Home | OST Filings by Number | OST Orders and Notices | OST Filings by Carrier
OST Filings by
Proceeding | OST Filings by Day | Office of Intl Aviation Filings by Carrier | Office of Intl Filings by Day
OST Docket Filings for February 27, 2003 |
Last Updated 02/27/03 08:19 PM
Applications and Renewals:
American and Iberia - Withdrawal of Application
Swiss and American - Notice of Additional Codesharing
Answers and Replies:
Alaska Airlines - Answer of American Los Angeles-Guadalajara
American - Answer of American - Los Angeles-Guadalajara
Extension of CRS Regulations - Comments of American, Sabre, United and Amadeus Global
Tokyo Narita Slots - Answers of American, DFW and UPS
Notices of Action Taken:
AmeriJet - Panama City-Miami Renewal
Japan Asia - Japan-Guam-Saipan Renewal
Notices and Orders:
Shuttle America - Order Disclaiming Jurisdiction and Confirming Oral Action
| OST-03-14542 | February 27, 2003 | Answer of American Airlines | Los Angeles-Guadalajara |
American recognizes that the Department will favor Alaska's application for year-round service over American's application for seasonal service. Accordingly, American will not prolong this proceeding by objecting to Alaska's request. However, American asks that its application for seasonal service in OST-2003-14447 be granted on a back-up basis in the event that Alaska fails to start Los Angeles-Guadalajara nonstop service by June 8, 2003, or fails to maintain such service on a year-round basis.
Counsel: Carl Nelson, 202-496-5647, carl.nelson@aa.com
| OST-03-14447 | February 27, 2003 | Reply of American Airlines Regarding Application | Los Angeles-Guadalajara |
American recognizes that the Department will favor Alaska's application for year-round service over American's application for seasonal service. Accordingly, American will not prolong this proceeding by objecting to Alaska's request in OST-2003-14542. However, American asks that its application for seasonal service be granted on a back-up basis in the event that Alaska fails to start Los Angeles-Guadalajara nonstop service by June 8, 2003, or fails to maintain such service on a year-round basis.
Counsel: American, Carl Nelson, 202-496-5647, carl.nelson@aa.com
American Airlines, Inc. & Iberia Lineas Aereas de Espana, S.A.
| OST-03-14523 | February 27, 2003 | Withdrawal of Application | Reciprocal Codesharing Services |
American Airlines, Inc. and Iberia Lineas Aereas de Espana, S.A. hereby withdraw their joint application submitted in this docket on February 13, 2003.
Counsel: American, Carl Nelson, 202-496-5647, carl.nelson@aa.com / Steptoe & Johnson, William Karas, 202-429-6223, wkaras@steptoe.com
| OST-96-1046 | Filed October 11, 2002 Issued February 27, 2002 |
Notice of Action Taken | Panama City - Miami |
Renew scheduled foreign air transportation of property and mail between Miami, Florida, and Panama City, Panama, and to combine this authority with its existing authority to serve points in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America. Amend this authority to permit Amerijet to serve Panama City through Ft. Lauderdale as well as Miami.
Amerijet was granted Ft. Lauderdale-Panama City exemption authority in Docket OST-98-3383. Amerijet states that it would be more convenient administratively to recognize all of Amerijet's U.S. terminal points for its Panama authority in Docket OST-96-1046 and eliminate its Panama authority in Docket OST-98-3383.
By: Paul Gretch
Extension of Computer Reservation Systems (CRS) Regulations
| OST-03-14484 | February 27, 2003 | Comments of Amadeus Global Travel Distribution | Extension of Expiration Date through January 31, 2004 |
The travel distribution community requires and deserves predictability as to the "rules of road" in this area. The proposed extension will allow for such predictability while new rules are being formulated. Further, continuation of the current rules will ensure (as any new regulatory approach should ensure) that all systems continue to be treated on an equal footing -- those which are owned in whole or part by airlines, and those which have commercial and marketing relations with airlines. In addition, as the Department has also recognized, it must regulate consistent with obligations undertaken by the United States in international agreements, including provisions in such agreements that specifically and extensively address CRS obligations. Maintaining the existing rules in place, at least during the pendency of the CRS rulemaking proceeding, will ensure continued compliance with those agreements until either the agreements are modified or some alternative compliant regulatory approach is adopted.
Counsel: Steptoe & Johnson, David Coburn, 202-429-8063
| OST-03-14484 | February 27, 2003 | Comments of American Airlines | Extension of Expiration Date through January 31, 2004 |
Given these dynamic circumstances, it is not surprising that Sabre, Galileo, and Amadeus support an extension until January 2004. Delay benefits the CRSs, which have garnered supracompetitive profits under a regulatory regime that has restricted airline choices and bargaining power. But delay is no longer a luxury that the airlines can afford. American recognizes that an extension of the existing CRS regulations until 2004 would not preclude the Department from revising or sunsetting these rules at an earlier date. However, the propensity of human beings everywhere is to take all the time available to them. Having a realistic, but earlier, sunset date for the existing regulations will help ensure that the Department's rulemaking, which has been open since 1997, does not take any longer than is absolutely necessary.
American respectfully suggests that the Department establish a sunset date of August 31, 2003. This date will provide the Department with more than five months to consider the comments filed on March 16, and more than three months to consider the reply comments filed on May 16. Any longer period of time would simply extend the existing regulations which most commentators, and the NPRM itself, have acknowledged are in desperate need of reform.Counsel: American, Carl Nelson, 202-496-5647, carl.nelson@aa.com
| OST-03-14484 | February 27, 2003 | Comments of Sabre | Extension of Expiration Date through January 31, 2004 |
The Department’s proposed nine-month extension of the CRS Rules after the reply date (January 31, 2004) will afford it sufficient time to digest the parties’ comments and to incorporate the information gained from a Fact Hearing, should Sabre’s petition be granted. The Department should be prepared by that time to issue its Final Rule determining whether the CRS Rules should abandoned in their entirety, or whether, as a transitional matter, it is desirable to extend the most pro-consumer aspects of the rules for an appropriate further period, and to take other appropriate actions, particularly to address the original basis and purpose of the CAB’s CRS Rule - - the ability and incentive of airline-owned CRSs to exercise market power and unfairly skew travel agents or consumers to their systems/sites, to the detriment of travel agents, new entrants, and consumers.
Counsel: Sabre and Pillsbury Winthrop, Kenneth Quinn, 202-775-9800, kquinn@pillsburywinthrop.com
| OST-03-14484 | February 27, 2003 | Comments of United Air Lines | Extension of Expiration Date through January 31, 2004 |
When the rules were adopted in 1984, all but one of the CRS systems in use were owned by individual airlines and the rules were designed to ensure that competing carriers could gain access to these systems on nondiscriminatory terms. Today, none of the systems is owned by an individual airline. As a result, the core objective of the CRS rules -- to ensure that each air carrier has access to key information and ticketing systems owned and controlled by one of its horizontal competitors -- has been rendered moot as individual airlines no longer control competitors' access to these systems. One unintended consequence of this change in circumstances, however, is that rules originally designed to promote competition now serve primarily to insulate the new owners of the CRS networks from competitive market forces.
The CRS regulations already have been extended for a considerably longer period of time than they were originally intended to be in effect, and there is no justification for extending them any further. The nondiscriminatory booking fee and mandatory participation rules, in particular, have served no competitive purpose for many years; instead, they serve merely to insulate CRS vendors from market forces and artificially inflate distribution costs for financially strapped carriers. These rules should be allowed to sunset on March 31, 2003, as scheduled, so that the public interest will not be harmed any more than it already has been due to the ill-advised extensions that the Department has implemented in the past.
Counsel: United and Wilmer Cutler, Bruce Rabinovitz, 202-663-6960, bruce.rabinovitz@wilmer.com
| OST-99-5111 | Filed February 5, 2003 Issued February 27, 2003 |
Notice of Action Taken | Japan-Guam-Saipan |
Renew exemption from 49 U.S.C. § 41301 to engage in scheduled foreign air transportation of persons, property and mail between Nagoya, Japan, and Guam and Saipan.
By: Paul Gretch
| Order 03-2-23 OST-03-14554 |
Issued February 27, 2003 Served February 27, 2003 |
Order Disclaiming Jurisdiction and Confirming Oral Action | Transfer of Operating Authority |
Shuttle America states that the transfer of operating authority is necessary to complete an intracorporate reorganization for business and tax purposes and will involve no change in management, ownership, control, operations, financial condition, or citizenship of the carrier. Under the reorganization, Shuttle America’s parent holding company (Shuttle Acquisition LLC) established a newly formed Indiana corporation into which Shuttle America will be merged, and the surviving company will also be called Shuttle America Corporation. The company has requested that the Department disclaim jurisdiction over this reorganization no later than February 27, 2003.
By: Randall Bennett
Swiss International Air Lines, Ltd. d/b/a Swiss and American Airlines, Inc.
| OST-02-12001 | December 16, 2002 | Notice of Swiss International Air Lines of Additional Codesharing Services | Statements of Authorization (Blanket Codesharing) and Related Exemption Authority |
Hereby provides notice of additional codeshare services to be operated under its codeshare arrangement with American Airlines, Inc. Swiss will display American's "AA" designator code on flights operated by Swiss between Zurich (ZRH) and Lisbon (LIS) and Porto (OPO), Portugal.
Counsel: Condon Forsyth, Thomas Whalen, 202 289-0500
U.S.-Tokyo Air Services (Slots at Narita Airport)
| OST-03-14489 | February 27, 2003 | Answer of American Airlines | U.S.-Tokyo Air Services (Slots at Narita Airport) |
| Exhibits 1-3: Frequency/Market Share - 2002/2001 v 2003 Frequencies | |||
| Service List |
The UPS request should be dismissed. UPS already has so many Narita slots that, by its own admission, it is now leasing at least eicrht of them to Nippon Cargo Airlines Thus, UPS is funding foreign-flag operations with its own slots while at the same time seeking to dip into the U.S. pool for an award in this proceeding. In these circumstances, it would be flatly contrary to the public interest for the Department to entertain the UPS request. Given the decision by UPS to lease out slots it already holds to a foreign-flag carrier, the Department need not consider the UPS request any further.
American is ready, willing, and able to increase combination service to Tokyo from the Dallas/Ft. Worth gateway (which serves the entire southern catchment area of the U.S.) to replace some of the lost capacity, and to help preserve competition against the dominant incumbent carriers.
The Department should be particularly concerned about facilitating the re-building of U.S. carrier (particularly nonincumbent U.S. carrier) combination service to Japan. It is highly unfortunate that at the very time when new slots finally became available at Narita upon the opening of Runway B in April 2002, combination carriers were reeling from the effects of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and were unable to take advantage of the expansion opportunity. As the industry recovers, slot constraints at Narita, rather than frequency caps under the U.S.-Japan bilateral agreement, will once again be the primary limiting factor. The Department should not miss the opportunity presented in this proceeding to help American, a non-incumbent carrier, round out a second daily service from its largest hub at Dallas/Ft. Worth.Counsel: Carl Nelson, 202-496-5647, carl.nelson@aa.com
| OST-03-14489 | February 27, 2003 | Answer of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport | U.S.-Tokyo Air Services (Slots at Narita Airport) |
Without denigrating UPS's proposal, clearly use of these valuable Narita slots for Third/Fourth Freedom U.S.-Japan service is a superior public use than UPS's planned use for increased infra-Asia flights. An additional weekly Narita-Taipei flight, if that is what UPS contemplates, is inferior to the two additional DFW-Narita flights proposed by American for these newly-available Narita slots. For more reasons, DFW Airports urges that the Federal Express slots be awarded to American for additional DFW-Narita nonstop flights.
Counsel: Silverberg & Goldman, Michael Goldman
| OST-03-14489 | February 27, 2003 | Answer of United Parcel Service | U.S.-Tokyo Air Services (Slots at Narita Airport) |
There is a real question raised by the timing of American's application as to whether it has any real need for these two slots. American announced that it was starting two additional daily flights to Tokyo the next day after it applied for the slots here. The timing of these events suggests either that American was supremely confident in its chances to prevail in this proceeding (even before it saw a competing application) or that it already had access to the necessary slots to start the operation. In fact, American is likely to have access to the vast cache of Narita Runway A slots held by its close code share partner, Japan Airlines, with whom it will be code-sharing on the services at issue here. Given the dramatic imbalance in the availability of slots to UPS, it hardly seems reasonable to award the two slots at issue here to a carrier with apparent access to scores of slots from its code share partner.
If there is going to be a competitive U.S. all-cargo carrier industry in the 21st century, UPS must be freed of these bilateral constraints and empowered to compete on a level playing field with Federal Express. No other U.S. carrier is going to be able to compete with Federal Express. Only UPS has the breadth and scope of operations, the aircraft fleet, the employee base, the surface transportation infrastructure, the financial strength, etc. to be able to compete with Federal Express. UPS urges the Department to give the highest priority to obtaining additional rights from the Japanese.
Counsel: UPS and Kelley Drye, David Vaughan202-955-9864, dvaughan@kelleydrye.com
Home | OST Filings by Number | OST Orders and Notices | OST Filings by Carrier
OST Filings by
Proceeding | OST Filings by Day | Office of Intl Aviation Filings by Carrier | Office of Intl Filings by Day