Airlines to DOT: We Have Issues With Your Proposed Rules
by Michele McDonald /In a sign that the airlines plan to put up a fight against the Transportation Department’s latest round of consumer protection rules, 13 airline lawyers, regulatory advisers and other airline representatives challenged DOT staffers to clarify a slew of items and phrases in the proposed rules.
One issue raised by the airline trade group Airlines for America (A4A) was the number of open-ended questions in the DOT's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM).
According to a summary of its Aug. 7 meeting with the DOT, the airline group identified more than 75 open-ended questions in the DOT’s proposal, “which makes it impossible for carriers to fully comment on the multiple combinations of possible rules.”
For example, the proposed rulemaking asks, “Should carriers and agents be required to display all possible advance seat assignment fees, or a range, or the fee for each seat assignment available at the time of the search for a particular city-pair?”
About the DOT’s proposal
The proposed rulemaking’s major focus is on whether airlines should be compelled to provide “basic” ancillary fee information to GDSs and ATPCO. It defines “basic” as first and second checked bags, carry-on bags and advance seat assignment.
But it also touches on a variety of other issues, such as code-sharing and minimum customer service standards for “large” ticket agents.
43 questions
Airlines for America presented the DOT with 43 questions. In many cases, the DOT deferred the questions and suggested they be submitted as comments.
The airlines asked for a definition of “the legal basis for proposing to regulate the interaction between the air carrier and the carrier’s customer and its proposals in the NPRM that would insert the department in the relationship between air carriers and intermediaries (ATPCO, GDSs).”
Blane Workie, the DOT’s acting assistant general counsel, said the department “is striving for minimal impact” on the relationship between airlines and intermediaries, but it felt the rule was necessary because “consumers continue to have difficulty finding ancillary fee information.”
Currently, airlines are required to provide a link on their website home pages to ancillary fee information.
Who else does this?
The airline group also asked, “Is the department aware of any other industry where the government forces regulated entities to provide fee for service information to other regulated entities to enable comparison shopping?”
Workie responded that comparison shopping was not the goal; rather, she said, it was “to ensure that consumers are aware of the total cost of travel.”
The DOT’s proposed rulemaking contains one provision that is likely to set off a new round of battles between GDSs and airlines.
It would prohibit airlines from charging for distributing fee information via contract provisions. The airlines asked whether that would apply only to current contracts.
Avoiding disruption
Workie said the provision was meant to avoid disrupting existing airline-GDS contracts, and the prohibition would last only as long as the existing contracts. After that, “any price charged for distribution of ancillary service fee information would be negotiated by the parties involved, just like the price for distributing fare information.”
She also noted that if the rulemaking is made final as proposed it would be unlawful to provide consumers with fare information that does not include fees for basic ancillary services. The implication is that airlines and GDSs will have to come to terms.
Comments on the proposed rulemaking are due by Sept. 22; they can be posted at Regulations.gov. The docket number is DOT-OST-2014-0056.