Airline Passenger Experience association and Spirit Airlines. The subcommittee will come to order. I would ask unanimous consent ththe chair be last consent they authorized the recess during todays m hearing and without objection sosoperm ordered. Aysi ask consent that they aret on the subcommittee be committedjectio to sit with theo subcommittee in todays hearing and asked questions, withoutgooi objection so ordered. Good morning, want to thank the witnesses offacco the subcommite today for discussion on the airn travel experience. Accordingtist to the u. S. Borouh of transportation desist except the u. S. Airlines carried 925. 5 million passengers in the u. S. Oe and abroad. The highest total since 2003. The federal aviation aviation Current Aerospace forecast will increase roughly 2 per year over the next 20 years. Where im from, the number of complaints will grow from 24 million in 2018 up to 55. 6ie million bys 2015. By demand creates new opportunities through the nations aviation network, inv n longstanding challenges o int human growtherested throughoute last few years, airlines have invested including i. T. Solutions such a smartphone apps to distress the travel u. S. Experience. Todayssai hearing is of thiss subcommittee Passenger Experience in ways to improve this experience and consider how congress and the Airline Industry can foster toht on t benefit the public and these a witnesses of the Passenger Experience and gao and in historyexpe while the subcommite will discover new u. S. Airlines that view at the top of our mind today. The accessibility issues and 57t million americans most of them humble mobility at you issuesing to understand the error travel experience including challengesa with boarding thend aircraft inappropriate screening techniques and damage wheelchairs and mobility aims. As by the 2016 inches and 18 authorization inacts,it thes ad transportation initiated several rules of your joining on laboratories and support and service animals. Ge, heari it joined us on behalf on america and mr. Page, thanks forork coming out and hearing me rules within the stakeholders to filling the gaps on airplanes an airport accessibility. Throughout this countrys history its been a pervasive and persistent issue and far too often videos or personalorto anecdotes uncover practices o across the sector on the basis ofreli race, color gender relign and an according to gao its submitted to an average of 80 over the past decade to ere96o r complaints into the 19. Most of these complaints werehes through discrimination and its a startling statistic through other cases that the reporting system is not captured. The priorities that i have is to break down barriers to fully participate in the economy and our society. The 2018 act directed the gao to nondiscrimination Training Programs for employees and contractors. He joins the panel from the gao and his work on this study. Forw mr. Cline with Spirit Airlines are more about their efforts industry o nation. I want to just touch on the future of the airline past experiences will 116 congress of senateen geford looking to ts agenda with prioritizes and hands travelel experience experience for passengers. To do so congress d. O. T. An industry must work to ensurevicl transparency prevent unfair and included numertices and provide reliable Inaccessible Services for all americans. The laughs fa included numerous to ex enhanced Expensive Airline passengers including to help r establishing minimum sea pitch and commercial aircraft establishing a d. O. T. Aviation sort of advocate for air travel complaints and require carriers to improve the transparency combinations that they provide o in a widespread in widespread flight disruptions among otherdo things. Ihis look forward to hearing todays e testimony from mr. Mcgee on how recent law will help improve the pastce experience and as well from doctor leader from the airline pasture experience volunteer efforts to invest in new consum. Technologies equipment and general practices to better serveon t consumers. Pleased to convene this first hearing today on air Consumer Protections in nearly three years to exploree p the importai issues facing air travelers today for the past severallth years the federal government and air. Karen air carriers havs progress for air Passenger Experience and we should recognize that and that theres work ahead. Comfortable erward to identifyig where congress can ensure all passengers for safe comfortablee and dignified safe travel a experience. With that i understand thatat sitting in Ranking Member of the subcommittee does not have a statement and ill still now turn to the tearful committee mr. Defazio of oregon. T ha want to address briefly the covid19 and and air travel. Thefive years ago the gao recommended that in response to the 2014 ebola outbreak, that develop d. O. T. Worked with relevant agencies and stakeholders to that develop and national aviationo s Preparedness Plan for Community Disease outbreaks. That has not happened. Two administrations it has not happened and now it is l a little late. We wit have cdc trying to deal directly with the airlines and trying to get past their information. There is ongoing conflict over that. Last week, the chair and i wrote to secretary chao and asked that she implement the recommendations of the gao and put i together a task force andd become more involved in these issues as cdc should not haveop to deal withle individual airlines and the policy should be developed from knowledgeable people at if eight were d. O. T. , so we can begin to better track passengers that is obviously not the subject of the hearing today state of air travel my act first term in Congress Introduced t a bill called the Airline Passenger equity act, and some of those things that were inut that bill have been enacted and some are still out there. There are still issues that need to be dealt with for a better Passenger Experience. One thing is complaints. Gao says there are 50s to complaints to the airlines for dot. Everyone that gets to deal with team who knows to get in touch with d. O. T. . Howve do you do that . Nandahe bilfor a while i had ga mandate in one or other of the bills that they had to post something with an 800 number at the Airline Ticket counters and d. O. T. To had to maintain and 80 number today how does anybody know to contact d. O. T. With a complaint. We need more transparency there so we get a better handle on how many problems and complaints there really are. The airlines have record anc profitability a big part of that is and so larry fees we have laws i studied economics i studied school undergraduate. Law has of laws of supply and demand. The airlines, somehow when it comes to and celery fees or bag fees, the sky is the limit. It is totally, it is totally p elastic. There is no point at which passenger bookings fall off. When we are doing the faa billed in f 18, within a month all majr airlines raised their bag fees by five dollars. Are there employments gonna drop off drastically . No. But they say if an airport, in order to enhance the airport experience the crowded terminals, the lack of gates which make planes sit idle on the runway for hours sometimes on the runway at a time. If the passenger facility charge hasnt been fixed in 20 years if that went up by one and two, if we think of five dollars like a bank fee nobody would ever fly again. It is totally an elastic. One dollar were flying. And even though we can make ther case to the airlines somebodys got to pay for, this and weve r had the airlines to an excellentnt job with the hearing last year. Okay we have to do these projects. If we just bonded for 30 years and dont to do anything else because we dont have any Bonding Authority heres how much interest were going to pay. If we could increase the passenger facility charge, the user fee by this amount, and get to the table and show with half w a couple of bucks, while you cut the interest cost and a half. When i say the airlines, who is going to pay that interest . Youre going to pay it one way or another. Landing feet, eight feet at least three, whatever. Somebodys got to pay. Why mos waste money . Twhy not waste raise money in the most efficient way possible and make the improvements we need tostem the system. E. Weve been stuck on that for quite some time. Pastors with disabilities, we had a hearing last fall on this. One mishandled mishandled trage mobility aid or one dropped passenger is a tragedy and very difficult for person with a disability. It is essentially part of their body and it is unacceptable, my local paper in fact did some investigative reporting about airlines resistance toimely basi repairing, replacing critical, essential mobility aids on a timely basis. S. I thinkai maybe you have seen te photograph of the guy who is taped to an aisle chair. This is unacceptable. We asked d. O. T. Ordeal which he has there has the airlines to sa their training procedures, how a they arend replacing or handling the aids that are damaged or lost, i have yet to see the that results of that. Maybe we will hear a little bit about that today. So, emotional support of animals, i am pleased to see the d. O. T. Is taking some action there. We get the peacocks, turkeys, and other animals. This is a little bit out of control. We need there are legitimate needs for emotional support and people legitimately need emotional support and have legitimate objects with them, animals,ally should not be penalized because other people are abusing the system. Finally, the serious thing is cabin evacuations. D. O. T. Is conducting some what i think is inadequate testing with partial mockup shell of an airplane having to do with evacuation times and dealing with seats facing and issues like that. E a before i got to congress we hadd thetr manchester crash and peope werehat piled up like cord wood trying to get out of that plane. They died in a survival crash. Rs it took another six years here in the United States to get ai that when see removed over by the wing, because the airlinesow did not want to use their revenue. They came back with a fake steady and said it takes longer to evacuate the plane if you take out that row of seats. We beat them back on that and we still have that but i am chic concerned about that. We have tore start dealing with theover behavior people in the chicago crash where it took well over almost two and a half minutes to evacuate a burning supreme plane. Dragging big planes and fighting with the Flight Attendants silver taking their luggage. We have to figure out how to deal with those problems and sts d. O. T. Has to evaluate whether or not we can beat the standard given Customer Behavior which is something they havent taken into account. I look forward to being formed by the panel today thank you mister chairman. Thank you mister chair. I appreciate the opening comment and we will now turn to our witnesses. I would note that the Ranking Member of the subcommittee does come during witness testimony will finish witness testimony and then go to the Ranking Member for a statement. Just a heads up on that. Welcome to the panel witnesses. We have mr. Andrew than our, mcgee, mr. Li page, senior associate that arrives, mr. Joe leader xi fixated officermerc, mr. Matt cline executive Vice President and by chief commercial officer of Spirit Airlines, also accompanied by mr. Can failed. Ey mr. Cline will be giving the opening statement. Mr. Campbell is present for possible questions as well. With that i want to thank you for being here today. Without objection, all your statements, full statements will be entered included into the record and since that is the case, that your written t testimony has been martin part of thehewi record, we will allow your testimony and will that with will proceed with mr. Van on. Members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity re to discuss our recent body of work on airline Consumer Protections. Th varar reports issued over the past three years on a variety of Airline Consumer issues, specifically my statement todayd covers trends and deal with tea data k on Airline Service. Airlinelain actions to improve h service and what is known about complaints and of airline practices on improv accessibility ended discrimination issues. I work at the quality Airline Quality performance issues haveo improved baggage issues have dropped precipitously, airlines have for example reduced to give ury boardings by investing in technology to betternd r predict passenger noshow, is increasing compensation to volunteers to give up their seats when neededi eliminating over bookings altogether. Tracking technology and have instituted practices tonically l mitigate the impact of delays such as checking flights that are at risk of being chronically delayed, improving communications with passengers to through text messagingeless updates fall voluntary compensating passengers during extended flight delays. Delays or other disruptions those occur it could be costly for airlines and passengers. Anairlines are required to compensate certain passengers who areflig denied boardingtold voluntarily and provide refunds for council flights. Beyond those requirement steel tea told us airlines are not obligated though they may choose to provide a calming for councils and delays. Looking at the impact of airline var selected airlines of they wil contract variation types of accommodations provided and under whatat circumstances they will be provided. This can lead to confusion and some passengers please move the microphone closer to your mouth i cant hearl im you. I may feel that they have not been mplainfully constant compensated. The data on complaint still a different story complaints received by duty 10 , have increased over the lastrobs decade relative to passenger boardings by about 10 . Flightht problems and baggage issues are consistently the top category of complaints. Oughcomplaints related to accessibility andased discrimination though far fewer, the data shows that disability related complaints to airlines have steadily increased in this decade from about 19,000 and 2010 to about 30,000 in 2017,la increase of overints 50 . There isnt enough tech of reported to deal tina last few years. Ofor course the number of examin complaints may not reflect the full address experience with passengers for example the accessibility of laboratories while there may be fewer complaints we noted that some passengers with limited mobility can take extreme steps to avoid using the laboratory altogether severely limiting their fluid and take and other mently l choose not to fly at a. Generally we have found are complaint thatfo inherently limited dissatisfied individuals never complain and not represented on the data. Our recent work on accessibility and discrimination issues are focused on airlines efforts to provide training on these topics of their employees. All the airlines we examined have developed training in these areas so theyn had been reticent to provide some of the details to us. Irliwith respect and nondiscrimination training we found thatand Airline Training o varied not all airlines cover t topics ofo bias which should be included in such training. Looking forward to the 2018 fa out the right station will contain with respect toing and Consumer Protections including d leading nondiscrimination practices for ese efairline trag into establish Airline Passenger disabilities these efforts are ongoing. D. O. T. Hasbili also recently tan steps to establish rules related to the accessibility of single eye air ill aircraft laboratories which has been something theyve been working on sincece regulating service animals. Ot ecin addition we have to targeta measure some consumer compliance activities, including getting feedback fromr consumers on its efforts to educate them s yothis concludes my statementd be happy to address any questions you may have thank you. Thank you very much you are recognized for five minutes mr. Mcgee. Subcommittee members on behalf of Consumer Reports, the independent nonprofit consumer ghanas asianars thank you for e opportunity to address the concerns ofbefo millions of american air travelers. Aothree years ago, i appeared committee after the doctor dial ands that today student where a passenger was literally dropped out of an flight. Ne conditions have not improved much forr since 2001 three Major Airlines delta united plus major low cross stat wise such lack of composition would leave americans at the mercy has comes resulting in or service, fewer nonstop flights. That is what is come to pass in many markets. Aircraft cabins irma fully packnett anytime since world war ii would passenger load factors at 84 straining the system to capacity and the nickel and diming a fees revenue reach 75. 6 Million Dollars worldwide last year. Statistics indicate that involuntary denied boardings increased by 57 last year with almost 21,000 passengers bumped against their will enough to fill capital one arena. That is why we still have and let essential question was never address. By doctor dial. When internal airliney calculations determine who would be booted to border or this is desperate need of transparency. Tosearching through multitudesf flights and flares can be in mind numbing complex price its especially hard because mostaris travelers fly less than once a year. Fees can be even more,flights on sometimes you cant obtain fees prior to booking and likeing o checking bags, seats, changing flights werefewe carrying on a. Its common for blocking seats out making fewer available for selection and scaring the customers into paying more. Basic economy is designed to attract shoppers. But a flight is