REMARKS FOR
THE HONORABLE MARY PETERS
SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION

AIRPORTS COUNCIL INTERNATIONAL – NORTH AMERICA ANNUAL CONFERENCE
KANSAS CITY, MO.

OCTOBER 1, 2007
10:15 AM

Good morning. I want to thank Rick Piccolo for those kind words of introduction and for inviting me to be here today. As Congressman Graves knows from his service on the Transportation Committee, ACI-NA is a tremendously important organization under Rick’s strong leadership and the terrific job Greg Principato does representing the interests of airports in Washington.

ACI-NA is important because the airports you operate connect people and communities across the country, and around the world. Your airports are truly, as your conference theme suggests, global gateways to opportunity. Councilman Bill Skaggs and City Manager Wayne Cauthen will attest to how valuable Kansas City International Airport is when they are recruiting businesses to bring more jobs and investment to the City of Fountains.

I am impressed with the way that the men and women who run our nation’s airports show the kind of leadership that makes this country so great. I want to congratulate you on the job you have done adapting your airports to the security requirements of a post-9/11 world. With your leadership, we have restored the confidence of the traveling public that was so badly shaken on that tragic day six years ago.

Demand for air travel has surpassed 2001 levels at almost all airports around the country, and continues to surge. Your airports served a record 741 million commercial passengers in the United States in 2006. And our forecasters anticipate we will reach a billion by 2015.

International travel is growing at an even faster clip as we remove restrictions and allow airlines greater freedom to respond to market demand. More than 141 million passengers flew between the United States and the rest of the world last year. We are projecting double that number by 2020.

While ACI and its members have long advocated fundamental changes to keep this fast-growing demand from overwhelming our airports and airspace, it took this summer’s gridlock to get people in Washington talking about what is wrong with aviation.

This summer was a traveler’s – and an airport manager’s – nightmare. The delays of the summer of 2007 did not just overshadow the delays of summers past, they eclipsed them. The on-time arrival rate in July was abysmally low, with delays or cancellations affecting more than 30 percent of all flights.

The worst of the breakdowns were in the New York region, which accounts for three-quarters of chronic airline delays. In just three years, delays there have doubled.
Keep in mind that one-third of the nation’s air traffic goes in, out, or over New York airspace. So delays at New York area airports have a rippling effect in Denver, Dallas, and Detroit and throughout the entire system.

The delays that travelers experienced this summer are a symptom of a system that has failed. New York is not an anomaly, but a preview of congestion to come at airports around the country without fundamental change to our dated aviation systems and policies.

The current system allows too many aviation funding decisions to be dictated by politics, not market signals. Users have little or no input. Meanwhile, current charging policies actually discourage airports from encouraging airlines to spread their flights more efficiently throughout the day.

It is a system tailor-made for congestion and inevitable backups. And with each delay and cancellation, vacations are ruined, important family events are missed. and opportunities are lost.

I think back to the first time I ever flew – in the summer right after I graduated from high school. I had just taken the long drive with my mom and my family from Phoenix to Sacramento, when I got a call about a job interview in Arizona. I knew there was no way I could drive the 750 miles back and get there in time. I was afraid I was going to miss out on a great opportunity. Then Mom arranged for me to fly.

I want that option to be open to my granddaughter when she graduates. She tells me she is going to be President one day. I would hate to think she could miss the chance-of-a-lifetime interview that would set her on her way because flying in America has become too unreliable.

Americans deserve real flight schedules, not a guesstimate as to when they might take off. Sitting on runways for hours and sleeping at airports should not be part of the adventure of travel.

Lost opportunities, lost time and buffer time, wasted fuel and emissions from idling engines and circling jets are all part of the price we pay for our failed policies. The annual economic cost of today’s delays is $9 billion. Nine billion dollars – more than twice the entire budget for the Airport Improvement Program – every year.

Worse, estimates are that, by 2022, congestion across our skies will cost this nation $22 billion each year in lost economic activity. That number grows to over $40 billion annually by 2033 if we do not act.

Some have used the current congestion crisis to call for more spending. This misses the point.

Even with the record investments in airports and technology since the last aviation bill was signed into law – and even with all the improvements we have made to the way we use and manage airspace – air travel today is increasingly unpredictable. We are seeing more frequent delays, longer delays, and record complaints from the traveling public.

Like you, we are hearing from more and more frustrated flyers. The complaints pouring into our Department this July were double what they were a year ago – and delays, cancellations, and missed connections topped the list.

Today, people are as likely to look forward to taking a trip on a plane as they are a trip to the dentist. I don’t blame them. Chances are the dentist will be a more pleasant experience.

We have got to make sure passengers are treated right. That is something the President stressed when we discussed the current aviation situation in the Oval Office on Thursday.

We are taking immediate measures to provide travelers better information on delays and better compensation when they are bumped. We are upgrading our complaint system, stepping up oversight of chronically delayed flights, and conducting reviews to make sure carriers comply with customer protection requirements.

The President insists on results, and I will be reporting back to him on progress and additional steps before the end of the year. I am going to need your help.

One issue that keeps coming up is better coordination between airports and airlines when it comes to runway delays. Some airports – like those in the Washington, D.C. area – already are doing this. But it needs to become standard operating procedure.

I know customer service is important to the people who run our airports. and I want to congratulate Mark Van Loh from Kansas City International on being named by JD Powers as the number one airport of its size in terms of customer satisfaction.

Our aviation policies ought to help people like Mark, not get in his way.

That is why we sent, not a reauthorization, but a revolutionary reform bill to Congress. We asked them to help us overhaul the nation’s air traffic control system by changing the way we pay for it and by investing heavily in new technologies. NextGen, the new satellite-based system we are building, will dramatically expand airspace capacity over the next 20 years. You know how key that is to helping solve congestion in the long-term.

You made it clear how important passenger facility charges, or PFCs, are as a local financing tool for established airports. And we asked Congress to raise the base cap on PFC charges and give you more flexibility in using your funds. We also want you to have greater flexibility to attract private investment through an expanded airport privatization pilot program.

We also have asked Congress for greater freedom to allow the market to work to reduce delays in the air and on the ground, now and into the future.

We cannot wish planes out of the sky, nor would we want to. Those planes are a sign of a healthy industry and a healthy economy.

Nor do we want to return to the days of heavy-handed government regulation.

But if we can use market mechanisms – such as congestion pricing, peak-hour ticket surcharges, and slot auctions – to convince carriers and their passengers to shift enough of their flights out of peak times, we can make a tremendous contribution to solving congestion.

It is being tried at Boston Logan. And I have encouraged the New York Aviation Rulemaking Committee we launched last week to be bold and to identify market-based mechanisms and other policies that can be used to reduce congestion and more efficiently allocate air space in the region.

I appreciate ACI-NA being part of the committee. I have asked them to finish their work by the time I report to the President at the end of the year, a time-frame that will hopefully allow us to provide relief for next summer’s travel season.

The status quo is not going to solve the congestion problems plaguing our aviation system. We need bold thinking. We need leadership.

That is why I am very disappointed that Congress has not taken any meaningful actions to address our growing aviation delay crisis and is resorting to a temporary extension when the authorization of the FAA and its funding expire today.

Let me be clear: our aviation system today is in crisis. We need fundamental reform, not a series of short-term extensions or even a reauthorization that continues the status-quo policies that have produced record delays and customer dissatisfaction.

Let’s embrace new solutions designed to meet today’s challenges. And let’s do everything in our power to support and encourage more of the kind of leadership its going to take to make air travel a reliable and pleasant experience again.

Americans want and deserve leadership. Let’s give it to them.

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