FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, February 27, 1998
Contact: Jeff Nelligan,Communications Director
(202) 366-6312
OIG 4-98
INSPECTOR GENERAL’S AUDIT
SHOWS AIRLINE PASSENGER ORIGIN
AND DESTINATION DATA UNRELIABLE
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Office of Inspector General today released an audit report on passenger origin and destination data submitted by U.S. air carriers. The Inspector General found the data collection system obsolete and the data collected unreliable.
Origin and destination (O&D) data provide the point of origin, the air carrier of each flight segment, the fare basis code (i.e., first class, coach, and discount coach fares), stopover points, the destination, the number of passengers, and the airfare. The information is important because, among other things, it is used by the government to analyze airline competition, select and approve air carriers for international routes, monitor airfares, and make decisions on the distribution of grants to airports. The information is currently gathered from passenger tickets collected at the airport gate using a sample of approximately 10 percent of domestic and international air travel trips on U.S. carriers. The administrative burden is tremendous . For example, of the nearly 35 million tickets sold each quarter, approximately 2.5 million records, both paper and computer, must be generated by the airlines, compiled, and sent to the department’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Data are collected using "city pairs," based on flight origin and destination -- a flight segment from New York to Chicago, for example. Department officials need O&D data to be at least 95 percent accurate.
The Inspector General found that 69 percent of the 8,894 city-pairs reviewed did not meet the 95 percent accuracy criteria sought by the department. For example, in 643 flight segments, the O&D passenger counts were misreported in a range extending from 31 to 40 percent.
"This is critical information the department must have in order to make key decisions regarding our nation’s vast aviation system, which carries more than 540 million enplaned passengers a year," said Kenneth M. Mead, DOT’s Inspector General. "It is imperative the department have accurate O&D data reporting. The Department knows that the data have problems and has been requesting the air carriers to provide additional data with which to make decisions."
Assistant Secretary for Aviation and International Affairs Charles A. Hunnicutt welcomed the airline data audits performed by the Inspector General, and he endorsed its findings. "The Inspector General’s report confirms our concerns about the O&D data filed with the Department. Secretary Slater is committed to improving and modernizing our data, and we have already taken steps to begin this process."
The Inspector General recommended that the Department replace the outdated and unreliable O&D data collection system, which relies on paper tickets, with a system based on data from the air carriers’ Computer Reservation System (CRS). The information on air travel currently reported in the O&D system is available through these CRSs. Use of the CRS process will result in more timely data products, significantly reduce the paperwork burden on airlines and provide more accurate and complete data for decision-making.
The Inspector General also recommended that until the new system is implemented, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics improve the accuracy of O&D data by:
The audit was requested by the department’s Assistant Secretary for Aviation and International Affairs, the Assistant Secretary for Budget and Programs, and the Director of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
The Department, in recognition of the problems it has experienced and which have been confirmed by the Inspector General’s report, is planning to initiate an industry and user outreach program to review aviation data collected by the Department’s Office of Airline Information and the measures that may be taken to advance on-going programs to modernize and improve aviation data reporting, processing and delivery systems.
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