOT spokesman left out is that it's the DOT that should be adjusting its activities to the needs of the US air transportation system, not the other way around. Airplanes are delayed for the very reason Boyd Group outlined to Congress over 15 years ago: The air traffic control system can't handle the nation's air transportation demands. Not then. And still not now.

Tarmac Rules Are The Direct Result of Bad Airline Washington Strategy. The good news is that the airline industry may be starting to take matters into their own hands, instead of following really bad strategy advice from their outslide lobbyists in D.C. Finally.

At those congressional hearings in 1994, we stated on the record that the ATC situation was so bad ($5 billion in extra costs then - it's double that now) that airline CEOs "should form a conga-line" into the DOT demanding not just action, but demanding results.

Unfortunately, the airline industry continued to follow really bad advice to "work with the FAA and DOT to find solutions." Given the years of DOT failure, that's like helping Bernie Madoff cook your financial statements. There have been no real results. As a strategy, going along with the DOT, instead of standing up and blowing the whistle on them, is an outright failure. That strategy and the insiders who promulgate it should be discarded.

Worse, the airline industry has been misled into believing that the entire solution is funding the FAA's NextGen. The problem is that ATA, not to mention the other alphabet groups, are not demanding that the the ATC system get fixed. They have been merely tossing their support behind the DOT - which is the very bunch who year after year has failed to craft any meaningful "new generation" approach to handling our nation's air transportation needs.

One airport alpha group recently held a workshop teaching members how to "pitch NextGen like an expert." (Wonder if they included breath mints for this kiss-up session.) Looking at the track record of the DOT and the slop-shop ATC results over the past 15 years, the first thing that needs "pitching" is the lack of vision and leadership such an event represents.

The ATA periodically leads airline CEOs into congressional offices like prize ponies, lobbying the solons to step up to the plate and give the FAA the money it needs for NextGen - a program that's so far behind and so far in the future that Ray Charles could see it's a failure. Let's try something new: airlines must demand results, and they must refuse to be used as toadies for failed DOT programs. Heck, if the last 20 years is not clear proof, there's no hope for the industry. Bring on the stupid rules, LaHood.

Here's the problem: the airline and airport industries have been mis-advised and mis-led by Washington insiders into equating NextGen as the only ATC solution. The results have been more delays and, yes, the public perception that "tarmac delays" and off-schedule flights are all due to the airline industry's intent to abuse the public. It's time the airline industry realized that the advice they've been getting from their paid insiders in Washington has been ineffective. The continued misdirection of the ATA on funding NextGen, instead of fixing the ATC system, is not productive. Sucking up to incompetent political appointees is no substitute for just telling it like it is: the DOT has failed the American public.

Maybe, Just Maybe, The Industry Is Taking Charge. Years of milquetoast airline industry Washington strategies have paid off in a continuing decline in airway efficiency and now, dishonest crackpot rules that will harm consumers and smokescreen the continued incompetence at the DOT. But this new tarmac nonsense seems to have awakened the industry. Finally.

The CEO of Continental put it clearly:

"The reason we're on the ground is because we use the very finest 1950s ground-based radar technology in our air-traffic-control system. The government sticks us on the ground because they refuse to invest in the highways in the sky. Then they fine us, when as a result of their incompetence we are held on the ground. We'll cancel flights."

Funny, if you go back to the 1994 hearings and dozens of media stories and reports since then, this is exactly the point we have been making. Alone. The rest of the aviation consulting crowd remained under their intellectual rocks, lest they lose potential business from the Feds.

Yup, the great improvements over the past decade are sooo comforting. Incredibly, some will point to the recent DOT on-time stats as a great sign. Really? 20% of all flights arriving more than 15 minutes beyond already (and necessarily) padded schedules is an indictment of the airline industry, not an achievement.

But what the airline industry needs to do now is to avoid getting misled into believing that ATC improvements are just a matter of shifting to satellite technology. The whole approach needs to be rebuilt from "highways in the sky" to using the entire sky. On the positive side, there's a new FAA Administrator who just might be different from his predecessors.

LaHood's tarmac edict is a wake-up call for the airline industry. The get-along advice it's been getting in regard to ATC improvements has failed. Either they do what Continental's CEO has done - come out and tell it like it is - or they can just sign a confession that they are evil and must be punished.

One thing's certain. The industry needs a whole new direction in its approach to Washington.
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[Michael E. Bailey]

The right to petition the government and of assembly are two of our most important rights that are necessary to making democracy work. The Members of Congress and the Senators, and the President, and staffs on the whole are doing a good job representing their districts and the country. I think it is also good for democracy that California passed an initiative that created a redistricting commission that will take the once every 10 years redistricting process out of the Legislature and turn it over to an appointed commission who will put the districts together based on demographics instead of party. Best wishes, Michael E. Bailey.