Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood plans to form a special panel that will put together a plan to fix the airline industry.
The secretary says the panel, the Federal Advisory Committee on the Future of Aviation, should produce a roadmap for the aviation industry’s future within a year.
LaHood revealed his plans to form the panel last week, after a daylong, closed-door forum on the state of the industry attended by a cross section of industry representatives. Aviation union groups had requested the meeting.
The nation’s airlines showed a cumulative loss of about $60 billion between 2000 and the first half of this year, according to financial data filed with the DOT.
In a letter sent to LaHood a day before the forum, US Airways CEO Doug Parker, said, "Our request of the administration … is do no harm. Please do not impose any additional taxes, fees or unfunded mandates on this already over-taxed industry."
Parker also wrote, "Please allow us the ability to fix our industry through rational business decisions and actions and self-help mechanisms."
A Nov. 19 letter from various industry groups to LaHood applauding the panel formation said, "The initiative risks failure if it proceeds, as many previous commissions have, in the absence of well-debated and agreed-upon objectives for U.S. national transportation and air transportation policies."
The overarching problem, the groups said, is the U.S. has never had a coherent national air transportation policy that has been updated over time.
