this is an industry that heavily outsources. i'm a former airline employee myself. i should point that out. i'm a licensed aircraft dispatcher. i spent seven years working in ground operations and management. i was proud to work at pan-am, an airline that was renowned for customer service. but right now, we have a situation where employees are understand tremendous strain. i think it's the executive decisions that are putting flight attendants in the front lines of so many of these situations. flight attendants have a fundamental responsibility to customer service. we've asked them to be bouncers and police officers and all kinds of other things. so there's no question that there's an issue of training as well. >> i ask any of you to quickly reply. >> simply put, we agree. and in fact, support a united today in the audience, several of our pilots and flight attendants. and i think we work with them

constantly to ensure what their needs what they see and the constant back and forth, so we do put in policies, training. >> any health training? >> we do have a practice that we're implementing for our pilots. >> may is mental health month, i urge you to take a look and make sure that is taken care of. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. mcgee, thank you for your comments that were just made about this industry, hoping to fix some of the customer service problems themselves. last, you know -- like many americans i was disturbed by the video we saw of mr. dao, and also other video subsequent to this that's why i along with my colleague sent a letter to ask

what questions if an airline asks seated passengers to exit a plane in order to accommodate a flight crew. mr. munoz, thank you for taking responsibility as a ceo for that disturbing video and making sure that there are policies now in place to ensure that doesn't happen again. that's the customer service solution that we here on this committee are looking for. i don't believe government can solve your problems. i don't believe this committee ought to solve any customer service problem. frankly, that's something you that should do for your customers. and we are your customers. we fly a lot. we interact with many of them in many different airports. let me tell you, i've personally witnessed better service in certain airports and worse service at others. i think each of you ought to do a deep dive into where the customer service issues may be in your existing systems, in your subs and also in the small regional airports and also if

there are any issues with tsa, let us know so that we can help correct that situation, too. mr. munoz, i had a question for you, but trust me, you would have answered it probably ten times already today. i'm not going to ask you that question, although a simple yes or no, do you also agree with me that united is better able to make customer service changes versus us? >> i believe so, yes. >> thank you, thank you. representi representing when this happened i did what i like to do i sent a survey out to my constituents. i got 29 pages of responses. over 2,000 responses to our survey. and overall, my constituents rated their customer service experience with the airlines a "c." passing. average. on a positive note, the vast majority said that 73% of them said they did not feel as though they've ever been mistreated by

an airline employee. so, that's good news. however, when asked if they felt the airlines were focused on good customer service, 60% said no. mr. jordan, one of the most consistent responses in our survey was an overall satisfaction with your airline. did you hack my system? >> i do not believe we hacked it. >> thank you. >> beverly said southwest employees are friendly. berry, employees at southwest are professional and friendly. winona from springfield said that southwest cares about their passengers. in all seriousness, is this is a common trend with how customers feel about their experience? are you seeing that with your airline? >> congressman, yes, the nps score is how we measure customer service are very high, high 60s to 70s range. they rang in the nordstrom,

google, apple nps scores we find that all across. i think that's due to not just changes we've made but it's due to the wonderful employees at southwest airlines. >> you do have good employees. i fly your airlines from d.c. to st. louis. i also fly american airlines. i will tell you an overwhelming majority of the time, every airline employee is very respectful, does their job extremely well and provides great customer service. but it's just like in our business, sometimes, they don't remember the good service. sometimes, it's that incident that leads to all of you sitting in the chair you are today talking to us and answering questions. i tried working with many of the airlines to address the customer service problem that i saw. and i've witnessed many times. it's parents flying with children, getting to the airport and being told that they're not sitting by their young children on the airplane before they even get there.

and i ask many of you, your airlines, can you device a way to fix this. you didn't do it on your own. i had to actually write language called the families flying together act that sort past the faa authorization that would require anybody purchasing an advance ticket in a seat, if they have young children, maybe there's a pop-up on that reservation that says you know you're not sitting by your child? because trusting the gate agent and the flight attendants to make that decision is not providing the passengers the customer service that they deserve. you know as well as i do that that's something that needs to be addressed. i was hoping we wouldn't have to address it here. but that's a shining example of when you don't act, we have to. that's exactly what chairman shuster just said. don't make us have to act and put a one size fits all approach to fixing problems that we obviously see exist. they may be the exceptions. they may be. and we know they are. because we see it.

but in the end, those exceptions will bring a lot more rules from us. if it's not addressed. so, thank you. >> good comments. mr. lipinski. >> thank you, mr. chairman. just this morning, the bureau of transportation statistics came out with a report that said, in 2016, the passenger airlines with a process of $13.5 billion. $4.2 billion is average of baggage fees. $2.9 billion from change fees. a seventh straight year for profits for airlines. i have nothing against profits. we do not want to go back to days where the airlines were failing because we need the airlines to be able to function. but i think it's important context, that the position that the airlines are in right now, financially. i want to commend united and southwest for some of our policy change that they have made in recent weeks. i encourage other airlines to

follow suit with those changes. and in elders. but these changes are not enough to protect airline passengers. and i think mr. defazio said we need to prod, regulate or legislate, so that our passengers are better protected. 16 years ago, on the house floor the then ranking member of the aviation subcommittee, mr. duncan was chairman of that subcommittee at that time. he ed discussing airline mergers if there are only three or our mega carriers searching the u.s. market, the federal government will once again have to regulate the airline industry. that was my predecessor who is also my father bill lipinski. i'm not saying we need to go back to 1988 and the fleet

regulation. but perhaps there are some things we may need to bring back. mr. gibbs raised the interlining issue. mr. kirby said that united does interline, but i want to read from united's contract with carriage. it states upon sole discretion and the passenger's request -- the passenger has to know this is in the contract and request it, and i actually think this is one of the better interlining -- statements about interlining or one of the better things in the contract of carriers of any of the airlines. so, maybe we have to go back to rule 240. that says then an airline delayed or cancelled flights have to transfer a passenger to another carrier. the second carrier could get the passenger to its destination more quickly than the original airlines. let me say this, i know that you will gouge each other in this type of situation.

so, maybe we put in there that some sort of restriction on how much one airline can charge and others in that situation. but it seems to me if we want to help passengers out and protect passengers, this is not to go after the airlines. if we want to protect passengers, to have these types of agreements require perhaps the types of agreements that this is the way to make sure more people get to their destination at a closer time than when they were supposed to get there. now, i want to open it up to each one. i don't have much time, because, quickly, is there a problem? would this be a problem for you to do this? let me start with united. whoever wants to act. >> i think we've enacted our interline agreements. i think we used them less and less as we became more reliable. i think an important note is to have those fees and money to reinvest in the business to improve reliability.

>> how large do yoften do you u? >> we use it a lot less than we used to because we don't need to. >> would you be willing to -- change the contract of the carriage that says happy to request it? >> i'll leave that language to someone who is more versed in it. i think it's pretty customer oriented and we also don't gouge with our agreements like others. >> that's good to hear. >> congressman, i think ultimately what you're suggesting is finding better ways for to us accommodate customers in these situations. and we agree with that. and as i said previously, we do maintain these agreements with other airlines. >> congressman with the change to no overbooking, i expect the percentage of this to go down to .001%. it's going to be a small number of customers that need to be accommodated. we do not have official interline agreements. we have informal interline

agreement at the airport. oftentimes, what we do at the airports we empower our employees to buy tickets on other carriers to move our passengers to their destination. >> given the questions sometimes 97 only in the airline industry, service is one of our top priorities at american, we're constantly working to improve the tools that we use behind the scenes and available to the employees and self-service tools to our customers to make sure we provide customers with the best options to get them to their destination when they have disruption. and sometimes that does includes booking them on other carriers. we'll continue to do that as well. >> i do not want to regulate but i know i have to. i know i will act every time when i'm told by southwest when we don't have any interline agreements, we can't put you on another airlines. i want to make sure people know to ask if this ever happens to

them. maybe we can solve this problem. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> mr. banden. >> yes, sir. >> i'm brian banden, from the state of texas. a small businessman, for over 30 years. i know parts of customer service and courtesy run in your business according to the golden rule. and i know how significant it is if you have disgruntled customers. you know, you treat like you'd want to be treated. i think this world would be a lot better place. some of you may have already answered this question. but i'd like to address this customer service. does your airline gather and analyze customer service data, and if not, why not? and if so, does your airline identify customer service issues and address customer dissatisfaction? i know miss philipovitch, i know

you said american is doing that. i want to know, because i fly united most of the time into houston. although i did fly southwest -- i do fly that occasionally. and i'd like to know what you guys do in terms of keeping data and customer service? >> at united, we actually pivoted from what used to be a very arduous survey that you received with 100,000 questions that took you forever. we did that for long periods of time. the fact of the matter, simply the things that you kept telling us, we weren't getting to fix. we pivoted away from some of the fancy measurements that just went to a simple survey, that says, did you like the flight? yes or no. and the importance of that is clarity and specificity, more importantly, we take that data immediately as opposed to a week or a month later for people that

run that network to fix it. that's more versus just gathering of the data. >> i'd like to ask mr. jordan same question. >> yes, sir. we measure every single day on every single flight the customer satisfaction, around not just the flight, but every point in the journey. how was your buying experience. your boardsing experience. your gate experience. your in-flight experience, we use that to provide feedback to constantly improve. >> i appreciate that very much. i'm going to run out of time so i have other things i'd like to address. in terms -- we've talked about ticket change costs. i think on the other side of the aisle they mentioned amazing differences in cost between changing a ticket. so, either free, $15. some of them $200 to $300. and i'm very disappointed in the

differences. especially with some of the airlines that i fly most frequently. and i would hope that would be a more uniform cost to the passengers. as a former private pilot myself, used to love airplanes and love airports. but it's gotten to be a very onerous task since a fly about six, seven hours a week. and i'd like to see a little more -- i don't want a label -- i'm a conservative republican. i don't like regulation if we can get away with it but something has got to be done in terms of customer service with some of you airlines. also, frequent delays because of a lack of a gate agent. that's been another problem we've seen where your aircraft pulls up to the gate. you may be ten minutes early or whatever. you have to sit there and wait on the tarmac for a gate employee to come out and hook

you up. that seems to be a frequent problem that i've seen. and also heard complaints. what's going on there? if you don't mind, with united since i fly you most of the time. >> thank you, congressman. united that is one of the things we're focused on. how we can run a more reliable operation including the aircraft. one of the things we've recently start said measuring every single step in the process including what you just described as at gate, they should be there to meet their plane, not just the gate agent but the ground crew as well. that's one of the things we're measuring and we'll have available to every one of our stations. anytime we fail on that we'll have data to go out and figure out corrective action or policy changes or staffing changes or anything we need to address that. >> thank you very much. you know, the biggest concern, i guess of any transportation service, and that goes for the airlines above all. get your passengers there safe.

and i think all of you are doing a fantastic job there. but there -- there's differences in between customer service and satisfaction. and i think airlines are at a low ebb, right now, in the public opinion. some of you are doing quite a bit better job than others. and i hope that would be standardized without any kind of regulatory reform. and changes. so, my time is up. mr. chairman, i would yield back. >> thank you there are, mr mr. babin. mr. cohen. >> thank you, mr. duncan. mr. munoz, you apologized to make compensation for dr. dao, i appreciate that. it was awful to watch that. it reminded me of the trump campaign rally. people shouldn't be treated that way. but the problem we've got is overbooking of airlines and the reason we had the overbooking and having to take that man off the plane, or have somebody come off the plane, is because the

airlines are beyond the realm in getting profits, profits, profits, higher salaries less f customers. part of that can be seen in the size of the seats that you have for the customers. now, american and delta are tiny bit better than united on pitch. spirit's the worst. i think sky blue is good, but probably alaska's okay. it's been shown that passengers can get problems with their veins in thrombosis from long flights when they are so close together. seats have gotten smaller. pitch has gotten less. safety is a factor, as well as comfort. mr. munoz, can you tell me what united has done, if anything, to try to have seats, size and pitch, that is safe for an evacuation of an airplane if an emergency should occur, which i believe is supposed to be three

minutes to get everybody off? >> if i could, scott is our seat expert and has been doing this for quite some time if i could yield to him. >> if you could briefly give me the answer. >> safe it is our number one priority, as is all the competing airlines here today, and we test all of our aircraft for evacuation in the case of emergency and that's done under the guise of the faa, so all of our aircraft, not just united airlines, but at every airline in the country -- >> can you get everybody off in three minutes? >> yes, sir. >> and has the dim in addition and pitch not made it more difficult? >> sir, we still meet those standards. >> do you have a film with that which my staff and i can view? >> we actually do have films of that. >> great. if you would let mr. fulton know. i'd love to see it, because i find it hard to fathom with those seats, particularly,

cincinnati and memphis would not be hurt, still be hubs and not any changes with the merger, so american's come in and filled up that, but yesterday i flew on air wisconsin, and that's the worst seat i've ever had in my life. i've been there before. i refuse it. i made a mistake. i'm going to start coming earlier and getting the embray air, which is a good plane. the air wisconsin planes are buses with propellers. why do you use air wisconsin and put passengers in those teeny tiny awful seats with probably the worst pitch, worse than spirit, and the worse width? why do you use those? >> first of all, thank you for your business in memphis, we're glad to be able to welcome you onboard. we work with regional partners to allow us to have different size aircraft so we can serve small and medium-sized communities across the country. and we're really proud to do

that. we know that we need to work to standardize the products and services, because when a passenger buys a ticket on american airlines, they expect american airlines' level of service. >> that's what i expected. instead i got on, you know, air 1941. it was like the civil rights bus from the '60s that had been preserved and had propellers put on it. >> i apologize you had an uncomfortable flight and please know we're working to improve and standardize the experience our customers have, regardless of who operates the flight when they buy an american ticket. >> thank you, mr. mcgee, do you believe the pitch and width have hurt customer safety, as well as maybe imperilled -- diminished comfort? >> yes, absolutely. it's not just a comfort and value issue, it's a safety issue in terms of evacuation, it's a health issue, as you noted in terms of dbt. consumer's union has researched this and advocated about it and written about it and we found when we reached out to the

federal aviation administration that there are unanswered questions when the faa conducts its -- its evacuation drills, that they are outdated in many cases. a, because they don't reflect real world load factors, which now are often at 100%. they are at less than 100%. b, they are often with employees and things like that, so they are people that know how to evacuate a plane, and the third reason is that they often don't reflect accurate real world seat pitch, as you pointed out, so there are unanswered questions there about the most primary issue of all, which is safety. >> thank you, sir, my time's expired, but to the airlines, think memphis, we need more flights. >> thank you very much, mr. smucker. >> thank you, mr. chairman. there's been a lot of discussion today in regards to competition and regulation of the industry, and i myself prefer free enterprise system, prefer to

keep government out of the way whenever we can possibly do that, but i think the real question for us is whether additional regulation will be needed, whether there is enough competition to prevent that, and i think mr. munoz, you said it best, you said the best way to avoid the need for that is for the industry to do self regulation, and i think what we're looking for is to be able to have the confidence that the industry will provide, the customer service that our constituents deserve without the federal government stepping in. so we had a horrific incident, unthinkable, to see what we saw the images that we saw in those videos, and i think our job is to determine whether this is a one-time incident or whether it is indicative of a culture that could lead to additional

incidents like this. and i believe in many ways that the top of the organization, the ceo, sets the tone. as a small business owner, admittedly much smaller, only had a few hundred employees, but the tone of the ceo is absolutely critical to drive the -- the customer service throughout the organization. mr. munoz, you ask us to trust you today to make the changes that will be needed here for united. i must tell you if i'm a member of the general public, seeing your reaction, seeing the reaction of united initially and in the few weeks after the incident, there's a lot of work to be done to convince us that you are responding properly to this horrific event. the day after the incident, and i'll quote, you said i apologize

for having to reaccommodate these customers. then later that evening you said to your employees, while i deeply regret this situation arose, i also emphatically stand behind all of you and i want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond. mr. munoz, could you tell us what you were thinking at that point? >> yes, sir. with regards to the initial response, i think it was -- there's no excuse. it was an act based upon me trying to understand facts and circumstances. it's on me, it was the wrong thing to say at the wrong time. the second comment after we gathered more facts and we understood a little bit more the facts and circumstances, what had caused the event, who had been involved in the physicality that you saw, it was my point to make sure that our 87,000 employees understood that we had -- >> could i interrupt you, sorry, i only have five minutes, i was

apolled by your comments the first day, sent a letter the morning of the next day, april 11th, which mr. chairman i'd like to submit into the record if i could do so. >> without objection. >> they were simple questions in regards to policy that led to this, in regards to what united was doing to change that policy. mr. munoz, it took you two weeks to respond to that letter. the response did not fully address the questions. you did send a review and action report. i was amazed that report did not even mention that your passenger was physically harmed. i think that is an important part of the investigation. it's not mentioned in your report. would you care to respond to that? >> sir, we prefer given the video was indeed so visible to so many people to just stay with the basic facts of the situation and not further sort of elaborate on those things. and again, the document as we laid out was, in fact, to get as much information out there as possible quickly.

>> i have 46 seconds. you do -- i commend you for some of the changes that you are making in regards to policy for your employees. i'm very disappointed that you're not changing or at least not mentioning a change to the policy of how you would select a passenger for removal. that's unbelievable to me that after that has occurred, you would not take, for instance, the very last passenger that shows up rather than some other algorithm to choose an employee, so i'm very disappointed in your response to that regard. >> thank you. the situation is a difficult one, because if someone arrives late because they were delivering a baby or something, it's a difficult choice. our policy, our practice, our go forward sort of situation would be as much as possible to ameliorate the possibility of those actual events happening and with regards to reducing overbooking, make sure crews get

there on time, and most importantly, once you're onboard one of our aircraft, you will not be removed, and certainly, law enforcement will not be allowed other than for safety or security, so i think we've covered most of those issues and, of course, we'll offer incentives and financial remuneration, along with alternative solutions to get to your destination. so it's a start, sir, and you'll see us do that and i hope i do earn your trust. >> thank you. >> thank you very much, mr. series? >> thank you, mr. chairman. first of all, you know, the optics of what happened are awful for your industry. and i know you're uncomfortable sitting before us, but you know what's more uncomfortable? when you have friends that travel your airline and they have a lousy flight, jerk them around, you send them, they miss their flight, and then they call you up, say what are you going to do about it? these are life long friends, and i -- last summer, i have friends of mine that travel to europe, out of newark, which i present

part of it. and 9:30, supposed to take off, 1:30 they cancelled their flights, put them in a hotel, no luggage, next day send them to the wrong city, they had to get a van to go and travel to meet the schedule that they had in europe. now, had i listened to all that from my friend, what are you going to do about it? my question to you is, are you too big to manage your industry? have you grown so big that you can manage -- i mean, you're moving 186 million customers a day. do you consider yourself too big to manage? because i was listening to the former virgin air, richard branson, and one of the things that he suggested is this industry is getting out of control, getting too big to manage. >> i think the value of the large footprint that we and other airlines on this table have is the ability to really connect customers to all parts

of the world through our various network. the large -- >> you can do that with smaller airlines and still, you know -- one big humongous airline. >> with all due respect, sir, it's more difficult than that. the handoffs we have today can be difficult and are continuing another concern we have of ours, but i think the large scale provides and allows for some more freedom of choice, but also the complexity is something we have to better manage. we are an organization around policies and procedures on safety that work very well and -- but, again, to your point, it's important that we localize that customer service not in a broad perspective and every one of our stations, every one of our folks, are very keen and focused on that. >> i ask for your response on the size of the seats in your airline. >> i can certainly answer questions about -- >> well, i would tell you to consider that people are getting

larger in america, and the idea of making the seats smaller is not safe. >> sir -- >> three minutes, i don't think i can make it on a plane in 23 minutes. >> safety is our number one concern at united airlines and we are focused on safety. as to seat size, we are trying to offer our customers more choice, and -- >> that brings me to another question. every time you want to do something, you have to pay extra. i mean, if you want a window, an aisle, you have to pay extra. if you want a seat in front, you pay extra. i know you're saying that it has to do with the price of the ticket and everything else, but pretty soon you're going to charge to use the restrooms. >> sir, we're never going to do that -- >> not going thood? >> not going to do that, but it does cost the same to fly an airplane whether you have 150 seats or 138 seats onboard. essentially the same. if you take 12 seats off to create more room on the airplane, you're going to have to charge more.

>> if you take up more room. mr. mcgee, can you respond to that a little bit? >> yes, absolutely. congressman, today we've heard an awful lot about pricing, and we heard this sort of charge over and over again that prices are lower than ever, one, adjusted for inflation, we heard it several times today. the fact is that obscures several key things. one, of course, is the fees as you pointed out. years ago we didn't pay to sit by a window or bring a bag on, et cetera. >> do we have an idea how many fees companies charge? >> we see every day there are not only higher and higher fees, but new fees. now for the first time -- >> airlines are making money. >> no question about that. no question they are making money. there's no question that the price of fuel has gone on. you have apples to oranges comparisons there, but in addition, even just within a given route, the fluctuation in fares is so great. we have seen time and time again

the d.o.t. puts out a quarterly airfare report, four times a year, that shows where there's competition from low-cost carriers, from spirit, from jetblue, et cetera, fares go down. in fact, as mr. jordan well knows, the d.o.t. calls it the southwest effect to address this back in the 1990s. when there is no low fare competition and the majors are competing with each other, or not competing with anyone effectively in many markets, fares disproportion when we talk about average fares, the disproportionate rate between the lowest and highest is so great that passengers all over the country are getting gouged. there is no competition. if you would allow, if i had a moment, i could just tell you, this is on a low-cost carrier, mind you, coming here yesterday i received the invitation last wednesday, and flying from connecticut where i live, i went on last tuesday night at midnight, 43 minutes after midnight, i found a fare of

$398.40. unfortunately, my credit card had a problem which we don't need to get into today, but i'm a consumer advocate, not an airline executive. i went back on, seven hours and 36 minutes later, that price was now $648.40. on a low-cost carrier, that's $250, that's a 61% increase in seven hours and 36 minutes. there aren't too many businesses that charge such a wide variance in price for the exact same product. luckily my credit card worked the second time. >> thank you, mr. chairman, sorry it took so long. >> thank you, mr. sam graves? >> thank you, mr. chairman. we certainly heard a lot today about everything that's gone wrong, and i'm going to give you the opportunity and we'll start with mr. munoz, so what's going right? >> sir, thank you for asking that question. what's going right, at least from a united perspective, over the last 18 months our operational reliability has improved to a degree that in this month we're finishing first in the four publicly recorded metrics, so we've learned, i've

learned over the course of my time when it comes to customer service and needs, there are three basic needs that people want. first and foremost, despite what they say about all of the other important items like food and seats, reliability is the most important one. get me where the heck i ask to get to. so we have been informsing in our people, in our business, resources, to make sure reliability improved. it's improved mightily. second, it's an issue of concern with customers is flexibility. we're almost 100-year-old company. safety is a main driver for us and safety is so important that the rigorous application of policies and procedures is a discipline that's carried over into our customer service area. that's where we have to make the changes, that's been our next sort of approach. lastly with regards to information, if something's going wrong, tell me the hell it's going wrong and tell me as quickly as you can so you don't upset my timing and schedule. so that's what we've been working on those things and the incident a few weeks ago was a

horrible incident that we're never going to repeat, but the trajectory of our company in that regard has been doing very well. >> mr. spring? >> congressman, thank you for the question. i think i would lead with at alaska airlines, our employees -- employee morale is high and they are focused on doing a good job for the customers and working very hard in that regard. i had a complaint when i flew out yesterday on alaska airlines, the inflight wifi was slower than i would have liked, yet when we think about it, wasn't that long ago the notion of being able to do e-mail onboard a flight at 30,000 feet would be unheard of, yet we're taking that on and we'll be installing satellite wifi across our fleets so we can improve that part of our customer experience. that's an example, to answer your question very directly, one of the things that's going right in the industry, is the innovation. airlines are investing and doing it with new approaches to technology and service to make the customer experience as good as it can be. >> mr. jordan? >> i think i'm speaking for

southwest, so many things are going right, particularly on the customer service side. the nps scores, how we measure service, are the best they've been in the last three years, 11 points higher. otp is 11 points higher, m mishandled bag rates are the lowest they've been in the history of our company. the complaint ratios, even though we plane 11% more customers than three years ago, they are nominally lower today. so i think a lot is going very well on the customer service side and just briefly you mentioned seats, we are in the middle of retrofitting quite a bit of the new fleet with a new seat and that seat is actually wider with better effective pitch, so the sort of personal room for the customer is actually getting better. so i think there are a number of things that are going better for the customer in terms of customer experience.

we've increased our team members' compensation by an average of more than 35%. we've added 100 new routes and our team members have delivered amazing results, improving our reliability and we've seen customer satisfaction scores going up and this is at a time we're making unprecedented investments in our product and customer experience, so we're really excited about what the future holds. >> thanks. mr. chairman? >> well, thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i represent las vegas, and this is a place that knows a thing or two about customer satisfaction and hospitality and service. we welcome over 43 million visitors to my district every year, and many of them come through mccarron airport, which also in my district. now, i've often heard my friend,

who's head of mgm resorts international, say people talk about their experience from the moment they leave their home, all the way through the trip, to the time they check into his hotel, and that leaves a lasting impression on them about the quality of the visit they had. now, he doesn't want to have to buy breakfast for some angry customer like mr. capuano here when they get here because they've lost their bag or had to wait for an hour to get a cab or had an unpleasant flight experience, and i'm sure you don't want to deal with that same kind of customer either, but it's no wonder that they exist. we've heard all these stories about ticketing systems crashing that leave passengers stranded, long lines passing through security, baggage fees that push customers to take their suitcases onboard, and despite the fact you say one goes up and one goes down, they are cramming them all up there, bumping into people while they do it. add that to the xenophobic

policies of the administration, who are doing this extreme vetting and checking your facebook or e-mail or whatever when you get on the plane, it's no wonder that people come kind of girded for battle. so i have some sympathy for what you're having to deal with, but this is my question, we've heard all this kind of ranting about how bad the airlines are and all these unfortunate experiences, and yet pretty soon this committee is set to consider a proposal to privatize air traffic control to a corporation that's going to be controlled by y'all, by the airlines, and you'll be able to run it as you see fit. i'm opposed to that for a number of reasons, primarily because how it's going to leave customers in the lurch, but my question is, what do you have to show that means you're going to

be able to take over this corporation and do better by your customers from that angle better than you do by the angle now. for example, there are questions like how much is the traveler going to have to pay to this corporation? what kind of things have you done at your airlines in terms of routing that might be better that you'll do through this corporation in terms of investment and technology, management decisions? what have you done about your own scheduling? all of those questions that have seemed to be criticized today, how are they going to translate into your being able to control air traffic control system through a private board? so maybe y'all could just tell me some of the things you're doing that would make an argument for why you should control that aspect of airlines, as well. >> well, thank you for the question, congressman, and we believe that one of the ways we can actually help our customers is through atc privatization.

the worst thing we do is long delays and cancellations and those lead to customer service problems, the customer that gets upset and we want to fix that. they are handicapped today by the model, by the model where they do annual budgets, where the kinds of investments we need to make for the future are hard for the faa to do in the normal course of the business in the government. and the kinds of things we could do to make the process better is, for example, you have more sophisticated gps technology in your car than we use on aircraft today. we have the systems and can fly straight line routes, but still fly highways in the sky to get from washington to las vegas. we can do things like continuous descent approaches, so today we're at 35,000 feet and we step down, like each one, driving your car, slamming on the accelerator, hitting the brake, we burn gas and we take more

time. all of that could allow us to fly shorter paths and get customers there quicker, and we believe it's one of the best things we can do for customer service, is to reform the atc program and one of the best ways to do that is faa privatization, not because the faa's doing a bad job, they do a wonderful job, but the process is designed to be difficult and particularly for making long-term investments. >> well, we do have bad incidents like what happened three weeks ago on united airlines. we have carrying 86 million people safely this year, as all of us talked about in the last question, getting better at running reliable operations and in this case we have the exact same incentive. what's better for our customers is better for the air traffic system, it's better for our economy, and we have the same set of incentives. if we can fly more efficiently, that's good for our customers to

get in there faster, but also good for fuel burning. >> i'm sorry, we have to take a five-minute recess at this time. we'll be in recess exactly five minutes.

>> if you missed any testimony, you'll be able to find it in our video library online and there's a link to the hearing right on

our home page. we'll also be showing it again tonight on the c-span networks. also live today, the house rules committee is coming together this afternoon to work on the $1.1 trillion government spending bill that was agreed to informally over the weekend. the measure is due on the house floor later this week. we'll have live coverage starting at 3:00 eastern time here on c-span3. and president trump tweeting this morning about the agreement, saying the reason for the plan negotiated between the republicans and democrats is that we need 60 votes in the senate, which are not there. we either elect more republican senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. our country needs a good, quote, shut down in september to fix the mess. you can read more of president trump's tweet, of course, online using the twitter app, and let you know that we will be coming back here or actually staying on the room here. executives from united,

american, southwest, alaska airlines all testifying today on the airline's customer service and they are expected to start back up here in a few minutes.

>> we'll go ahead and start back. if everyone can please take their seats and the next member to ask questions is mr. louis. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i do not want to go down the road here in my five minutes of telling you how to run your business. we get far too much of that from capitol hill it seems to me, and you know more about running your business than probably most of us here. i do want to come to you, though, as a consumer. a consumer who just spent two weekends ago 30 hours getting from washington, d.c., to minneapolis, minnesota. i and another colleague were stranded at reagan for a day and a half without, frankly,

adequate communication from an airline. we had our flights delayed for two days, delayed for an hour, delayed for an hour, then at the end of the day cancelled. would have been easier if it was cancelled from the get go, this was due to the weather disturbance in atlanta a couple days ago. as i say, i understand the constraints with which you run your industry, and it's got to be somewhat gratifying given the good financial health you appear to be in to proven warren buffett wrong. that's a good thing, when the guy said the industry is a death trap for investors is now investing in airlines. i think that's a good thing. a lot better than bankrupt airlines. so i want to make certain we can arrive at some solutions potentially today to make the flying experience better for people like me and my constituents and everybody across the country, while also maintaining profitability and operating at full capacity, which has been the goal for quite some time. there's no other way to run the

business. you can go back to 1978, but in those days, of course, travel by air was reserved for upper middle income. today it's every man's way to travel. so, having said all of this, and i don't want to focus on -- let me start with this, and i'll open it up with mr. munoz, and that is there's been a lot of talk about air traffic control reform, and since we are operating at full capacity, which is the best way for the airline to remain profitable, would air traffic control reform have an effect on the experience, for instance, my situation when you've got capacity so constrained and there's one hiccup, whether it's weather or crew or anything, you're going to have a ripple effect. would reforming atc have an effect? and what kind of an effect? >> it's an incredibly outdated system, which you may well guess, which led to some of those events. we think it had a lot of improvement. mr. kirby answered a question a

few minutes ago, i would ask for continuity purposes invite him to answer, as well. >> it would be -- it would lead to dramatic improvement, we believe, over time for people to fly faster and get to destination faster, which does put more slack and more capacity into the system. probably wouldn't have given what happened at a different airline for that, but it would lead to overall improvement for customers because we could spend less time with the airplanes in the air and on the ground and more time getting the customer there quickly. >> if it increases capacity, would you then just supply and demand tend to meet, would you just increase loads again? >> well, it's likely we would increase flying at that point over time, and that, i think, would still be really good for customers, as we increase flying. you know, fares, supply and demand on that side. as supply goes up, fares tend to go down and we can carry even more customers every year. >> mr. jordan, southwest came

out of the airline deregulation, great success story. there's one thing you do none of the other airlines operating don't do and that is you put the bags within the ticket price. it seems to me again there's been a lot of talk about stress from this panel today flying and one of the stressors seems to be in some cases it takes to board the plane and deplane than it does to get to the destination once in the air. and some critics suggest that's because we have separated or the excise tag doesn't apply to baggage. you haven't gone down that road. are the critics right, is there a problem with boarding? i know we've got zones now and executives are trying to figure out the best way to board and deplane, but it does seem to be a problem when you're behind a person trying to put their hope chest in the overhead bins. >> thank you for the question. just generally, i think we think what is the best for the customer is doing what's right for the customer is to let them

take a bag for free, bags for free, not charge change fees, not charge cancellation fees, et cetera, et cetera. on the operational side, yes, if a customer can check a bag for free, they are going to check more bags, which that results in a smaller number of bags that are brought onboard because they can check, which allows us to board more efficiently and allows for the overhead bins to be less crowded. >> i see my time is up, but i'd like to continue this at a later date i hope. thank you all for coming. takes a lot of courage to show up here given the recent events and we appreciate it. i yield back. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you for the endurance of the panel. but our constituents have to endure, and that's why we're here. you're not just in the transportation business. you're in the customer service business. and we've seen some rather noteworthy and disturbing failures in the last few weeks.

with the bad weather a couple of weeks ago, i had many calls in my office and people who see me on the airline every week talking about i've been stranded, i had to help a passenger who was in a wheelchair who was left for three hours, just sort of abandoned at a gate and nobody was keeping track of her, letting her know what was going on, could she get to the bathroom, could she have any help, and that customer service, frankly, no low ticket price makes up for a miserable experience. with the consolidations that we're seeing, four of the airlines controlling 85% of the traffic, when i fly from hartford, connecticut, i don't have a lot of choices, and that's true for my colleagues and more importantly true for our constituents. they have very little choice. you're in a near monopoly position and that's why so many of us are concerned and you're hearing this linkage to faa privatization. if the market were functioning well, this could never have

happened, mr. munoz, never have happened, and we know well that that was a shocking and, thankfully, rare event. we don't want to see violence on airlines, but unless we figure out a way to guarantee that customers are coming first, you're going to see more of that. my colleague, richard blumenthal, is introducing legislation in the senate today to deal with, you know, raising what those required offer prices are, putting in new standards, and i know there's been well drafted and, you know, hats off to the p.r. folks who helped you draft the response belatedly, but you can understand why we're skeptical that the market is going to solve it, because it should have prevented this from happening. and so genuinely what kind of assurance can we have that there shouldn't be legislation in place, that i don't have constituents telling me having

been diverted to dulles because of snow and left on the tarmac for four hours. standing in sight of stairs, and they just sat there with no update for our hours. now, i understand there are snowstorms, but why couldn't someone roll stairs over? i was getting calls from the plane to my office saying, can't you do something? we can see the stairs. no one will tell us what's happening. then they started running out of fuel. that bespeaks a focus on the bottom line and having lost the customer. if the customer is really king or queen, you've forgotten that. so how do we fix this? how do we fix this other than folks here, folks here having to draft legislation for you to treat our constituents with the respect and safety that they deserve on the airlines with the consolidation that's happened, because i think it's really

important, you know, we talk about the importance of customers being able to vote with their dollars, my constituents don't have that choice. when i'm looking at flights, i don't have that choice. if i need to be here in time for votes, i don't have that choice. i don't have that. and i can no longer take a 3:00 flight and think i'm going to get here in time. i have to back it up because i can't count on that. and the lost productivity is billions and billions and billions of dollars in americans right now who face the same choice that our colleagues all face in saying, well, i guess i got to take that really early flight, make sure i get there in time, i might get bumped. how are we going to fix this? what are you going to do? not a press release, but what are you going to do in changing your policies? among them, can i suggest, i never want to see a paying customer pulled off of a flight to move a crew. you charter a plane if you need to do it. you need to move your crews, i

get that, we all get that, but it should never be at the expense of a paying customer ever, and that's going to be the first thing on a bill i'm signing on to, because that is the ultimate, the ultimate indication you have not managed your system well and you are asking customers to pay for your failure to manage. so, genuinely, please come to the table with us and figure out how we're going to set standards in place and ability to hold you accountable. and again, i know none of you want to be here. frankly, we don't want to be here either. we want our constituents to be happy. we want them to get there safely and get home safely on time and we do, too, but it's got to be more than press releases. it actually has to be change in policies and practices. and most importantly, priorities. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you, panelists, for being here today and enduring this. indeed, we have a lot of controversy about air travel

recently and over the years. i think a great point was made about the sitting on the tarmac in a plane for several hours. i hope that can be something that could have a lot more attention to that in the future. i think some changes have been made, but to be sitting in an airplane waiting for an undetermined outcome, i hope they can find ways to help people deplane during a delay like that. i'm a frequent flyer, too, fly from the west coast to the east coast, it's about a five hour on average flight. by and large it goes pretty well. we note there's 700 million customers that fly successfully every year, and i think that's pretty remarkable. we have very tiny percentage that do have indeed some of the problems being talked about here, but what we also know about flying 35,000 feet or so in the air, you have zero margin

for error, okay. not like a land-based vehicle where you can just pull over. you don't just pull over in a plane. your options are a little more limited. so you have a lot of things you go through to ensure safety before you take off. we've all sat there when they are reprogramming the computer, something doesn't quite go right, they have a mechanical issue to look at. i'd rather they do than they don't. you also have constraints from competition to keep your planes full, you know. i use a major airline in my travel and the first three months of each year my direct flight isn't available because i don't think the airline can keep the seats full, therefore, i don't want to lose the flight completely having it direct, so i have to hop through denver or chicago for the first three months of the year until the tourism comes in. so we all get those economic constraints, and that's important. as a business person, i get that, too. so i guess what it gets down to, though, is we did have this

recent incident here, and legislators, they read something in the newspaper, they want to legislate and you are all taking your beating in the committee today and united especially, and what i have seen united do is take steps towards that. so a quick question towards the whole panel, and i think i understood, sorry, been in and out of the hearing a bit for a competing hearing. mr. munoz, you did mention you no longer have a policy of pulling somebody off the airplane where you did before, right, that is already seated? >> that's correct. >> that's abolished. for the rest of the airlines, will you quickly on that, did you ever have that or since abolished since this issue? >> we've recommitted that we will never remove a seated passenger to accommodate another passenger. >> thank you. >> and for southwest, same thing. it's our intent never to involuntarily deny somebody that's already boarded on to the aircraft. >> not aware of us having done

it at alaska airlines and same, it's our intent to avoid that situation altogether. >> all right. i think a very big lesson learned very graphically on twitter and video and everything else. so i don't always think there's a legislative remedy from people that aren't in business that deal with it day in and day out, so i'm not quick to think legislation is needed from washington, d.c., on this issue. i think let's give the airlines a chance to carry that out. i did -- i did go through the united carriage of contract over the weekend, i had a very slow moment there and didn't see rule 25, denied boarding, about pulling anybody off the airline. was there anything in print? >> no, sir, that's an internal policy. >> all right. so that appears to be in the past. so, i think that what we can also do is learn from other

people in how they do things, so some of the major airlines versus some of the not quite as big airlines, what would -- what would alaska airlines, for example, be able to impart to united or to southwest and what could alaska airlines learn from united or southwest or american. bigger ones versus more midsize ones. what would you share with each other in how you'd do things? let alaska go first. what is it you would advise and what is it youth like to learn from them as a way to do better? >> thank you, congressman, for the question. i will be a little cautious with my answer, because this is an industry that has an ability to humble an airline and its employees in a hurry. there's a number of things at alaska airlines that even with some of the customer accolades we've received that we need to improve on and we know that and are focused on that. one thing we have found is giving our employees, our customer-facing employees that deal with our guests every day

as much empowerment as possible, we have a stated company value to do the right thing, and we believe that if we empower our employees and we talk to them about empathy and the golden rule that they'll do the right thing and that usually leads to the best outcome for all involved. >> i appreciate that. i'll yield back in a second. also, i had a very good experience watching a lady at the counter in southwest in baltimore during the delay, she handled things like a pro, but also she was assertive enough with obnoxious customers to be able to get the job done for the rest of us. there's a very talented line that has to be there with that. also, alaska, i like your tail logo the best. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. >> thank you, sir. i want to first thank the panel. you know what, you probably feel today like a lot of flyers, very claustrophobic in waiting for something bad to maybe happen. so thank you for your patience,

and my colleagues have done a very good job, i think, in pointing out some problems, and i'm not going to pile on. i want to start by thanking the thousands of professional flight attendants and pilots and the counter people that work in this industry who do very good jobs. and work very hard. and i think what we all can agree that policies and training make a difference so that they can do their job. so does having a good civil justice system so people can have a private recourse, and it doesn't hurt to have a good cell camera when you need one, right? i'm from florida, south florida. we had 100 million visitors last year. many of them took planes. the airline industry creates 1.3 million jobs with a $44.5

million payroll in our state, so we have to get this right. i have three questions, and just so that you can answer them, maybe one of you would try to answer each of these questions. i don't need all of you to answer them, okay. first of all, i'd like to know whether the consumer union folks ever meet with you all, and you could sit down and discuss these issues. number two, we've talked a lot about overbooking. i'd like to understand what the -- what might be the unintended consequences and how it would affect, especially customers, if we do not allow overbooking. and then i think a policy that i know really irritates most of us is the rigid change policies, how expensive it is. and i don't understand why in this digital age they have to be so rigid, so if you want to take a shot at those three questions. >> i think united will take the overbooking one since we've been

answering. scott has been doing this. >> first, congresswoman, thank you for thanking our employees, who you're right do a phenomenal job in tough conditions all the time. on overbooking, we use overbooking to take care of thousands of customers that we would otherwise not be able to accommodate. one of the most common uses is in a situation where someone has a delayed or cancelled flight and we will then overbook them, those customers, on to another flight that's currently booked full. >> may i just say something, what does the number of people who are bumped compare to the number of people who are accommodated because of the overbooking? >> so, we from an over -- most of our over sales where we can accommodate customers come from operational issues like a weather issue or can't take a full load of passengers. we at united, about 15% of the time we actually overbook a flight. do we actually have more customers show up than are on the airplane, and in that

situation 95.6% of the time we are able to solicit volunteers, so it's really unusual that overbooking creates an involuntary deny of boarding and particularly now that we've gone up to a $10,000 limit, i think we'll drive that number close to zero, but if we stopped overbooking entirely, there are thousands of customers we either couldn't sell a ticket to or when there is an operational disruption, we couldn't give them another option for how to get home. >> next question. >> i can take your question about consumer unions. as you know, the department of transportation has a robust consumer protection division that oversees airline issues. they also host a panel with consumer union members and airlines to get together to discuss issues, so that's a good way that we are able to connect. >> congresswoman, can i add something to that? >> yeah. >> i want to get to the rigid

change policy if somebody could, yeah. >> just a quick aside on the issue that's come up several times. legislation versus self policing. it should be noted that during the tarmac delay discussions that were so robust a few years ago, i participated on behalf of consumers union at a meeting organized by senator boxer and every airline in the united states was invited, as well as the largest airline trade organization, and not one representative showed up. for me, that was a turning point for consumers union. they were invited to discuss a serious consumer issue and they didn't even come. the chairman today noted that some of the airlines that were invited to this hearing didn't come, so i think that speaks volumes. >> and on the rigid change, the rigid change policy. >> i can take that question. i had answered it earlier, as well. airlines offer a variety of products to meet differing needs of consumers, and some consumers put a priority on buying the lowest fare and are willing to

buy a restricted ticket in order to get that fare, while other customers know they need more flexibility and they prefer to buy a nonrefundable fare. so the change fee is something that is basically a way to offer some measure of flexibility when people buy a nonrefundable ticket with a change fee we do allow some flexibility there, so that's the purpose of change fee. >> thank you and i yield back. >> thank you very much, mr. woodall? >> thank you, mr. chairman. you know you're having a bad day when you're getting lectured on customer satisfaction by congress. that's a low bar to get over. i want to see a show of hands, when somebody gets stuck for three hours in the snow in dulles airport, whose airline makes more money because those passengers are trapped out there on the runway? nobody does? well, let me ask a different question then, when the stairs fail to get over to my planes so

i can calm down, which one of you has operational control over that airport and are preventing those stairs from getting rolled over to my plane? let me ask the other question then, who is it that's controlling the air space there on that runway that's not letting planes come and go? is it the profit-seeking airlines, or is it the consumer-friendly federal government that is controlling those airways? can someone help me with that? i know the answer to this question, and i just cannot believe that we've been sitting in this hearing again as if we have the customer satisfaction approval ratings to do it, talking about how if only the government were to regulate more, we would do better. the $1,350 maximum bumped passenger fee that is in d.o.t. regs today, i'm sure folks intended that to be a floor, but it is, in fact, a ceiling that

developed in the industry. if you can't roll the stairs to your plane, if you can't take off just because you want to take off, i want to understand if we're in the safest aviation environment we've ever been in, as we go back historically, have we been in a safer aviation environment historically? no. well, as we go back, have we been in a more affordable air travel environment ever in our nation's history? so we're the safest we've ever been, we're the cheapest we've ever been, and we want to figure out how to do better for consumers and we're thinking it might be more federal regulation that will do it. i did a quick back of the envelope count on how many flights have taken me back and forth to georgia each and every day, and atlanta's a different -- atlanta's a different case, and i understand

that we have spirit going back and forth, we have southwest going back and forth, american takes us direct, delta's going back and forth. we don't have any shortage. about 36 flights a day take folks back and forth from atlanta to the region, and competition sorts out the issues. does anyone's airplane model allow me not to purchase a bigger seat if i'd like one? has anybody eliminated the larger, more comfortable seats from the model? nobody on this panel has done that. so we haven't eliminated the larger, more comfortable seats. whose model has added smaller, cheaper seats? anybody? american added smaller, cheaper seats in the last ten years? >> we've changed density on aircraft in some cases where we've added seats, but we haven't changed the size of the seats. >> has southwest added smaller, cheaper seats? >> we have moved to a new seat, but it's actually wider and more

effective pitch. >> i just can't -- i just can't understand who it is on this panel that believes we care more about your customers than you do. i'll ask my friends from united, mr. kirby, you're crunching the numbers day in and day out, how much has united been advantaged in this past three-week episode? >> well, we certainly -- this was not something we regret and didn't help us financially, but it is going to help us, by the way, be better in the future, because we're going to learn and be a better airline. >> this is -- and i regret i spent so much time on my previous rant. think about the burdens we place on you. my flight attendants today say, rob, we're not going to pay that close attention to whether or not your bag is tucked under the seat, whether or not your cell phone has been turned off, because folks are so angry and passengers are pretty tough, we put these responsibilities on you. every flight i get on says federal regulation requires you to follow the flight attendants' instructions. your flight attendants had

instructions don't follow those instructions. what is it, what would the enforcement mechanism be if the federal government was not regulating in this place, if it was not true that federal regulations require you to follow flight attendant instructions? what tool do you use to have a rowdy group of passengers follow your flight attendant instructions, which we need to do in the name of safety? >> we appreciate the role that the faa plays in ensuring that policies are in place to make our aircraft and our customers safe. >> i don't believe that there's anyone in this town that cares more about your customers than you do. i don't believe the lesson of united's experience is customers don't matter. i think the lesson is customers do matter and folks are going to change extraordinary policies in order to serve their customer base. we have never been safer, never been easier to get on an airplane, i will tell you, mr. chairman, the challenges that we face may not come from the

private sector, they may come here from right here in this committee and on the road on independence avenue. >> thank you very much, mr. payne? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i've been listening for the last several hours, and let me just associate myself with the comments made by my colleagues on this side of the aisle so i won't be repetitious and brow beat the issue. we're clear where we are in this regard. also let me state for the record that, you know, i oppose privatization of the air traffic controllers. with that, i've been flying for a while. i'm a little older than i look. that's what i'm told, but -- no,

i remember people's express, who then became continental, who then became unite express, who then became united. their hub in my district, newark airport, for quite sometime. so i've seen the evolution and the consolidation. in some ways it's been positive, others negative. to me it appears southwest is really setting the standard here in the industry, and i would hope that some of the practices of that airline would be incorporated across the industry.

but with that said, you know, i've had the opportunity to meet with mr. munoz on several occasions as united has really given back to the community where it's hubbard in newark, new jersey. each year students in my district are interns from north and east orange, jersey city. it's an opportunity to expose young people to careers in aviation at that airport. these communities are tremendously appreciative of these opportunities. so i just wanted to put that on the record for my district. but mr. munoz, the incident with fly 3411 really has kind of

blemished united's reputation, but i'm glad to see neither company has responded in the changes that it's made to create a more positive experience for your customers. unfortunately a lot of times my colleagues on the other side talked about regulation regulati regulation. but unfortunately sometimes in the industry, a lot of things are reactive instead of being proactive. i'm sure if it wasn't clear before, this episode is highlighted by, some issues the

industry needs to come with. how can congress, transportation and airlines work together to improve the flying experience for customers because in the end that's what we want. we don't need to sit here and reha rehash. everyone knows what happened. how can we work together to make the experience more positive for customers. that's what we want to do with members of congress, help you and help the industry as well make this a positive experience. >> thank you for your comments. we love our intern program at twr and actually expanded that to other places in the country. i think i'm new to this industry, i've worked in many other industries. i've had many debate and discussion on all these matters. i think at the end of the day, in open discussion, any more pro

active conversation rather than reactive is always helpful to us in business of the problem with introduced legislation or regulation at any point in time, it is so reactive and doesn't apply to business needs. if there's some way we can do open debate between isles and companies, i think it's important. it the old why can't we all get along. it's important to note as we govern the country, govern us, i think it's important. the end all, it has to be a customer at the center of the universe from us. i think what you've heard from the panel is just that focus. >> thank you. chairman, i'll yield back. >> thank you very much. miss comstock. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i guess we've gotten to that point in the hearing where all the questions have been asked but not everyone has asked them. also many of the questions we've already heard from, i would associate myself with, genuine

concern. really, it was appalling for everyone to see this, as has been expressed. i do appreciate, mr. munoz, your recognizeing that and very strong statement the initial whole incident, responses and detailed plans you've come here to outline for us. i hope we'll continue that dialogue. as i heard mr. davis earlier talk about the survey that he took, i hope you will take into mind focus groups, surveys, reach out more to the flying public to hear from them. and in that regards, it's a little different than some of the questions we've had before. i wanted to point out something we highlighted in working group, women in the workforce. studies show, a little off what we've been talking about, studies show companies with three or four women in senior

management functions scored higher in leadership, accountability and innovation more than companies with no women at the top. i know when i look in the transportation industry in general it is male heavy. the boards are also that case. i would ask as you're looking at this, making improvements and taking into account all the things we discussed here today, sort of the diversification of boards and taking that opportunity, i think technology is something we can use much more. also technology really takes into account the lives of your flying public. i recently go online, do a lot of my things online. i was recently flying and i wasn't alerted as i normally would be the flight was canceled. when we got there, quite a few of us -- it wasn't united, i won't say who it was -- quite a few of us were not informed of this cancellation. it had been canceled several

hours. i could have changed flights. i hope you'll have board members who understand the on demand economy, understand the diversity of the flying public and the needs and use technology in that communication to improve letting people know. in the case i was in, if i had known before hand, i might be that one, i'll stay here a little longer, adjust, let me know. also getting people when you're there in line and in that frustrating situation, all of us have our devices. it's a lot easier to do that than standing in line. oftentimes you need a person there saying come here, do this, really having that consumer servicemen at that time has we've talked about today. so i just wanted all of you to highlight some of the ways you are using technology and efforts you are making to diversify your management, diversify the boards, and having who is working in our airlines more

reflective of the flying public. >> i'll start. with regards to women in the workforce, i have five sisters and two daughters. i can tell you my focus is keen in that regard. in our organization with united, we have one of the most diverse management teams certainly in the industry if not the country. our chief technology officer is a woman or chief customer officer. my chief of staff. so we are very cognizant of that. we have two women board members. our board in total needs some work. >> how many, two out of -- >> fifteen. we have a proxy situation, oversized board. with regards to technology application that's one of the most exciting things and we don't have enough time to walk you through it. i mentioned it, the application. we've rolled out 60,000, 70,000 iphones with applications that assist -- our employees assist customers, who is flying, where they are flying, connections. now they are fog to have an

additional application or capability that allows you to solve issues right on the spot. so it's a whole broad aspect, talk about big data, personalization, some of the things in the future. i yield some time to somebody else. >> i might comment on alaska board of directors, 40% female and other twediversity on the bd as well. that sets the tone. others don't have quite that good percentage but we're working towards that because we recognize the benefits of having diversity not just in the leadership of the company but throughout the company. i mentioned in my prepared testimony but we have outfitted our customer facing group, flight attendants, customer service, mobile devices, readily available information on all our

customers and importantly our empowerment tool kit is available to customers in the moment on the device so they can address problems quickly. >> congresswoman, we all have a way to go. >> we have to do it quickly for the next two. >> southwest, for example, our cfo, our vp inflight diversity, our controller, our vp internal audit, vp communications, management, technology, and i keep going are all female. we have a very targeted activity there. not just to increase diversity but because they are the right people for the right positions. >> diversity and inclusion is a core value at american. we have a number of females on our senior leadership team, myself included. i'm proud to represent americans today. also have been focused on building diversity in our leadership team and board. to your point about technology, i wish we had more time to talk about it. we have a lot of exciting

changes coming. as i mentioned before, service recovery is one of our most important customer initiatives and that includes being better able to communicate timely and accurate information to customers particularly during disruptions and giving our employees and customers the tools in order to provide options and solve problems. so we have a number of new pieces of technology coming out this summer and i'd be glad to tell you more about them later. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i would appreciate having more along those lines, discussion on technology. >> thank you very much. >> thank you so much. to everyone here today, thank you for coming. there is i feel a very direct need to address the term overbooking. it implies lack of efficiency. you have x amount of seats and you have x amount of customers. we keep using a term that is automatically perceived as being

inefficient. i think we need to look at it from marketing, you all are in customer service. i don't want to be overbooked anywhere. when you take my reservation, i expect for you to honor that. that's just a whole marketing piece i think this industry needs to look at. you need to relabel it or call it something else. i want to know from the panel that's here, because i have found every time there is a correction, let's give an example, we validate the enormous amount of fees on luggage because of fuel costs. now we're saying, now i heard today, we're able to give lower passenger fees because we charge more for luggage. are we going to now see an increase justified by the fact that now if i take you out of a flight, i will give you up to

$10,000. can i expect a justification for increase in travel based on these new policy that you all are taunting. because to give me $10,000 for kicking me off the flight is a lot of money. i don't know too many tickets that cost $10,000. so am i now going to hear from my customers that the prices of our plane tickets have gone up as a result of this enormous response to monaco that was totally inappropriate? then the last thing i want to put, and then you can answer, i am always so frustrated by the frustrated staff, when there are delays. i've had the counter clerk be so hostile to the the public, don't ask me any more questions, i'm telling you everything i know. he or she are overwhelmed. i had an example, it was none of

you that's here, where the flight attendant stopped the line of boarding because he wanted to take the orders of the first class, their drink orders, and said would you please wait here and stretch for a minute, i need to take care of them and backed up the loading. we need to understand, and some of you seemed a little frustrated by the questions. we are customers, myself, all of us, and customer service is something job why southwest is so happy every time you're on their flight. i don't know if they give them happy pills. they are happy, come on in, so excited. some of them are so uptight. i see these flight attendants running to get on a flight because they are holding the flight for them to get there. so please, in the few minutes that's left, those are the concerns i have, and i would like some answers.

>> we as leaders of airlines we own the moral and mood of our teams. we know that and we accept that responsibility. it is our responsibility to take care of our teams, make sure they know we care about them, provide the right resources and support. >> do you recognize you need to improve? >> absolutely we recognize we need to improve, which is why we're here today. i apologize if we seem frustrated but it's my honor to come and reiterate the commitment to americans. >> i'm glad to hear that. can someone address will there be an increase as a result of this new policy. >> in fact, we think not just by this policy but the new policy put in place which really does allow our employees to have tools to use common sense to solve customer problems by leading to better customer service will help us and lead to a more profitable airline.

we don't view this as a cost or something that's going to cause us to drive ticket prices up. >> mr. mcgee. >> yes, thank you, congresswoman. there's been a lot of talk about cost today and price. but i think when we dig down into the weeds on this issue, we find there's not always a coalition between an airlines cost and the fares they charge. just last week the economist noted that jet fuel prices had fallen by half since 2014. the profit per passenger for airlines in europe is $7.84. the profit per passenger for airlines in north america is $22.40, three times more. they stated when costs fall, consumers in america fail to enjoy the benefits. so you've hit on a very key issue. we're told if we don't check a bag, we're going to see a lower fare. i didn't check a bag yesterday.

as i pointed out earlier, on my flight from the airport it was a $250 differential in seven hours. it's very hard to tell consumers they are going to see a lower fare when they do certain things and then they don't. >> thank you all. i yield back. >> thank you very much. mr. sanford is next. >> i tell my boys all the time, life is a series of course corrections. what you don't get right one day, you might get right the next. to err is human -- i would go back. it was actually church hill that said never let a good crisis go to waste. rahm emmanuel changed just one

word in that phrase, never let a serious crisis go to waste. in essence he was paraphrasing churchill. what he was getting at is government has a tendency in the wake of any disaster to react, at times to overreact. at times to overregulate, and at times to fight yesterday's battle. what may be supposedly remedied turns out yet to produce another consequence people didn't see coming in term of higher bag pricing or whatever else. i guess my follow up to get at what my colleague from georgia was getting at, given the conflict you have to work through on a daily basis, if you had to pick three regulation that is caused you either to not give some of the service customers would expect or price things differently, what would be the three regulations you

would choose to erase. >> i'm going to let scott who has been in this industry and across, but i have my own. >> not necessarily regulations but high on the list would be for our partners at tsa and the customs and border patrol to have more ability in the future and respond to some of our hard customer experiences, along tsa lines mentioned today and customs and border patrol. we will have situations where we have hours long back-up atticus thomas. >> that's a government action. my colleague's question, i want to bore back down. are there a couple things the government should do different from a regulation standpoint that would help you serve customers better. >> faa privatization. that's really one of the biggest things we could do to ultimately serve customers better. >> that's a big, broad umbrella. i want to get down in the weeds.

there are three specific small things, pint size, specific, measurable and achievable in nature that would help you better serve the customer? >> i think one would be just full fare advertising regulations, just theable to make it transparent. it includes just the taxes today. put us all on a level playing field. >> okay. that's one. >> that would be one i have on my list as well. we don't have the ability -- >> okay. that's one. >> also regulation around gds, global distribution systems and how we sell and display our products. relaxation there would be helpful. >> okay. >> sir, i would add in talked about carriage and charter and thick documents, i think, that is correct. a lot of that verbiage is driven by things that have happened in these rooms. as we move to a more streamline

approach, it would be helpful to work back and forth on how to reduce that density. >> you're a general. could you be more specific. >> y'all place a lot of stuff on us. >> what? i'm trying to get to three. >> i haven't been in business long enough to understand. >> the consumer facing rules are the ones that are the most frustrating for us because we feel like we're not adequately -- there's a number of rules within advertising where we would actually like to more clearly communicate to customers and like our partners like expedia to clearly communicate to customers. there's a host of specific rules in there. >> could you -- >> i don't know the specific, exact rules. we have a whole set, similar to what my two colleagues refer to. we have a bunch of requirements to communicate to consumers and we wind up confusing the issue. we would much prefer clear communication. >> mr. mcgee, would you see that

from a different vantage point? i'm trying to see what he just handed you, then i'll come to you, mr. mcgee. my staff does that to me, so i get it. >> revenue diversion, taxes and fees within. >> thank you, congressman. we just heard from several airlines that looking for less regulation on fares and fees and how that is translated to consumers, from our perspective, yes, we have an absolutely different perspective. the airlines are the ones imposing these ancillary fees. they say they are optional. for many people not taking a suit case is not an opposes. it's necessary. yet the transparency on getting a full and complete fare

inclusive of mandatory tacks and fees that we all have to pay and ancillary fees the airlines impose at their will. it has become more cumbersome and difficult from a consumer perspective, oath on branded websites and third party sites than it's been. >> thank you. i've gone over my time. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> i'm required to call a five-minute recess at this point. five minutes.

so you heard a brief break in house transportation committee on airline service, they expect to resume in a couple moments. we'll continue with live coverage when they resume on c-span3. at the end of the hearing, if you missed any of it, want to see it again, go to c-span3.org, search. we'll reair tonight.

they will be marking up $1.1 trillion spending bill worked out over the weekend. it's due on the house floor later this week. live coverage begins at 3:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span3. also earlier today, former house energy and commerce chair fred upton, according to the hill, told republican leadership that he will not support revised republican health care bill. he said in a local rao interview earlier today. you can read more about that on thehill.com. >> we'll go at this time to mr. nolan. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and i want to thank all the witnesses for being here and being candid and straightforward. particularly grateful for assurances that what has happened to passengers in recent weeks and months and other times when they didn't necessarily get recorded on video, we appreciate

your assurances that that will never happen again. i'm sure everybody in the country will be watching to make sure those insurances are fulfilled and we're grateful and thank you for that. i'm going to just quickly as i can relate a recent incident and ask you to respond. my colleague congressman lewis and i were at the airport a couple weeks ago on thursday. because of weather, our floit was delayed and delayed and delayed again and delayed again. nobody was able to get any opportunity to discuss with anybody on the airline any alternatives that might be made available. our distinguished acting chairman mr. duncan pointed out some years ago people in russia had to wait as many as four days to get an alternate flight.

that's exactly what happened to us here in our nation's capital. after the flight was finally canceled, again, no opportunity to talk with anybody, to get any information about anything. nobody offering compensation for hotels or food or nobody offering to put anyone on another airline. everybody was just unilaterally informed they wouldn't get a flight out until the following monday. of course, it was cherry blossom festival, hotels running 5, $600 a month -- a night. needless to say there was a lot of upset people and understandably so. mr. lewis and i were able to get a couple of tickets to a nearby city through the number of efforts including my granddaughter able to get back home. because the airline was

overbooked on every flight, there was no place in america we could fly to and catch the connecting flight to get back to minneapolis, minnesota. i would never believe that was possible. for crying out loud, we could have felony to london and back and gotten home in a timely matter. my question to each of you, and i know we've only got five minutes, what kind of policy do each of you have for compensation for people caught in circumstances. i understand weather caused initial, can we extend cause of weather to second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day? what kind of compensation do you offer? what kind of alternatives do you offer for other airlines? what kind of communications do you offer to your customers in a situation like that, which is so troubling and confusing and difficult for so many airlines

passengers. please. >> i hope that wasn't united. it probably wasn't. >> it wasn't one of the airlines represented today. >> it was minneapolis, so i guess i know who it was. >> yeah. >> so we at united, those followfollow on consolations, our policy is to take care of customers as if they are cancellations provided by us. follow on reservations that are occurring. >> would you put them on another airline. >> we put several hundred thousands people on other airlines. our folcus is taking care of th people, taking care of the customers. >> thank you, mr. kirby. >> the same, congressman. one thing i would add communication is important in those situations. we have minimum guidelines for

intervals between communication updates that we ask our staff to adhere to. we also ask captains who we know customers have deep respect for in certain situations to also provide an update. >> thank you. >> congressman, the same thing. we treat those follow on cancellations the same way. we provide vouchers for hotels and meals and those types of things. it's constanley to take care of the customer. >> likewise for us at american, as i mentioned before service recovery is one of our top priorities. i think your experience is illustrative of the importance of that. when we got into irregular operations meaning not only are we communicating with customers but providing options and providing compensation, so that's something that will be as well. >> mr. mcgee. >> thank you, congressman. your joke about flying to london and back may not have been as you think. two years ago i was on a delta air lines flight, of course, an

airline carrier, brussels, a mechanical delay. it was before, textbook. how did they handle it? a plus. same aircraft problem, same crew occurred not in brussels but in atlanta, delta's hometown. the results would have been very different. the reason that we were flying u.s. airline, the reason we were treated the way we were and it was handled so beautifully with meal vouchers, updates, accommodations was because the eu rules were in effect even airlines in the eu. when left to their own devices, unfortunately situations like yours are not as rare as we would hope. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i yield the balance of your time. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i thank everybody on the panel for your testimony. i know you've been here quite a while. it's almost over so hang in there.

i'm just thinking back to when i first started traveling back in the 80s on airlines and just how much changed since that time. that's when i highlight and ask a few questions. reservations, it's very difficult to get a human being maybe times calling airlines today whereas before it was very easy. much more to go on line for. food. used to have a decent meal, got to a snack and now nonexistent on many flights. seats, i'm 6'3", i'm not the tallest guy in the world but it is oftentimes where i can't even sit up straight in the seat. i have to stick my legs out in the aisle because the seats are so crammed together. the comfort is difficult. baggage fees, overbooking we've talked about, frequent flyer miles. there was a time when you had frequent flyer miles where you could use them and take a short flight or flight somewhere and it was a set amount. now the miles are getting less and less powerful and less and

less able to be used. flight cancellations. planes sitting on runways for hours. lack of instructions or information when people are sitting at the gates or in airplanes as to what's going on. frustration, just searching for tickets online. trying to figure what a ticket price should be. you come to a conclusion after all this. i understand what the shake-up has been in the industry over the the last several decades but it really has come to this culture commoditizing the passenger. indifferent toward the passenger at times. i looked when i was sitting here out of curiosity to see how the airlines were doing. correct me if i'm wrong, this is what i pulled up on gook. united made a profit of $2.9 billion, american $2.7 billion, southwest $2.24 billion and alaska airlines $911 million. so you're doing good. i understand there are times

when you weren't doing good. i understand that's doing business. now that you have this financial stability again, and i know the the next crisis could be around the corner, now that you do, i started thinking about the changes you announced today. let's face it and be honest with ourselves, you wouldn't be here announcing some of the changes if not for reacting to a situation. but i'm wondering if any of these airlines have taken a step back to look at what happened to the culture of service and the culture of making it a much more pleasant experience. i think one of my colleagues on the democratic side tells you basically how much of a hassle it is to fly. it's no longer pleasant to fly. there was a time when it was. it's no longer there. so do any of you ever take a look at the big picture? i don't want to hear about small programs here and there. do you take a look at involved passengers and how to make it a better experience and not wait

for instances like this to happen with united or what happened with american? do you ever stop and think and look back, okay, how can we get back to a time when there was more -- passengers were treated with more appreciation. passengers were treated with more professionalism. the overall experience was far more pleasant. i can tell you, i fly american a lot. it's a fine airline. it gets me where i need to be. it's not pleasant. you can't even be comfortable on the seat when you sit down. you're paying hundreds and hundreds for a ticket. that's difficult for me. i think that that's a larger problem. again, you're reacting. i'm asking you, don't react. take a step back and look at the larger picture. anyone wants to respond to that, i'll be happy to listen. >> congressman, first of all, thank you for using american for your travels. we appreciate that. i think that the recent incident certainly has put us in the spotlight and as i said, were the reasons we're here today. the fact of the matter is we've

been focusing on our experience since we've had the financial wherewithal to do that. as you noted we are in the last few years coming out of a time of decades of turmoil. i think what we lost during that time was while we were changing our business model in ways as you noted were not always popular for customers and really trying to survive, that was a time when other industries were forming more customer centric cultures. our customers expectations are not only formed by the experiences they have with us but also the experience with other industries. we know we have catching up to do. we're very focused on that. as we noted in the opening remarks, american is investing millions in new aircraft, products, amenities for customers, investing in our members, adding team members, growing service. alongside of it all, we have significant efforts invested across our leadership team in finding ways we can do better

for team members and customers. you have our commitment. we're grat feud to see customer satisfaction scores improving and we'll continue to work towards that goal. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, miss wilson. >> thank you. let me welcome everyone here today. i am an american airlines traveler. i travel american airlines twice per week. every monday or friday or tuesday or thursday i'm on an american airlines plane. i just want to sum up what i see happening. it seems to me as if this whole scenario is like sororities and fraternities. you have people hazing all the time. everyone who is in charge of these sororities and

fraternities know this hazing is going on. no one does anything to stop the hazing until one day it's exposed on social media. when it is exposed on social media over and over again, then panic reigns throughout the industry and the whole nation that this is what's happening on our airplanes today, and this is what's happening in the airlines. so i'm just wondering if now all of a sudden we've had these different scenarios where we see customer service just breaking down. everyone is going to be trained now. we're going to start training. what was happening prior to this incident becoming such a publici publicity phenomena? are you connected at all with

the university or someone to train your employees the day they hired, or is this something you hire and put them to work without any training, and then you wait six months until you have maybe 30 people and then you train all of them? explain to me, i would like for each of you to explain to me, especially american and united, explain to me how the training process takes place for new employees coming in. i have some real reservations about the baby with the stroller. i have four little grandchildren. whose responsibility is it to stop a lady from getting on the plane with a stroller. isn't there someone there at the door to say let us take this stroller because it can't get on

the plane? whose decision is it, and how did you make the decision? how did you make the decision this gentleman should be the one removed from the plane? and he was traveling with his wife. was she not part of the equation? you were just going to separate them? i couldn't get my arms around what was going on. i believe those are the two things that slapped me in the face from tv, so help me with this in this frat house. >> first, i just want to take the opportunity to apologize for what you saw on board the american flight from san francisco to dallas with our customer and her stroller. we did not handle that situation as it should have been handled, and we take responsibility for that. to your question of who, we should have helped her to gate check her stroller before she brought it on board. the fact of the matter is the aircraft she was boarding didn't have storage capacity for it, so

that should have been resolved before she got on the aircraft door. we're taking steps to make sure in the future we do better. to your question about training, all of our employees work with safety critical jobs, so they absolutely receive training before they start working at american. nobody starts doing their job without receiving training. our initial training for customer facing employees does include some measure of customer service training and training in how to deescalate complicated situations. we know we need to provide that training more effectively and more frequently and we're working to do that. >> thank you. i would echo the same sentiments on training with regards to specific questions with how dr. dao and his wife were selected as a couple. >> were they both ejected. >> they were both selected for deboarding. >> did she leave the plane? >> she did with dr. dao eventually.

and with regards to how they were selected, it's an automatic system that simply applies some logic to the fact that the fare you paid, how much you paid for the ticket, and your status as a mileage plus member and other dimensions, those are the two basic ones we work through. >> let me see, in the last five years, has anyone ever been ejected from your airlines for other than security or health reasons, physically, any of you. >> there are instances more often than we would care for safety and security. with regard to specific process with dr. dao and his wife, we can't remember a time when that happened. so it was an incident that -- >> what about southwest? >> i don't know specifically. my guess is very few, if any. with the exception of just

safety and security reasons, no. >> american? >> i'm not aware of anybody being physically removed from a plane ocean for a safety or security reason. >> and alaska? >> the same. >> okay. >> and thank you for flying american. >> we're getting very close to a vote. >> i thank the chair and thank the witnesses for hanging in there. i appreciate it. it looks like i'm the last one. i hope i didn't jinx us. i wanted to -- i had some other hearings going on this morning so i couldn't be here in person but i watched a lot on closed circuit tv on c-span. i felt i wanted to come down here because i think your flight attendants, i think your employees generally ought to be commended. i think that you generally do a great job. i do fly a lot in this job and doing other things.

i appreciate the attention to safety, number one, which is why a flight attendant is there. let's not forget. the attention to detail your employees generally provide. i commend united and southwest and perhaps other airlines for what they have learned from this incident that did go viral. i think the response has been appropriate, and i appreciate your leadership in that regard. i also wanted to say this is a bit of a two-way street. what happened on that united flight shouldn't have escalated to where it was. it's been acknowledged and steps have been taken. but a grown man assumedly saying when approached by law enforcement on an aircraft should abide by the request being made. i don't know that that, mr. chairman, has been said in this hearing or generally in the conversation. so i wanted to make a record of

that, because it deserves to be said. mr. mcgee, in your testimony, from what i read, you proposed to put the risk of overbooking on the air carrier. i don't think that's been discussed here yet in much detail. within 30 seconds or a minute go into more detail on that proposal. >> certainly, congressman. what we're saying is there should only be voluntary denied boarding, not involuntary denied boardings. from our perspective we don't see a downside to a passenger being offered compensation to take a later flight. i've done it myself with my son. from a passenger perspective, that's fine. but we have called today in my opening remarks i said. >> what happens in a situation, i'm not trying to be argumentative with you but respect the time so we can get on to votes and lunch and what not and bathrooms, whatever. what happens when no one

volunteers. >> compensation is raised. >> theoretically that doesn't happen? it was going to happen on the united flight? the plane doesn't move at the end of the day. >> united said offer of $10,000. statistically people 100 people offered $10,000, i have a feeling there's going to be an empty seat pretty quickly. >> i didn't know if you had a data or a fail-safe measure if you got to that point. i guess the plane just doesn't move, right? >> unfortunately a lot of this is opaque. we're still not clear talking about transparency with fares, we're still not clear, though it's been asked several times of algorithms, how people are selected. >> fair enough. mr. munoz, regarding denying passengers boarding or removing them from seats or whatever, involuntary or otherwise, what is the trend line? is this a growing line or something the industry has a handle on? >> i'm not exactly sure of the industry trends but i've watched

and monitored ours. as involuntary denied boardings year over year dropped 40% as we operate reliably and invest in best and so on. one in 23,000 that actually get affected by this. and that involuntary denied boarding is often, if not majority of the time, caused by operational issues, not oversold conversation that we got. >> do you have percentages on that? you say more often than not. i don't know if there's statistics around that or not. >> scott was looking at this. >> we don't have exact statistics but two-thirds of involuntary denied boardings come from operational. >> operational, mechanical? >> weather is the biggest. the second one is we have an aircraft downgrade, which can be because of weather or mechanical. >> aircraft downgrade meaning less seats. >> fewer seats. >> that would occur because the original plane had mechanical. >> either mechanical or has

weather in a station and hasn't made it back to where it needs to be to fly the next flight. >> again, wit they did, i thank your employees. i would be very hesitant, mr. chairman, to have this committee go down an avenue of regulating this. in that vein, i would associate with the comments former governor sanford made. i yield back. >> thank you very much. i'm going to turn the chair back to chairman schuster. i want to say i for one really appreciate what i consider to be significant actions taken by all of the airlines in regarding to these unfortunate incidents that have happened. thank you very much. chairman schuster is back. >> gentleman from oregon is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. kirby, i want to get something straight. when you were asked, you said you had films of evacuation drills. last time i'm aware of physical evaluation drill was

certification of 777 and done by aaa. your airline does not do evacuation testing on the planes. >> yes, sir, we do. >> physically? >> you load a plane and get everybody off in 90 seconds. they said three minutes. independent the standard, half the door is 90 seconds. >> we do evacuation testing in concert with faa. we actually do the testing. >> okay. that's interesting. that's not our impression, so i'd like to follow up on that. i've always wanted to watch one of these drills. so now dan reed in forbes pointed so something i think is fairly obvious that we haven't discussed here in terms of performance, and that is that everybody wants to schedule their planes to take off and land at the same time and the faa just says, sure, fine, whatever you want to do. there's no rules. for instance, i just looked, there's 1 flights scheduled at chicago o'hare at 12:15.

can 17 planes take off in one minute? >> senator, at o'hare, five parallel runways. we schedule -- call it sloping the schedule. >> what i'm getting at, what mr. reed, who is an advocate of privatization says, don't overpromise. and he says only airlines can make their planes right order, right time, reduce congestion, airport taxiways, only schedule flights and accentuate, neither delay, prolong or excessively wrong. you talk hour and a half versus radar. i again looked on flight aware and looked at planes in the air right now. they are doing climb outs, straight lines, long distances, for instance. this is one of many i saw. houston to st. francis, gps-based departure route. climbed directly to cruise altitude, straight line gps base route called q route and

descending into sfo using gps-based. what percent of your flights, main line flights, i'm not talking about united express are using gps base? >> i'm not sure, congressman. there are some. >> right. you're talking about zigzags on that. again, in looking at this, it seems to me the most frequent cause of that now is inadequate capacity. for instance, everybody wants to land about the same time, so then you have to start flying zigzags to get there on radar approach because you can't land more than one plane at a time when you've only got one runway or two planes if you've got enough separation. so i recommend the article to you. i know you're advocating privatization and to others advocating it. you really should read this article, says don't overpromise.

he's particularly critical. mr. mcgee, do you have any comments along those linebackers? right now we're hearing about customer issues and that. we're hearing about concentration of the industry and very little choice for people particularly in the 55 or so airports that are one and 150% with one airline. the question now if we give control to air traffic of the airlines, effective control, four seats on board, what do you think that means for customers and efficiencies? >> particularly heartfelt in the high density airports and busiest airports in the country. what you said is critical issue, 17 flights. another problem that hasn't been discussed, that is the outsourcing. airlines call it partnering. outsourcing of flights to

regional carriers. up until recently, i don't know if it's still on there, regional airline association on its own page posted about the fact that not only 50% of all domestic departures operated by regionals on behalf of major carriers, but in addition they boasted of the fact that most of the departures every morning between new york and washington, two of the busiest airports not just in the country but on the planet, laguardia and washington national are operated by region regionals. we have to ask ourselves, is that the best use of those slots to use smaller aircraft on high -- >> you're saying just because you've got a small aircraft and basically maybe you can follow a tiny bit more closely, a little more closely because of weight turbulence, you're taking up basically a slot with 60 people on board versus a slot with 180 people on board. >> absolutely. i'm rusty on some of these issues. a long time since i worked as an

airline dispatcher. the bottom line is as they used to say, all metal requires x amount of space between it. whether large aircraft or small aircraft. there's difference with turbulence and things like that. bottom line is, are we using, they are public resources. let's remember, not airline resources. they belong to the public. they are treated as if they were private in that domain. are we using them to the best ability, you know, in many ways. not just safety and efficiency but also cash on footprint. >> just one last observation from the bureau of transportation statistics. 81.42% on time in 2016 air carrier caused delays 5%, weather delays .5%, national aviation system delay 5% same as triggered by air carriers, security delay .03, we're doing a little better there.

aircraft arriving late. not due to the national air system canceled 1.17. so i mean, again, let's talk about the reality of what the problems are with the system. i think that was a very good point you made. if you substitute regional carriers and they need two or three planes to land the same number of people, and it's sfo or here at national, we have just used a lot of airspace and all trying to land at the same time anyway. >> i think we also want to ask, why would they do that? the response comes from the airlines that customers prefer high frequency to, you know, consolidating flights. but there's also another factor that doesn't get discussed as much, that is the competition factor. in other words if you have scares flights -- excuse me, slots at laguardia and trying to prevent competition from low

cost carriers, use more frequency out of those airports. again, these are the most high density airports. >> frequency and i would congratulate united, they brought real united to eugene and the flights actually go versus fake united express got worse where we had seven flights a day but not so dependable because they are the first thing canceled when chicago fogs in or delays whereas your main line flights aren't. so we have now three flights a day and people are much happier with three as opposed to theoretically seven with these commuter airlines. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. defazio. i appreciate our witnesses being here today. i have a couple of final questions. one, and we talked about this a little bit earlier, contracts of carriage. i think mr. sprague said your goal is to get to one page. is that like an executive summary? i can't imagine with all the

legalities, all the things that swi swirl. >> the offered by one of the committee members burks what we did commit to the last airlines is firstly acknowledging that our our's is too long. we do want it to be a usable document for our customers. getting to a much more concise summary or contract of carriage. >> i appreciate that. is my observation correct, yes or no disagree with me, part of the reason it's so long is because of the litigious soeciey we live in today, you're trying to cover everything from a to z just in case. is that a fair observation, yes or no? >> that is a fair observation. there was a reference to the eu and the legal system in the eu is drastically different than the u.s. >> very different in many places it is. >> that's a fair observation. >> yes, sir, that's correct. >> agree. >> mr. mcgee, what are your thoughts? >> well, again, i think when you

held up -- it's very visual when you held up documents of 78 pages long. >> sure. >> there's no question that there are litigation issues here. but that really doesn't speak to the fact that they're so hard for consumers to read. i have researched this and written articles for consumer reports where i've spoken to aviation attorneys. look, i'm reading a clause to you because i generally can't figure it out. i'm not an attorney. i'm going to read you a clause. and they said, not sure. not sure myself. those are attorneys that work in the aviation industry. what hope do the rest of us have, even assuming we do the due diligence and read it in the first place. so there's no question that there are issues here. >> i don't take issue. i agree, they're way too long. i just for me to fathom they can get down to one to two pages is unbelievable to me. finally -- >> i was just going to say -- actually f you don't mind, mr. chairman. you mentioned an executive summary. that may not be a bad idea in some cases to have a brief two-page thing, these are the

most frequently asked questions. >> principles. another observation i would like to make because there's been some talk -- i'm glad the focus of this hearing was on customers and what you folks are doing to make sure we treat them better, fairer, but there was some things brought up about the taking and forming an out of government not for profit corporation. it's my view that when we talk about all the congestion we see on the ground, if we make this system more efficient and drive down costs, that gives everybody more money to spend on taking care of those problems because of airport runways not having enough of them, not having the spaces or places to pull planinplanes off. that all costs money. if we have a robust, profitable industry and the government is able to drive down its costs, everybody benefits by that. so that's kind of where we're going with my proposal is let's have a sufficient system as we

can. everybody save money and also we look at the airline industry over the last -- i think warren buffett said it was in the hole last 30 years. warren buffett said the airline industry had 80 bad years. you're finally getting to a place where you're making money. so from our standpoint up here, we expect to see some of the profits driven back into the company to make sure the customer experience is better because as i said in my remarks before i left, i'm glad i got back here in time. i'm just going to reiterate them -- if you don't take this as a silver lining, if the industry doesn't sit down together collectively and figure out how to move forward in a positive way, put aside your marketplace differences where you do what you have to do, but come together because the last thing in the world you'll want is this committee and this congress to put out things out there that, as i said, will be one size fits all and it's not going to fit anybody at the end of the day. so, again, i appreciate you being here. i appreciate taking the time and we look forward to hearing from you and watching as you move

down the road and watch these things take hold. so thank you very much. with that, i ask consent the record of today's hearing remain open until such time our witnesses provided answers to any questions that may submit them in writing. unanimous consent that the record remain open for 15 days for any additional comments, information submitted by witnesses. without objection, so ordered. once again, i want to thank everybody for being here today. thank you so much. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> adjourned.

you can watch this hearing again on our website c-span.org. type house transportation committee. it will be available on the c-span networks tonight, and we will reair it in just a few moments here on c-span 3. the house rules committee will meet this afternoon. they'll be marking up the 1.1 trillion dollar government spending bill that was worked out over the weekend. it's due in the house floor later this week. we'll have live coverage of that beginning at 3:00 p.m. eastern

here on c-span 3. and president trump tweeting about the agreement this morning. the reason the plan negotiated between the republicans and democrats is that we need 60 votes in the senate, which are not there. we either elect more republican senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. our country needs a good shutdown in september to fix the mess. that from president trump earlier today. executives from united american, southwest and alaska airlines testified earlier today before the house transportation committee about customer service and some of the recent incidents involving passengers. here is a look at that hearing from the beginning.