{"id":937708,"date":"2022-12-29T10:03:29","date_gmt":"2022-12-29T10:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2022\/12\/southwest-airlines-cancellations-buttigieg-complaints\/"},"modified":"2022-12-29T10:03:29","modified_gmt":"2022-12-29T10:03:29","slug":"state-officials-have-been-begging-pete-buttigieg-to-crack-down-on-airlines-he-hasnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/12\/29\/state-officials-have-been-begging-pete-buttigieg-to-crack-down-on-airlines-he-hasnt\/","title":{"rendered":"State Officials Have Been Begging Pete Buttigieg to Crack Down on Airlines. He Hasn\u2019t."},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Southwest Airlines\u2019 flight cancellations are stranding thousands. Attorneys general have been sounding the alarm about lax airlines oversight, begging transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and Congress to crack down \u2014 to no avail.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n Pete Buttigieg, US transportation secretary, speaks during a news conference at the Memphis International Airport in Memphis, Tennessee, on November 29, 2022. (Lucy Garrett \/ Bloomberg via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

Southwest Airlines stranding thousands of Americans during the holiday season is not some unexpected crisis nor the normal consequence of inclement weather \u2014 and federal officials are not powerless bystanders. Before the debacle, attorneys general from both parties were sounding alarms about regulators\u2019 lax oversight of the airline industry, imploring them and congressional lawmakers to crack down.<\/p>\n

The warnings came just before transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on national television insisting travel would improve by the holidays, and before Southwest executives \u2014 flush with cash from a government bailout \u2014 announced new dividend payouts to shareholders, while paying themselves millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

Four months before Southwest\u2019s mass cancellation of flights, thirty-eight state attorneys general wrote<\/a>\u00a0to congressional leaders declaring that Buttigieg\u2019s agency \u201cfailed to respond and to provide appropriate recourse\u201d to thousands of consumer complaints about airlines customer service.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmericans are justifiably frustrated that federal government agencies charged with overseeing airline consumer protection are unable or unwilling to hold the airline industry accountable,\u201d they wrote in August, arguing that Congress must pass legislation empowering state officials to enforce consumer protection laws against the airlines.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

\u201cBetter by the Holidays”<\/h2>\n \n

Currently, Buttigieg and the Department of Transportation are the primary regulator over airlines thanks to a forty-four-year-old law preempting state consumer protection authority. Model legislation<\/a> proposed by the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), an anti-monopoly think tank, and backed by consumer groups would empower citizens and state law enforcement officials to sue airlines that violate consumer protection laws.<\/p>\n

One week after the letter from state attorneys general, Buttigieg\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0The Late Late Show With James Corden<\/em>\u00a0that airline travel \u201cis going to get better by the holidays.\u201d He added that \u201cwe’re really pressing the airlines to deliver better service.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Southwest \u2014 which received\u00a0$3.2 billion<\/a>\u00a0of government support during the pandemic \u2014 announced it was reinstating its quarterly dividend for shareholders, at an annual cost of\u00a0$428 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The company made that announcement just days after its CEO \u2014 who is paid\u00a0$9 million a year<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0the airline has been slow to modernize its\u00a0computer and scheduling systems<\/a>, whose breakdown helped\u00a0fuel<\/a>\u00a0the holiday travel disaster.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you took our crews, we have a lot moving all over the country,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Southwest CEO Bob Jordan. \u201cIf they get reassigned, someone needs to call them or chase them down in the airport and tell them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Santoro, vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that the company\u2019s \u201cinternal software can\u2019t handle massive cancellations. The company hasn\u2019t invested the money into scheduling infrastructure to support the network they have developed.\u201d<\/p>\n

While forsaking those technology investments, Southwest paid a handful of executives more than\u00a0$112 million<\/a>\u00a0over the last five years, according to executive compensation data compiled by Salary.com.<\/p>\n

One week before the Southwest scheduling disaster, thirty-four attorneys general led by Colorado Democrat Phil Weiser sent another letter<\/a>\u00a0begging Buttigieg to \u201cimpose significant fines for cancellations and extended delays that are not weather-related or otherwise unavoidable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

\u201cYet to Fine Any Airline a Single Dollar\u201d<\/h2>\n \n

Buttigieg now seems to be threatening some sort of enforcement action,\u00a0tweeting<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday: \u201cSouthwest passengers have experienced unacceptable disruptions and customer service conditions. I have made clear to their executives that our department will hold Southwest accountable for making things right with their customers and employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

But critics charge that his agency has continued to do almost nothing in the face of egregious abuses of consumers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department of Transportation has announced a rule on refunds that won\u2019t take effect for at least 2-3 years, sent the airline CEOs a letter, and promised to unveil an information dashboard,\u201d\u00a0wrote<\/a> AELP:<\/p>\n

It has yet to fine any U.S. airline a single dollar for unpaid refunds, flight cancellations, or systematic violations of consumer protection law, and has issued fewer enforcement orders in 2021 than in any single year of the Trump and Obama administrations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Buttigieg was appointed to lead the Transportation Department despite having no relevant experience in transportation management. His former consulting firm, McKinsey, has published reports suggesting ways for airlines to\u00a0extract<\/a>\u00a0more fees<\/a>\u00a0from consumers.<\/p>\n

In recent months, Southwest has been lobbying Buttigieg\u2019s department on \u201cairline customer service and consumer protection issues\u201d and \u201cfare fees,\u201d according to\u00a0federal<\/a>\u00a0disclosures<\/a>. Southwest has spent\u00a0more than $2 million<\/a> on lobbying since Joe Biden took office and Buttigieg became secretary of transportation. Last year, the company paid<\/a>\u00a0at least $796,000 to the airline lobbying group Airlines for America.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n

You can subscribe to David Sirota\u2019s investigative journalism project, the\u00a0Lever<\/i>,\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Southwest Airlines stranding thousands of Americans during the holiday season is not some unexpected crisis nor the normal consequence of inclement weather \u2014 and federal officials are not powerless bystanders. Before the debacle, attorneys general from both parties were sounding alarms about regulators\u2019 lax oversight of the airline industry, imploring them and congressional lawmakers to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1777,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1777"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":937709,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937708\/revisions\/937709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}