Discussion about a shutdown again. Why would we have a shutdown in september . If the appropriations process is still not working by september, that is a bad thing for the country. One of the things that we like as members of the government is that the proper functioning of the appropriations process is critical to the constitutional function of the government. The house and senate are supposed to use the power of the purse. When they dont do appropriations bills, our constituents voices are not heard. We hope that comes back as part of the process. We are pleased with the deal today. Thank you very much. Thank you for letting me have a shout out to my wife. Can we identify the location of that wall exactly . Sean sean. Really . No one leave. [chatter] they are not coming back . [chatter] announcer cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. This morning, republican congressman Chris Stewart of utah discusses tensions with north korea to then virginia democratic representative Gerald Connolly on the future of health care and market polyp, senior White House Correspondent for bloomberg talks about president trumps approach to wall street regulation. Watch cspans washington journal live this morning at 7 00 eastern. Join the discussion. Munoz airlines ceo oscar and other industry executives testified at a house transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing on Customer Service concerns following recent incidents on domestic flights. As is about threeandahalf hours. [gavel] the committee will come to order. To order. I, first, want to recognize mr. Lobiondo for a motion. Pursuant to rule 1a1 on transportation infrastructure i move that the chairman be authorized to declare a recess during todays hearing. Questions to the motion and all those in favor say aye. All those opposed say nay. The ayes have it and the motion is agreed to. I, first, want to start with thanking all of the witnesses for being here today that accepted our invitation to testify on this oversight hearing on the airline Customer Service and we invited all of the major carriers to participate and you are the very few to be here with us to seek answers regarding the treatment of passengers in the Airline Industry. Air travel can be stressful and as many of us on this knows that we are passengers and many here are passengers on a twice a week basis flying all over the country, but anyone who flies knows just getting on the plane can be stressful and getting to the airport, checking in and getting to the gate on time can rattle the most seasoned travel. The whole thing starts with the purchase of a tick pet. There is the expectation that theyll be treated fairly and with respect with the airlines and the employees. There is also an expectation that the ticket will be honored and the airline will get them to the destination safely. I used to be in business, in fact, i was in business for 20 years and one of the fundamental rules of any successful business is that the customer comes first, and as i said, i spent 20 years face to face in the Retail Business with customers, so i know firsthand how our customers are supposed to be treated if you want to be a successful business. So theres something clearly broken when you see passengers being treated the way some of you have been treated in recent flights. Regardless of the contractual relationship between the airline and ticket holder, its common dyessency and common sense that you dont treat a person that way, let alone a paying customer. As i mentioned, members of congress fly a lot so many of our constituents and those watching online, weve all been in a situation where we all just want to get to our seat, get in the air and get home as quickly as possible. But imagine almost seven hours into a long flight and you get physically ripped out of a seat you paid for and thrown off the plane and get your teeth knocked out or getting your infant child on the site and yanks a stroller out of the way and nearly hits your baby. These are recent examples of serious disturbing Customer Service breakdowns. I expect well hear more examples when the members of this committee get their opportunities to question the witnesses. There will be tough questions today and make no mistake about it you owe the public and this committee answers. Hundreds of millions of people fly in this country every year and 2 Million People will fly today or something close to 2 million and theyre tired of being treated inappropriately and without courtesy. Something is broken and the obvious divide between passengers and the Airlines Need to be addressed and thats why we are here today. We want to hear what the breakdown and the response to make sure that it doesnt happen again. To learn about these Customer Service approximately sees, what are you doing to improve the Service Experience . What needs to be done like the most recent that may never happen again. This wont be a pleasant hearing for the witnesses today, but i want it to be constructive and i want to stress that. This needs to be constructive and we need to come out of here with a better understanding from this committee on how the Airlines Operate and what a better understanding of what the response of the Airline Industry will do to change to make sure that the steps are taken to improve Customer Service. This is and i know that some have already and mr. Munoz has been on tv and i watched them and others have already made changes to the way they operate, its a positive first step, but its only a first step. This committee and congress do not want half measures or temporary fixes. This issue is not going away. We will hold you accountable and we expect real results. As a general rule i dont believe in overburdening our industries that are successfully deregulated and i shouldnt need to remind you that congress will not hesitate to act whenever necessary to ensure that our customers are treated with the respect that we deserve. If we dont see meaningful results the next time this Committee Meets to address the issue i can assure you you wont like the outcome. I want this to be a constructive meeting today and i appreciate the witnesses being here today to take the tough questions. As i said, its going to be a tough, tough hearing today and with that, i would like to recognize the Ranking Member mr. Defazio for his statement. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I appreciate you holding this hearing. A number of us asked for a hearing after the highly publicized hearing on united and i am pleased we are here today for the hearing and not pleased for the circumstances. Id say that todays hearing is really the culmination of the deterioration over a number of years. I mean, just think back to last summer, hundreds of thousands of people were stranded and displaced if are days because of major computer meltdowns at two airlines including southwest who is represented here today. Airplanes and youre very good at filling them up, but they often dont have a single empty seat and theyre getting smaller and closer together and the highprofile and lowprofile seats are great and you can jam more people into the cabin, but its certainly testing the patience of the passengers and testing the patience of the flight crew. Just last month we saw an American Airlines Flight Attendant trying to go at a customer in a physical fight. Tempers are short everywhere and then, of course, dr. Dao, and that incident, and i know, mr. Munoz, that you have apologized and i am interested in what you will tell us her today about why this will never happen again and how things are going to improve. My first term in congress, i actually introduced an Airline Passenger equity act to keep airlines accountable to their passengers. Among other things, it would have required them to report information regarding flight delays, cancellations, reroutings, luggage status, performance and passengers. Some of the provisions were included in the passenger act of 87, but 30 years later, i think theres a lot of room for improvement and so i think were here today to look and hear about where we could prod, push or regulate or legislate to get Better Service for passengers. Today Ranking Member larson and i are requesting a gao study of what more congress and the d. O. T. Can do to remedy whats gone wrong with the airline system. Weve seen massive consolidation. We have basically four carriers and 80 of the market and you know, less than a decade ago we had much more diversity and much less concentration and factors are near a 15year high and denied boarding for 15,000 passengers and a lot of people just dont have a choice anymore, and we adhere that the big problems are air Traffic Control, but actually, its 60 of delays were caused by factors within the airlines control and there was a recent article in forbes by an advocate of privatization and air Traffic Control said you cant take 15 or 20 planes off in a oneminute period from any airport and no matter what you have is a system, yet airlines insist on scheduling it that way and in part, they are at fault in addition to the meltdowns of the reservation systems and their dispatch systems and other things. The socalled passengers passengers rights when they are told to look at your contract of carriage, the contracts of carriage are, i would say, deliberately obscured in terms of legalese. Some airlines, this is which one is this . These are the contracts of carriage and some are 37,000 words and 67 pages long, and i would say very few passengers have any idea of what their rights are, and i had a staff member last weekend after we were talking about this decided to printout the contract of carriage for the airline she was traveling on and delay of the control of the airline which required you to get compensated and how many people have the patience to do that . We need simple language disclosure and transparency in these contracts of carriage. That, in part, was what led to the incident with united was the limitations in the policies. Representative larsen and i have introduced hr 1420, know before you fly act two months ago, and it would require that the airlines provide information to the public and baggage fees and assisting passengers during widespread disruptions. As weve seen the concentration grow for a long time, the airlines neglected their own i. T. Infrastructure. We had those incidents last summer with dispatch and with ticketing, and that really shows to me that this is all being driven by the bottom line and not by Customer Service and weve got to get some Customer Service back in there and customer rights in there and now were being pressured by the airlines to privatize the air Traffic Control system and put them in effective control of the governing board. I think the airline needs to focus getting its house in order instead of extending the reach to control our skies. The airlines lack of focus on the traveling public and the failure tors reflect i. T. Infrastructure add to the many reasons i will continue to oppose privatization and with that, mr. Chairman, i thank you for the time and look forward to the testimony. I thank the gentleman and now recognize subcommittee chairman lobiondo for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Like you, i was deeply troubled by the events last month where a paying passenger was forced from his seat and we are here today to ensure that this never happens again and hear how that will take place so it never happens again. Flying is stressful. Thats just the simple truth and passengers are stressed and waited at a crowded gate for the delayed flight or trying to make a connecting flight when the weather is not cooperating or spending an exhausting day flying with Young Children. Unfortunately, there are examples where Airline Employees make an already stressful situation even more unpleasant and in some cases, impossible and those situations need to be singled out, addressed and talked about how theyll be solved in the future. There are also daily instances where Flight Attendants take action on their own to improve the flying experience, go above and beyond as well as gate attendants and pilots. These incidents and these situations need to be recognized, but the recent upsetting incidents were absolutely avoidable. Airlines need to clearly communicate their policies and use good, oldfashioned common sense when applying those policies especially during difficult situations. Today we will hear what actions the airlines are taking to ensure the passengers receive the best Customer Service possible and i look forward to a productive discussion. Id like to hear what the airlines are doing to uphold the commitments to the passengers and ensure that the paying customers are treated in a fair and respectful manner. It is this commitss responsibility to make sure the Airlines Follow through on these commitment ands we will continue our efforts to ensure that positive changes made as a result to recent Customer Service debacles are not just the temporary response to the media spotlight. I want to thank the witnesses for attending today and look forward to hearing the testimony. I yield back. Gentlemen . Now recognize subcommittee member larson. Thank you, chairman schuster for holding todays hearing. I dont want to belabor all of the points and just a few of them so i will be brief. I want to make clear to you and all of the other airlines at the table and those who are not here and what happened on United Express cant happen again. We are here to discuss what went wrong and how it can be prevented from happening again. What happened was the Airline Policy failures and failures that the company took steps to recognize last week. In truth, these problems are generally not specific to united, several of the airlines have recognized room for improvements in the overbooking and other policies and have announced changes in the reese eve recent weeks and theyre enhanced focus on the paying customer Going Forward and better training and empowerment of the front line employees and have their interactions with passengers and in the same spirit this morning, Ranking Member defazio and i recognize that the gao dive deeper into the Consumer Protection for Airline Passengers and understanding current protections and identifying any gaps will be critical as we develop meaningful improvements for the flying public. Ranking member defazio and i address two surefire ways to address two sure fire ways to ruin someones flight. Unexpected fees and electee delays. The know before you fly act remains trance parents when it comes to baggage fees and inform passengers at the time of the Ticket Purchase what they will and will not do for passengers in the event of of a widespread Computer Network failure and i would also like to note that Consumer Protection must recognize the improvement travel for persons with disabilities and the shortterm aviation extension bill included my Provision Requiring the d. O. T. To move forward with a longdelayed rule making updating standards for the lavatory access for passengers with disabilities. We almost continue to advocate for the rights and protections like these for all travelers. So to you, they may be your customers. To us, they are constituents, deserving of the oversight and questions that we will ask today. So with that, i look forward to todays panel and will to the forthcoming report and yield the remainder of my time. Thank you. I thank the gentleman. I would like to welcome our panel of witnesses and mr. Oscar munoz who is the chief executive officer of United Airlines and hes accompanied by mr. Scott kirby, the president of United Airlines. Mr. Joseph sprague, Senior Vice President for external relations for Alaska Airlines and mr. Bob jordan and executive Vice President and chief commercial officer of Southwest Airlines, and Senior Vice President of Customer Experience for American Airlines and mr. William j. Mcgee and aviation Consumers Union. I look forward to hearing your testimony and to working with you in the coming months and i ask that our witnesses full stapts be included in the record and without objection, so ordered. Since your written testimony has been made part of the the committee asked that you would limit your oral testimony to five minutes and with that, mr. Munoz, you may proceed. Microphone. Thank you, chairman schuster. And you might want to pull it a little closer to you. Thank you, sir. Better . Yes, sir. Thank you, and Ranking Member defazio, thank you as well as all members of the committee. We thank you for the opportunity to address the committee on this as equally important matter to us as you said, my name is oscar munoz, i am the ceo of United Airlines and with me is our president , scott kirby. The reason im sitting here today could you pull the mike a little bit closer to you . Will it move . The whole thing should move. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks. The reason im sitting here today is because on april 9, we had a serious breach of public trust. Id like to, again, apologize to dr. Dao, to his family, to every person on that flight 3411 and of course to all our customers and employees worldwide. Further, im personally sorry for the fact that my Immediate Response and the response of our airline was inadequate to that moment. No customer, no individual should ever be treated the way mr. Dao was, ever, and we understand that. For the last three weeks, i have spent literally every single day thinking about how we got to this point, what chain of events culminates in the injury of a customer and the loss of trust in so many more. And so, last week, on april 27, we delivered on our promise to release an analysis of sorts about what happened, where we fell short, and the actions we need to take to change the Customer Experience at united at all of you have so wonderfully articulated. From our perspective, there were four there were many failures but there were four main failures that we outline in this report. First, we called on Law Enforcement when safety or security did not exist. That should never happen. Period. Second, we rebooked crew at the very last minute. We created a situation at our own doing that we should have never done. And third, we didnt offer enough compensation or enough incentive or any options for those customers to give up a seat and therefore, and perhaps the largest failure, our employees did not have the authority to do what was right or to use, frankly, their common sense as some of you outlined, and in that moment, for our customers and our company, we failed. And so, as ceo, at the end of the day, that is on me, and this has to be a turning point for the 87,000 people and professionals here at united and it is my mission to make sure that we make the changes needed to provide our customers with the highest level of service that you come to expect, reliability but also a deeper sense of respect and trust and dignity. Our report announced several immediate and some longterm changes that we will, at first, prevent completely prevent an issue like this from ever happening again, and second, improve the overall united experience, not just today but into the future. For example, unless safety or security is an issue, we will never again ask a customer to give up their seat once theyre on board. Simple common sense. Or ask Law Enforcement to remove a customer from a flight. Second, weve already taken, as we constantly do, a relook and a reevaluation of our overbooking policies, although that wasnt a factor, necessarily, in this case. It is something that we chose to reevaluate and so we have reduced it and if faced with an overbook situation, which will indeed occur in certain instances for many, many factors, we will identify volunteers earlier when we can and more importantly offer incentives up to 10,000 because again, common sense says that you cant stop at a number. You have to give them something more. And even more importantly, offer them options for travel on top of that and thats the combination of things that we do. And of course were not going to move our own crew, our own folks around unless schedule those 60 minutes before departure so we dont have the same situation that happened. And then, as an added, additional policy review that really had nothing to do with a particular incident, weve eliminated the red tape around permanently lost bags by instituting a no questions asked 1,500 reimbursement for permanently lost luggage and later this year, we will roll out an app on our phones that will give front line employees the ability to compensate customers proactively when Service Disruptions occur. If we break it, its incumbent upon us to fix it and thats the intent of the work that were doing. So these changes are just a start. We understand that. I also know we need to do a better job of solving problems in the moment and making travel smoother and easier for our customers when challenges arise, and challenges often arise, some beyond our control, some well within our control, but its incumbent upon us to solve those as best as possible. When i became ceo 18 months ago, i promised we would make united the best airline, not only for our customers to fly but for our employees to work with. I said it because i believe in this company, a company thats been in business since the earliest days of aviation. Thats almost a century of flying. In fact, at this very moment, there are 600 to 700 united planes in the air carrying hundreds of thousands of people all over the world and before the day is done, we will take off and land almost 4500 times. And by the end of this year, we will carry 86 Million People to 53 countries around the globe. It has become routine to be in washington today and in china tomorrow. Our united team, along with many of us in the industry, have truly made that extraordinary feat of moving around the world. Weve made it ordinary and routine, and we had a horrible failure three weeks ago. It is not who we are. It is not this company. And frankly, its not that industry. We have many, many successes, and its important to note that too. But we are here to talk, to discuss certain issues that wont happen again, so we will work incredibly hard to reearn, not your business necessarily, but your trust because thats the most important thing that we have for our customers all around the world. And more importantly, as weve proven over the last couple weeks, our actions will speak longer than our words. We will do better. And so i thank you, and scott and i look forward to answering any questions you may have. Thank you, sir. Thank you, mr. Munoz. Mr. Spraig. Good morning, chairman schuster, Ranking Member defazio, Ranking Member larson, and members of the committee. My name is joe spraig and i am Senior Vice President of external relations for Alaska Airlines. Alaska airlines is the fifth largest u. S. Airline. We have a work force of 19,000 employees, 280 aircraft and 1200 daily departures. While we have grown considerably over the last ten years, we are still small by airline standards. The four Largest Airlines represent 85 of the u. S. Domestic capacity, while alaska is just 7 . We fill a niche role in the industry. While we are an 85yearold company, we have a lowcost, lowfare business model, yet offer a Premium Service product to our guests. We know this hearing is driven by a desire to explore u. S. Airline Customer Service policies in light of certain recent incidents. This has been a tough few weeks for the Airline Industry, and the team at alaska acknowledges our colleagues at united and other airlines for their policy changes and other efforts to quickly respond to these situations. For our part, alaska is actively reviewing sensitive customer policies such as overbooking and it is our intention to further improve the experience for our guests. Alaskas relative small size requires us to have a laserlike focus on Customer Service as we compete every day for each of our guests. Our stated purpose is creating an Airline People love. Which we view as an ongoing process of improvement. We are continuously implementing Service Enhancements to improve our guests inflight experience, including the recent launching of premium class, the enhancing of Inflight Entertainment and Connectivity Options and upgrading our food and beverage service. However, it is the Caring Service our people deliver that is key to us winning guests along with any accolades we may receive. And our formal Company Value of being kindhearted serves as an important guide. We have been humbled to receive recognition for our Customer Service, including receiving the jd power award for highest in Customer Satisfaction for nine years in a row as well as just recently earning the number one ranking in the annual Airline Quality rating. While we are proud of these accomplishments, we know the strong competition we face requires us to constantly up our game. The Airline Business is not only highly competitive but also extremely complex. This means comprehensive policies and procedures are necessary. At Alaska Airlines, we also have a focus on empowering our employees to use their judgment to make exceptions to policies and procedures to ensure our guests have the most positive experience possible. Our smaller size gives us the ability to be somewhat nimble in this area. All of alaskas employees have attended a dayandahalf long Training Session called, beyond service. Which is specifically designed to give them the tools they need to execute on our high service standards. This training is refreshed annually and incorporated into new hire training courses. In addition, all our customerfacing employees are given what we call an empowerment tool kit, enabling them to provide additional compensation, including miles or discounts on the spot to resolve Customer Service issues. Our airport Customer Service agents have recently been outfitted with mobile devices to better assist customers, and our empowerment tool kit is a key app on these devices. One area where sound policies and good judgment is certainly needed is in the denied boarding environment. At Alaska Airlines, denied boarding events are very rare. In 2016, only 0. 4 guests per 10,000 boarded were faced with an involuntary denied boarding. A rate of just 0. 004 . While this positions us as one of the better performers in this area, we believe even this is too high. We are actively looking at our policies to see what we can do to bring this number down further. For example, in a denied boarding situation, we are updating our policies to make it explicit that our Customer Service agents are empowered to do the right thing for our guests, including having discretion over compensation with the overriding goal to provide the incentives needed so as not to adversely impact our guests. At Alaska Airlines, we view the Airline Business as fundamentally a people business. If we have angry customers, no one wins. This is not to say that mistakes and anomalies do not sometimes arise and every airline is vulnerable to that, including us. But it has been our experience that such mistakes become lessons that carriers use to improve and where necessary implement changes to policies and procedures affecting customers. I believe this is on display with the airlines represented here today. Thank you for the opportunity to present Alaska Airlines views and i would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you very much, mr. Sprague. Mr. Jordan, you may proceed. Thank you. And good morning, chairman schuster. Congressman defazio and the other members of the committee, my name is bob jordan. Im the chief commercial officer at Southwest Airlines and i have been there nearly 30 years. A lot of that time, ive had the chance to work on the Customer Experience so hopefully i can be helpful today. Yall know the history of Southwest Airlines, we started in 1971 serving the texas triangle, dallas, houston, and austin, and weve grown to be the largest domestic carrier in the u. S. Today serving over 120 million customers a year. We have about 54,000 southwest warriors. We have an unblemished history with our employees, which is a 46year record of new furloughs, no layoffs and i think what im actually most applaud proud of we have for 43 years provided Profit Sharing for our employees which includes a 586 million Profit Sharing payment to our employees here in this past year. One of the basic principles of Southwest Airlines comes from our founder, herb, who many of you know, and its pretty simple. If you treat your employees right, they will, in turn, treat your customers right. Its also important to know that while this hearing is about Customer Service, our employees, particularly at the airports, have very tough jobs and its critical not just to theyre critical not just providing Customer Service, but to providing a safe and reliable operation every single day. And our another key principle at southwest is our purpose statement, which is pretty basic as well. Its to connect people to what is important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and lowcost air travel. And weve invested in that a lot in the last couple of years, and i think made improvements and one of those Big Investments is a very intense program around hospitality and training our employees on hospitality and generally just how to be more civil with each other and how to be more civil with our customers. But at the same time, i appreciate the fact that our company is not perfect, and we make mistakes. Theres always room for improvement. And as herb likes to say, and a lot of you know herb, please never rest on your laurels, because if you do, you will simply get a thorn up your ass. So, with that in mind, and with the need to constantly make improvements, weve announced that beginning may 8, southwest will no longer overbook flights. That decision is the result of a bunch of factors, some of those are unique to Southwest Airlines, and ill just tell you what those are very quickly. First, compared to others, we have historically had a comparably high noshow rate. Thats really because we have very flexible policies. We allow customers to change their flights, cancel their flights, without a fee. And so you have more noshows. That noshow rate has come down considerably over the years, though, as we have had better improvements in technology and then second, we made a change where we simply asked customers who are not going to travel to please call and cancel that flight before they board the aircraft. They can cancel as late as boarding and then they receive the ability just to reuse those funds without any kind of change or fee. Second, we are conducting a major upgrade to our reservation system, which is the largest system that any carrier uses. And the final components of that go into place on may 9. Its by far the most ambitious technical project we have ever undertaken at Southwest Airlines, and the implementation of that new reservation system gives us better data and better forecasting techniques so we can basically basically, we can predict better who is going to show up for a flight. And finally, i will be honest. While weve been looking at this issue for many years, the recent events related to overbooking did cause us to stop and pause and take a look at this again. It just gave us another reason to review and another reason to go ahead and move forward with this change today, and simply put, the discontinuing the practice of overbooking is completely consistent with our other customerfriendly policies like bags fly free, no change fees, no cancel fees, points that never expire, award seats on every single flight every single day so that we think it fits perfectly with our brand. Now, it is important to note that we will still have oversells on a very small number of flights on occasion for operational reasons. Weather, you have weight and balance restrictions. We may have a down gauge or an aircraft that was 175 seats gets downgraded to an aircraft thats 143 seats. But we expect those to be very rare, and again, we will no longer overbook as part of the selling process. And most importantly to note, i expect that our denied boardings to go down by 80 as a result of this policy change. And today, denied boardings are very small. They are about 0. 01 of every passenger that flies Southwest Airlines is affected by a denied boarding and again, i expect that number to go down by 80 as a result of that policy change. So, in conclusion, i wanted to thank you for inviting us here today and i would be happy to take questions as well. So, thank you so much. Thank you very much, mr. Jordan. With that, ms. Philipovich, you may proceed. Good morning, mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee. My name is carrie philipovich and i am Senior Vice President of Customer Experience at American Airlinesment thank you for inviting me to talk with you today about American Airlines focus on improving Customer Service. American airlines is a Global Airline operating nearly 7,000 daily flights to 350 destinations in 50 countries. Our mission is to validate the trust placed in us by our customers, team members, and other stakeholders. Theres no question that travel can be stressful and disruptions will occur. When they do, we first deliver a resolution to our customers, we commit to finding the root cause, and we incorporate those learnings quickly. It is this process that leads to Continuous Improvement at American Airlines. We work in a business that relies on people serving people, and with 120,000 team members who are spread around the globe, it will be difficult to avoid inconsistencies and occasionally falling short. On april 21, an incident occurred on an american flight from San Francisco to dallas ft. Worth that involved one of our team members and a customer traveling with small children. Clearly, what happened was wrong. And we promptly apologized to the customers involved. Our immediate focus was on ensuring our customer and her children were cared for during the remainder of their trip. We issued a prompt public apology and reinforced that this incident did not reflect the values of our company and team members or how we care for our customers. We removed the team member in question from service to further investigate the situation. Situations like this are an outlier, but it is important for american to take responsibility when we dont handle things well and we accept that responsibility completely. Recent incidents have been interpreted by some as evidence that Customer Service is broken in the Airline Industry. Theres no question that we can do better, but we are making progress. Overall, Airline Customer satisfaction increased in 2016, reaching an alltime high in the jd power Airline Ratings and tying the record in the 2016 american Customer Satisfaction index travel report. In fact, industry ratings in both reports have improved each year since 2012. We have been hard at work to enhance our customers experience and were seeing the results of our Front Line Team members hard work to improve the reliability of our operation. American delivered our best ever performance this year for mainline flights departing on time, arriving on time, and our lowest rates of mishandled baggage. Running a reliable operation is the foundation for delivering the experience that our customers deserve. Today, the u. S. Airline industry is stable, the safest in the world, reliable, competitive, and most importantly, widely accessible. This is an intensely Competitive Industry with carriers offering different prices, products, and service. This competition is good for consumers. Adjusted for inflation, the average cost of an Airline Ticket has decreased by more than 24 since 1995. At the same time, were also making significant investments to improve Customer Experience. At american, we take delivery of a new aircraft on average every four days. Were devoting nearly 3 billion in investing to make the travel experience more comfortable and more convenient, and we have 17 billion in Capital Improvement projects underway at multiple airports in which we operate. This includes a new regional terminal here at Washington Reagan National airport so we can once and for all retire the dreaded gate 35x. Other events have drawn concern about Customer Impact from skroefr booking flights. Given the frequency with which travelers adjust their plans, overbooking avoids empty seats in a congested air traffic system, allowing more people to fly and greater availability of lower fares an oversale situation occurs when more confirmed passengers arrive at the gate than the number of seats on the aircraft. More than 50 of oversales are driven not by overbooking but by operational and safety factors like equipment swaps, weatherdriven Weight Restrictions, and accommodating federal air marshals. In light of recent events, american has added the following initiatives to our efforts to improve Customer Experience. First, we committed that we will not involuntarily remove a customer who has already boarded to aircraft to accommodate another passenger. S second, weve increased the number of employees who monitor oversales and work to solicit volunteers prior to customers arriving at the airport. New procedures are already showing a reduction to the previous low numbers of involuntary denied boardings as we work to bring that number closer to zero. Third, there is a dedicated hotline so our gate agents can offer the compensation necessary to entice customers to volunteer. We have not established an upper limit on what we will pay to solicit volunteers but have entrusted our team to make the best decisions to serve our customers. Lastly, we are adding training for our customerfacing team members to strengthen their abilities to avoid and deescalate contentious situations in realtime. This is a time of great optimism at American Airlines and for air travel in our country. American is committed to validating the trust our customers, team members, and stake ho stakeholders place in us each day. We look forward to our continued Work Together to make this economic engine of our country all that it can be so americans everywhere have the choice to travel affordably, safely, and comfortably. I appreciate the chance to be here, and im pleased to answer any questions you have. Thank you very much. And with that, mr. Mcgee, you may proceed. Good morning, chairman schuster, Ranking Member defazio and Ranking Member larson and all committee members. On behalf of summaries union, the policy arm of Consumer Reports, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. The abusive treatment of dr. David dao on board United Express last month shocked us all and exemplified that consumers are are at the mercy of powerful airlines in an ever more concentrated industry. American consumers are very much aware that dr. Daos fate could all too easily have been their own. This incident and other recent media reports has regalvanized congress and we applaud this committee for calling this hearing. The Major Airlines may boast of investing millions into their operations, but a closer examination reveals those investments often focus on amenities and perks for the few who can afford to pay more to fly in premium classes while the overwhelming bulk of classes in economy are subjected to packed cabins, tight seats, new and higher addon fees and all too often an utter lack of respect. We hope the committee will take this opportunity not only to address overbooking and denied boarding but to take a broader look at the onesided contracts of carriage that give all rights to airlines and precious few rights to passengers. Dr. Daos mistreatment highlights one aspect that is badly in need of reining in. Airlines overbooking flights and then not having seats for passengers that bought tickets. This is a throwback to the 1950s when passengers could make multiple bookings without penalty. But one, noshow passengers today are penalized, either with high fees or the forfeiture of their tickets. Two, state of the art yield Management Systems allow airlines to closely manage selling all available seats. Three, the demise of once ubiquitous agreements. And four, record high passenger loads, historically in the 50 to 60 percentile range, now average in the low 80s and regularly reach 100 . We are not aware of other industries in america where the business is given this kind of free license to oversell the product with so little accountability for failing to deliver. Last year, domestic carriers bumped 40,629 passengers against their will. Airline executives may tell you this is a small percentage, but they were bumped without explanation, based on criteria known only to the airline, and missed family events, business meetings, vacations. United and other carriers announced changes to their policies. But we believe that all denied boardings should truly be voluntary. The airline should pay whatever compensation is necessary to convince a passenger to willingly give up a seat for any reason. Airline industry consolidation has hurt consumers and entire communities. The harmful effects of this con s s consolidation have come home to roost in numerous ways. Carriers are allowed to disregard the interests of their passengers in ways that were unthinkable when there were 12 or 10 or even 8 Major Airlines until the industry. Passenger protections are further compromised because the Airline Deregulation act preempted state Consumer Protection laws. The intent was to keep states from reimposing economic regulation, but consumers do not right of action to sue. And courts cited the federal preemption clause in striking down new york states 2007 Airline Passenger bill of rights. Its also become more difficult for consumers to determine the true cost of flying. Basic services such as checking baggage, changing flight reservations, even carrying on a small bag in some cases are subject to higher and higher fees. This means its no longer possible to make accurate apples to apples comparisons to previous air fares. We are calling for a consistent, uniform, comprehensive, clearly written set of passenger rights for u. S. Airlines. What we cannot do is continue to leave it to the airlines to decide what rights they will confer in their contracts of carriage, which is Consumer Reports has documented over the years, are lengthy, filled with legal jargon, and where the priority is to protect the airline, not its passengers. And are subject to change whenever it suits the airline. Heres an example taken from deltas contract of carriage. Deltas published schedules are not guaranteed and form no part of this contract. Delta may substitute alternate carriers or aircraft, delay or cancel flights, change seat assignments and alter or omit stopping places shown on the ticket at any time. Schedules are subject to change without notice. And here are some of the passenger protections we endorse. Clear and consistent guidelines for compensation of flight delays of varying lengths. Clear and consistent guidelines for flight cancellations, clear and consistent guidelines for voluntary relinquishment of a ticketed seat and a clear prohibition of involuntary relinquishment. Complete air fare transparency and all possible ancillary fees from the airlines, equally available in all booking channels online and offline whether offered directly by the airlines themselves or offered through third parties. Enforcement of minimum seat standards to ensure reasonable passenger comfort, address health concerns, including the risk of deep vein thrombosis and promote safety. Much has happened in the nearly four seconds since passenger of the Airline Deregulation act but some of the key promises of deregulation, especially enhanced competition and improved Customer Experience, have not been realized. These disturbing incidents of passenger mistreatment have made clear we need to started a conversation immediately. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Mcgee. Now well proceed to questioning. Members will have five minutes to ask their questions and well stay pretty close to the not pretty close. Well stay very close to the fiveminute time frame on the questioning so i would ask all members to respect that and watch the clock. I truly believe that what happened over these past couple incidents was deals with empowering the employees, and i looked at everything through the prism of 20 years in business myself and many times situations would occur. My employees hopefully with the proper training and policies in place, they would make tright decision. Occasionally they didnt but making sure that the customer was taken first was paramount and i believe that to empower your employees, you have to have clear policies in place so they understand whats expected. And they have to be trained. Trained so that they can develop the judgment. So, im interested, hearing from mr. Munoz and from ms. Philipovich since two situations that occurred most recently, what are you doing to make sure that your employees are empowered . Specifically. Mr. Munoz, why dont you start. Sure. Our curriculum for Customer Service and training and dealing with deescalation issues is something we have to strengthen. I think we do it when youre first hired but we dont do it on a recurring basis so theres lots to learn from some of the other folks at this table. Specifically, on the empowerment angle, is beyond the empowerment at the point of a situation like we were faced with on april 9, i think its incumbent upon us to put policies and practices and protocols that inhibit or prohibit us ever getting into a situation like that. Its an impossible situation when you put folks in that kind of state and no rules, no empowerment, no training can deal with that. So, its important to go back in the chain and which is the policies that weve implemented to say, were not going to deboard somebody if theyve already been set. We are going to reduce overbooking, although that wasnt a factor in this particular case. So, for us, theres training and curriculum. Well continue to do that and learn from others at this table. But most importantly, its important to, you know, its the start of the chain. Its just not create these impossible situations for people that there is no out. Philipovitch. Yes, i would agree with mr. Munoz, and we know that it is the responsibility of Airline Leadership to make sure that our employees have the proper tools, training, resources, and support to deliver the kind of Customer Service that theyre so good at doing and that they want to do every day. We recently launched a Service Training initiative for Front Line Team members called elevate the everyday experience. Its a twoday program and by this summer, over 40,000 of our team members will have completed the cross functional experiencetial learning course that were very excited about. In light of recent events, and also based on feedback from our employees, were working to enhance that curriculum to further support our employees with training on deescalating complicated situations and to provide kind of interim training between those sessions as well, so were looking forward to that, and again,ment want to m sure our employees have the tools and support they need. Second question is on overbooking. I think i basically understand the overbooking situation but i know theres refundable and nonrefundable tickets. And its been my experience in business, if somebody buys a product and its they pay for it, they get it. So, can you explain to me the difference, how refundable and nonrefundable customers are treated when it comes to not putting them on a flight, refunding their dollars, those kind of things. Mr. Munoz, if you would. Sure, theres many practices and procedures and one of the reasons mr. Kirby is with me today, hes been in the field f for 20 years and i thought this committee deserved o more exacting knowledge base. Thank you, chairman shuster. As weve talked about, this incident was not driven the incident on united was not driven by overbooking, but overbooking is much in the news about this. And its important to understand that most of our oversale situations are driven by operational restrictions. The largest being Weight Restrictions because of weather. So, for example, when youre at an airport and theres snow or ice, or even wind and weather, at either the departure or arrival airport, were often not able to take a full load of customers and meet our safety parameters, and in those situations, we will have to deplane 20 to 30 people sometimes because the aircraft simply cant operate safely. That is the vast majority of our oversale situations. As to overbooking, we also use it to take care of thousands of customers who we otherwise couldnt accommodate. We had an incident in mumbai where an airplane, an engine went out of service on landing, and we were going to have to replace the engine, which takes a while in india to get the engine replaced. So we had to cancel the return flight. We reaccommodated a couple hundred customers on other airlines but because there were so many, we had customers still to deal with. We overbooked the following days flight by 48 customers because that was the only seats that we had. Otherwise, we were telling those customers we couldnt get them home for five days. We were able to accommodate 25 customers the next day and the other 23 we were able to voluntarily give them compensation to take a flight the next day. But its an example where overbooking actually helped us take care of our customers. And in our at united, the vast majority of our involuntary denied boardings are driven by these operational restrictions as opposed to overbooking. And we view overbooking, particularly in situations where we can incentivize a customer to take an alternative flight, as a win win for both the airline and for those customers. And 96 of the situations where we have overbooking, were able to get the customers to be volunteers. And in todays world where weve increased the compensation limit to 10,000, were hoping to drive that down to essentially zero. So we view overbooking as something that actually helps us accommodate and take care of thousands more customers than we would otherwise be able to. Thank you, mr. Kirby. I exceeded my time. Im going to stay on message for the five minutes, but i wish you could in writing explain to me the refundable, nonrefundable and what the difference is in writing. With that, i recognize mr. Defazio for five minutes. Ill try to do this very quickly. We dont have much time. First, to united, american, and alaska, how much does it cost you to change someones booking . Give me a number. Youre charging people 200, 300 to change a ticket. Whats your real cost . It seems like really inefficient if it costs that much. Well, sir, the cost is not about the actual changing of the ticket. I dont know what the actual changing of the ticket costs. Okay, so its about being very profitable. I would observe that united got 800 million in change fees last year. 800 million. That is a lot of money. Sir, the and theres no real cost. I mean, i realize, you said lets go back to overbooking. Well, first, how about can you answer, southwest does not do this, so can american answer, how much does it cost to change someones ticket . I would agree with mr. Kirby. Right, its for your operational concerns so you can get the planes absolutely full or sell more than 100 of the seats. Okay. Lets go to overbooking. On overbooking, now, southwest, are you going to go broke or something . I mean, youre not going to overbook anymore . How can you do that . Quick answer. We are not going to go broke. I promise you that. Okay. What happened, its really basic. There are a couple reasons that cause the need to overbook. We have noshows. The noshows at southwest have come down materially over the years as weve had Better Technology and we have more noshows than most because we have very flexible rules, no change fees, so those come down and then second weve just improved our technology to really understand whos going to show at the aircraft and then third, we did implement a pretty modest change. Ive only got five minutes. I got it. Okay. Mr. Mcgee, do you want to comment on the practice of overbooking . You said it was 1950s, 1960s, because in those days you didnt get charged. You werent making 800 million on change fees. Exactly. At that time, it was a burden for airlines because Business Travelers in particular used to book five flights at once and get one of them and then those seats went empty but for all the reasons i detailed which i dont want to repeat for times sake, its clear that time has passed. And all of the language in the contracts, as i stated, favor the airlines here. If youre delayed getting to the airport, because your taxi driver had an accident and you have a nonrefundable ticket, youre out regardless. Theres no provision in the contract that accommodates for your circumstances but theres a long list of accommodations for circumstances for the airline or what they term force majeur, acts of god, in which some cases are not in fact abiliticts of g. Thank you. Back to mr. Kirby. You said that, you know, you talked about how you can use overbooking to help people. How about just a policy that in routine reservations, you would never, ever overbook, you would never sell more than 100 of the seats for routine, daytoday booking, not to accommodate people because of a change of plane or something else, but just on a daytoday basis. Well, sir could you do that . Southwest is doing that. We still think that helps us accommodate thousands of customers. But it also helps you make, you know, get to these load factors and then, of course, you have your change fees. Lets go to contracts of carriage. How about a simple disclosure . I mean, this is uniteds contract of carriage. This is just for fares. If you look at the print here, very user friendly online, supposed to read this before you buy your ticket. So, how about, you know, a distilleddown, simple language disclosure. Would any of the airlines agree to do that, post that, make it available to people . I see mr. Sprague nodding his head. Yeah, we would acknowledge ours is too long. We recently acquired Virgin America airlines, we found theirs to be much shorter. As part of our integration, were going to move to a much shorter contract of carriage. Theirs is 16,000 yords, words, united was 37,000 words with smaller print on only 46 pages but i dont think that counts because it doesnt make it much more user frepd friendly. One other question. As weve observed, theres a lot of tension, the planes, youre jamming more people in and yet is there a question about how many Flight Attendants there should be on planes as opposed to the faa requirement . Because theyre being asked, essentially, to referee and do all sorts of things and we got terrorism. Everything has changed but the number of Flight Attendants hasnt changed for 20 years or so. Anybody think that maybe were overstressing our Flight Attendants . Mr. Mcgee, you want to answer . Yes. Theres been a lot of talk today about employees and the term is used its been used multiple times, but i think an important point here is that this is an industry that has massively outsourced so many functions, including functions that interfiinte interface with public so im not sure that many passengers are even aware that when they check in or theyre speaking to a Customer Service agent, in fact, in many cases theyre wearing the uniform of an airline and they have a name tag of an airline but theyre outsourced and what this means for passengers is that in no way are we denigrating the work of the people looking for jobs, but the fact is, theyre poorly trained. Its a transient work force. And the airlines have outsourced just about everything that the faa will allow in outsourcing. Were not here today to talk about Aircraft Maintenance but thats one area that affects safety. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Duncan, youre recognized for five minutes. Just yesterday morning at the knoxville airport the plane we were supposed to fly on to washington, a wing clipped a baggage truck with damage that you couldnt even notice, but we spent three and a half hours there. They had trouble getting hold of the proper person, the manufacturers in brazil and then they canceled the plane. And it caused me to miss votes last night and i hate to miss votes, but i tell you this just to tell you that ive flown so much over the years that ive run into almost every kind of problem that you can think of yet i will tell you that we have the best Aviation System in the entire world. You know, my dad told me years ago, he said, everything looks easy from a distance. But you all have a very tough business. But i think what happens, when people have 99 good flights and one bad one, the one they tell everybody about is the one bad one. Im so thankful. I heard on npr many years ago that the russian aeroflat system sometimes had delays at four days. We get upset with a 40minute delay, so i appreciate what you do for us. Let me ask you this, mr. Munoz, before this unfortunate incident with dr. Dao, did you did your airline ever call Law Enforcement to remove somebody due to overbooking before that incident . There have been other a good amount of occasions where that has happened. It happened without incident. Where the where you had to call Law Enforcement due to overbooking . We call Law Enforcement for safety and security reasons when they happen. There have been occurrences in the past, in this year, where weve had to ask Law Enforcement to come in and help and assist. Have any of you other airlines had Law Enforcement remove people due to from the airline due to overbooking . Have you ever done that, that you know of, mr. Jordan . No, sir, not that i know of. Again, i agree with oscar. Its primarily in the cases of just safety and security where you have potentially an intoxicated passenger. Well, i mean, if its a disruptive person with a Law Enforcement, thats a different situation. Yes, sir. But in the case of a im talking about due to overbooking. In the case of an overbooking, not that i know of, sir. We were given statistics. Theres something called Airline Quality rating. It said that there is removed six that involuntarily denied bookings boardings affected six passengers per 100,000, and i noticed that mr. Mcgees testimony said that it was 40,000 or a little over 40,000 out of the almost 700 million passengers that comes to one for every 17,500, roughly. It seems to me thats a pretty low thats a pretty impressive figure. We also were submitted information from another airline thats not here that said that overbooking has been done so that as one of the many ways that ticket prices are held lower. Is that correct, mr. Sprague . Yes, congressman duncan, thats correct. In fact, for Alaska Airlines, in 2016 alone, there were 675,000 seats that would not have been available if we did not have an overbooking policy so those were seats that would not have been available for lastminute Business Travel purchases, for accommodating guests that might have been disrupted due to weather or downsized aircraft and frankly having those Seats Available for sale allows us to keep fares low. So more people are able to fly at lower prices because of overbooking . Yes, sir. Is that is that true . Would you agree with that, mr. Kirby . Yes, sir. All right. All right. Well, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, with that, ms. Norton is recognized for five minutes. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. I know you must have received messages from a number of us after the first incident about the need for more oversight by this committee of the Customer Service part of what the airlines do for us as a nation. I want to say to our witnesses, you may think youre looking at members of congress, but really, youre looking at your customer base, except for a few of us, perhaps me chiefly among them, because i represent the people who live in the nations capital, most members of congress get on an airplane every single week, frequent flyers who do weekly monitoring i cant imagine why we havent had a hearing like this based on my based on what my colleagues go through. Now, when it comes to business in the United States, i expect and have seen competition solve most of our problems. But essentially, you represent four regional monopolies. So, youve been able to do anything you want to do, addon fees, basic services that we take for granted, its as if you have to tip a corporation to get a business to do what they used to do for free as a courtesy. So, over time, we do have such hearings as this, and people come up with notions, well, we ought to have a passenger bill of rights or whatever. Mr. Defazio, our Ranking Member, in 87 no less, entered a document that didnt pass. But the u. S. Transportation secretary, because this could be done by the administrative process as well, indeed was successful in getting through that process. Rules having to do, for example, with lost baggage. So, what we have here, essentially are a passengers bill of rights. Each of you have a contract. Weve learned that you can find out what it is if you go on the website, or you can look at the tens and tens of pages. I want to clarify whether i believe was the response to mr. Defazio, are each of the airlines here willing to boil down what the customer is entitled to, to a onepage a onepager that the passenger could receive as part of getting on the flight or could find by going to the website . Could i have answers from each of the airlines . I only have five minutes. Speak up first, mr. Munoz, why point to him. Why not begin with you. Thats a its an excellent question. I dont know that i have the proper answer with regard to a onepage document. I think simplification, clarity mr. Kirby, do you think, since you that that could happen . Maam, im not sure if we can get it to one page but i certainly thinking getting a simpler conduct of carriage. Anybody else have people who can write who can boil this down to one page . Mr. Sprague. That would be our goal, maam. Sir . That would be our goal, maam. Congresswoman, absolutely. We would love to continue to consolidate that. I would tell you we also have a Customer Service commitment document which writes it in much simpler language. We already have that on our website that describes what Southwest Airlines does, but the goal is to be completely transparent with the customer about what is available to them in any case. And we add american have been working to simplify our policies to make them clearer on our website for our customers and we would also like to strive for a more simplified contract of carriage and we have work underway for that as well. Were going to hold you all accountable for that and see whos best at doing something that you may have may have learned to do in college if you had good writing instruction. Mr. Jordan, do i understand that Southwest Airlines, because this is my favorite way to do things in our country, has found that using incentives, you can indeed solve problems that are otherwise solved by remedies such as overbooking . Youre incentivizing approach where you say you brought down the number of involuntary boarding involuntaries where boarding does not occur. Yes, maam. Our goal again with this change in not overbooking as part of the selling process. What was the incentive that was most important . The incentive was to eliminate this problem for our customers and to some extent no, that you gave so you did not have to overbook to the customer so you didnt have to overbook. Well, actually, its on the airline side, weve had Better Technology, those things that allows us to eliminate this process, because of the value to the airline has simply gone down very, very much but it would be our incentive to have involuntary denied boardings in particular be very, very rare and its also our incentive and we do this every day to make sure our employees are completely empowered to do what is right, involuntary denied boarding or voluntary denied boarding to do what is right for our customers in the moment so that we dont have incidents that we shouldnt. I thank the gentleman. And i would just point out i think everybody these contracts of carriage are far too complicated, and simplifying would be wonderful, but every member on this committee should look at each other and say, part of the problem is us. Part of the problem is over abundance of attorneys in this country that are suehappy so a little bit of tort reform may be able to let the industry not just this industry, but every industry to simplify what they put out there in contracts because again, im not going to get it right now, but im pretty sure its driven by the damn lawsuits in this country that go forward and so weve got to congress has to make sure were simplifying the law so we can get onepage, twopage, tenpage documents on these contracts of carriage so with that, i recognize mr. Crawford. Thank you, mr. Chairman. You probably felt the eyes of a lot of attorneys on you at that point in time. Mr. Mcgee, you touched on this in your testimony. Deregulation back in 1978. Im a limited government guy. I dont want the government to get involved to solve problems in a competitive marketplace, but do you or any members on the panel, do you believe congress should reregulate the Airline Industry . Consumers union supported deregular la deregulation in 1978, long before my time. But we have at no time in the 17 years ive been with the Consumers Union recommended reregulation. What we have said is that its clear that when you leave Customer Service up to the airlines, on many issues over the years, tarmac delays and other things, they do not do whats best for their airlines excuse me, for their ka customers and in aps to the congresswomans question about simple language, it is possible to one extent. The model already exists in the european union. For 12 years, there have been passenger rights, easily accessible, easy to read, one page on the eus website when youre traveling in the eu. Lets let some of the other members weigh in on this. We work in a very Competitive Industry we know that can remember Customer Service is essential. The d. O. T. Today also exercises broad oversight and regulating airlines and protecting consumers as well. Mr. Jordan. While were talking about very difficult issues today, specifically generally, the performance of the industry has been very good. On southwests sake, our in the promoter scores are 11 points better in the last two years. So thats a no on reregulation . Best weve been in our history, so no. No, sir. No, sir. Ive been with Alaska Airlines for 17 years and that entire time, weve been competing hard against the rest of the folks on the panel here today and that competition has been our main motivation to improve our Customer Service. Mr. Munoz. Agreed with most of those. So the answer for us would be also no but by context and perspective is one as having worked in heavily regulated industries, both in telecom and other transportation models in the Railroad Space and having a chance to see this over the last year, i think theres always a delicate balance between the right things. I think thats right and what weve heard today sort of demonstrates kind of the line were walking here, and i dont want to jump into a competitive model and apply reregulation. But that means that the industry has to do some selfregulation to decimmonstrate that you don need interference from congress. I couldnt agree more, and its shameful that an event like the one that we had at united has to drive this kind of conversation but again, it will accelerate and this will make us better. Let me ask you something. Mr. Defazio touch on this and i could see that virtually everybody in their chairs was uncomfortable and the body language was evident, this is not a topic that anybody wants to talk about. But the change fees. And theres a relationship to overbooking and change fees, is there not . Yes, sir. I mean, we have change fees, and theyre mostly about our way of offering low fares to consumers. Sure. And and theyre about keeping our fares low. And as was referenced earlier today, you know, fares have declined 24 in the last 20 years in real terms. One of the great things about deregulation and about these kinds of policies, overbooking and change fees, is that weve driven prices lower for consumers and theres more people traveling in the United States than anywhere in the world. Maam, i could tell you had some things you wanted to add when that conversation was taking place. Would you like to expand on that a little bit. Sure. Thank you, sir. We strive to offer different fare products to meet the needs of varying consumers. And so some customers will value flexibility and be willing be willing to pay more for an unrestricted ticket, while others really just want to lowest fare and thats why we sell a nonrefundable product. Even though customers have agreed to a nonrefundable product, the change fee is a way to allow some flexibility if a circumstances arise that they didnt anticipate. This sort of gets back to what we talked about with full disclosure on what you can expect as a customer and all of yall are competing. I love a competitive model because Customer Service generally thrives in a competitive environment but were not seeing that today. Consolidation, weve seen a sharp decline in the level of Customer Service that is related to the amount of consolidation thats taken place in the last 10, 12, 15 years and i think thats probably an experience weve all had at some point in time in our air travels. Is that fair . Ill take it initially. Ive appearancedexperienced a l consolidation in my experiences over the history and i think the customer has an infinite amount greater choice today than theyve had in a long period of time. And scott, whos been in this industry for 20 years, has been part of many integrations and consolidations and could probably share insights as well. My time is expired but i appreciate your comments. Thank you. Ms. Johnsons recognized for five minutes. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Let me ask, i guess in general, but most especially for united, first of all, its clear that we have so much air traffic and the incident on april 9 involving the forcible removal of a passenger on board a united flight 3411 has brought into question how airlines treat its passengers. And this really is not a new issue. In 2016, the department of transportation received 12,766 consumer complaints against us airlines. So its impossible to say how many of these are legitimate, illegitimate, how many of the incidents is one reported. But i guess what i need to ask first is, what were the rules in place to determine who would be removed from the plane . Thank you, maam. It was a simple Automatic Process that dealt with without all the complexity, what someone paid and whether they were enrolled in our mileage plus complexity what someone paid and whether they were enrolled in our mileage plus program. Its a difficult choice when we get to that point. All of our poll sisz are to prevent this situation from ever happening because its an impossible situation how do you pick amongst all of you as to who sits where. You have a process where you sit and we have a process. And peskily the process that we have and continued to dr. V is around the fare that you made and what level you were. So this was the cheapest fare. It was one of the lower fares, yes. What about the rest of you . Is that the way you determine who to mistreat . Congresswoman, no. In the k5i6s an involuntary denied boarding it is tied to whether the kuft her her had a seat assignment and if there are multiple customers with a seat assignment it would be based on the last person to check in for the zbliet same thing here. Its basically the last person that checked in at the gate, arrived at the gate. And, again, our goal is to always not have any involuntary but to treat all those folks as a voluntary denied board are if we have to and deal with that before boarding. But its in the order of basically the check in at the gate. So if someone checks in and is given a seat and someone checks in later who paid more for a seat, they can unseat the person who is seated . Nom. The in the case again in southwest, if the aircraft has 143 seats, for example, and the 140 fourth person, the overbooked checks in, they do not have a seat. So they would be the first person that we attempt to work with to voluntarily deny board them through compensation. Okay. But i understand this person was seated, had been admitted by a ticket, and was seated in a seat. And the person who they were trying to get on did not have to purchase a seat so how do you make that criteria . It was it was a mistake of Epic Proportions and clearly our policies broke down in that regard. The situation specifically was that a crew member trying to get to another flight in essence to ironically in a Customer Service oriented fashion to try to make sure that that crew arrived at the next aircraft so 150 people could get to their destinations. Its a horrible calculus to put people in, do you make the flight for 150 or serious inconvenience two or three on the current flight. So one of the policy changes we introduced last week is once you sit on our aircraft and you are on a seat, other than for safety or security reasons, we will not take you off of that flight. Now, i understand there were four seats needed, three had been given. If that one person had not arrived at the next spot, would that have stopped that airline from taking off . Yes, maam, theres a certain level of flight crews that very have to have and we did find alternative aspects with regards to get a different fly crew in there. But this is a fairly well or says straighted process throughout the world to get 700 flights in the air at any given moment so flight crews are not readily available in all of our locations. So we did try to look at that 0 pro zbles so you have two groups of rules to look at, is there did you address the rule of what happens if a person im sorry, my time is out kbu let me just finish this question four to think about. If that person had not gotten to the next flight that you were trying to get there, what is the alternative if that person couldnt get there with three already . Sure. We have a policy we guilty in and im happy to foum with you. Thank you, young lady. With that recognize mr. Hunter for five minutes for questions. Thank you, mr. Chairman. First, thank you for being here. I fly from san diego so ive got one of the longest flights and i fly back every week because i have kids, so i guess my first question i was going to ask is why do you hate the American People, but im not going to ask that. I was going to ask how much you hate the American People. Im not going to ask that either. What i have heard a lot of you talk about is competition. Explain that to me because i think thats a joke. Its an absolute joke that theres competition within the Airline Industry if you just look at san diego, its United Airlines. I have no other options unless i want to fly to San Francisco or l. A. Or texas or chicago, theres only one straight shot to another united owned hundred, dull lous airport, thats it. So he in, you please, explain the competition for a layman like me that must not understand it very well. Because competition really quick, jack in a box, mcdonalds, wendys, thats competition. Hertz, budget, afis, thats competition. Having only one airline that flies one straight shot out of all the airlines, thats not competition. Please explain to. He congressman hunter, speaking for Southwest Airlines i can assure you the competition level that will were experiencing right now which is defined basically in a couple of ways, how many of our routes are overlapped by other carriers where we have competition and we look at where the we were overlapped by the ultra low cost carriers, the front tears, spirits, it has never been higher and its climbing at a rate every single year thats a higher rate than the year before. So weve never had mr. Competition in our history and the best measure is probably fares, because fares are ultimately tied to competition. And they were down in the Fourth Quarter of 20163 from 15 and they are down 6 from 2014, so fares have continued to fall. Our average fare today is 152 which inflation adjusted is below a decade ago. You wouldnt describe competition as options . Again, i would describe it as where we are we are overlapped woerj carriers, where we do have competition. And of course youre going to have routes where there are very few options and routes where there are many, many option dollars. It differs route to rut. Let me interrupt you really quick. Mr. Manu munoz, which percentage of your pliets are operated by united. I would think in the 60 to 70 . 60 to 70 if youre in houston youre going to fly united most likely ms. Hoeb business same question four about the dallas hundred. One thing thats important to note is the purpose of hubs is to filt build factories that can manufacture connections. And a lot of 70 of our customers are connecting there, its not just about the origin and Destination Market because there are a lot of different ways that we build routes across the country. Okay. So would any of you concede even in the smallest way that there is some hubs in some airports there arent a lot of options except for just one of you . Would you not concede that in a small way . I think from a common sense perspective, absolutely. And it does it does occur in certain markets but we all have broader aspects. But the concept of competition and a different perspective if you think when i used to work at both coke and pepsi, those were to options that consolidated over the years to provide two offerings to the American Public that seems to work okay. I used to work in the tell com space and between at t and verizon and in both those areas you have a lot of Product Offerings and a lot of continued healthy competition. But thats the perspective i bring from the outside. I let scott talk a little bit about the competition dynamic inside this industry. Representative you and by the way there are is different than any other thing because we dont have a choice. I have to fly, the American People have to fly, all the time. We dont have a choice. You have a choice to not buy a pep sip you have a choice to not go with verizon or t mobile and spript because thats highly regulate the by this congress, more so than it is with you all. But theres no option to not fly is the big difference here. Yes, sir wroir say that this is a highly, highly Competitive Industry you can see it in the fares declining, you can see it in the different kinds of Product Offerings that you can get across airlines. There are markets where theres only one nonstop carrier although north of 90 of our customers are flying in markets where there either is nonstop carrier competition or were waring connecting customers. So afl half our customers are flying in connecting markets which obviously have lots of competition. And even in those markets more than half the people that fly between washington, d. C. And san diego choose to make a connection. So theyre choosing to take a connection on someone other than United Airlines each though were the only nonstop carrier in that market. Theres nothing to prevent another airline from umming can in and flying in that market, so its a hugely competitive market. There are stanss where theyre usual where theres only a single carrier in the market but its a hugely competitive market and there almost always are connecting options for customersing. Thank you very much. I would add its a route by route thing you can find exceptions but the vast majority of routes have a great deal of competition on them. Thank you, gentlemen. We anticipate this to be a long hearing so were going to take periodic breaks. This is our first fiveminute break. This is only for the witnesses and the members. Those of you in the audience can go after the break because dont want mass rush to the rest rooms i know recognize mr. Larsone for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I need to let you know im not quite satisfied with the answer you gave to mr. Duncan earlier. The question asked of you was whether, i believe, whether united used to Law Enforcement at all to remove our person for overbooking and security twice in response to the question. It seemed to either be a pat answer or, i dont know. Let me be specific. Has united this year removed personnelng security strictly on an overbooking issue . I am not aware of any specific instance where Law Enforcement has removed someone on that particular oversold situation. Its clear. Are you able to tell us what united management or the site manager communicated to Law Enforcement that they, regarding 3411, waser on united this person did they say this disruptive and needed to be removed, or this person would not take 800 and needs to be removed. The failed policy and procedure we have is that after the attempt to incentivize a customer with that amount and other amounts, the protocol, the policy, called for asking for assistance from local Law Enforcement and that is wrong. So what changes have you made in your policy with regards to that . To 10,000an go up dollars. Offering alternative solutions for the passenger, it is not just about money. We have kids on the flight. How do i get to my destination and then of course, what we did was we will no longer have Law Enforcement d eboard anyone on the aircraft. Part of the concern that we have and a lot of us have is that sometimes we are guilty of this. You major problem customers problem. I this particular case, so think hearing from you all, how you are not making problems you have about getting your staff somewhere and making it a customers putting the solution on the customer to solve your problem about getting staff somewhere. Echoed not agree with you more. That is why our crewmembers, unless they check in 60 minutes before i absolutely agree with you. Mr. Jordan, can he help me understand what we can expect to or from southwest on may 8 may 9 . We lastly are had the meltdown in the i. T. System that may be is not as directly the subject of the particular hearing, certainly did not trigger this hearing, but is certainly a Customer Service issue. Happen . Going to i think you called it bigger and better than what you have now. Yes sir, the Largest Technology project we have ever undertaken. Doing it for literally almost one year now to ensure that they work as they go. There is extensive testing. We put in hundreds and hundreds of thousands of hours of training. Issues thatndle any come up to the testing has gone flawless so far. Like any big software implementation, i expect some small problems on may 9 when we implement, but i think we are extremely wellprepared, and i expect it to although very well. Problemsd that small in the industry, in your industry, when it comes to i. T. , result in delays to an entire system. So even the small problems, it does not give me a lot of assurance. Can you give me a little more assurance . Again, we have tested this i. T. Ct more than any implementation we have ever done. We have implemented those pieces in phases so we are not doing it. Usually what happens is you put something in a big bang implementation overnight. You wake up and it does not work very well the next morning. We have implemented swap pieces, almost every week, for literally almost one year now. Second, when we began to add international destinations, they are running on the new system, and have been for more than one year. We have been running it in production for a small way for a long period of time. That is good. One must question for the record for United Airlines. If you guys get back to us, explain to us why this particular issue was not an overbooking issue. Every customer and everyone who watched it on mine saw it as an overbooking issue. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much chairman schuster. I am a pretty frequent flyer, ely status on every airline up there except for alaskan, and that is because you probably do not fly to corpus christi, texas. Hint, hint. What i am seeing is a growing level of frustration both on the passengers and from your passenger facing crew in the airport. Everybody is in a rush. We have had to deal with the tsa. We have got to go by some liquid because you cannot take that through security. You have to get them food. Youre stuck buying 12 for a tv dinner or 7 for a lunch on the airplane. Passengers are frustrated. Another piece of it is we are all rushing to get what limited space there is. Several years ago, the airline said the fuel costs are up so we are going to charge for checked that revenue. P now, the fuel costs are down. Are there any plans to remove the checked baggage fees . Thank you, congressman. We view charging for checked bags as one of the ways we keep all the other fares low. In 2016, at united, we spent 1. 9 billion carrying checked bags and we collected 900 million. The answer is no. What about american . Same. We put our fees in place to give customers more options and choices and to pay for the intend tohey consume. Let us talk about southwest. Mr. Kirby, you said you had to overbook flights to keep fares low. I cannot remember the last time the united care was lower than the southwest fare. How are you able to do that at southwest . Just a couple of things, and we appreciate your business in corpus christi, by the way. We try to make policy for the customer. It makes sense that you can bring your clothing along with you. Specifically, regarding the the bag fees, allow people to check their bags, so we have more been they are checking the bags. Keep coststrive to low. It has always been a tenant of our Airline Business, keeping cost low allowing us to do fees, like having no bag and finally, we believe we get more business overall because we do not charge fees. In the publicized incident that probably led to this hearing, the reason you had to get people off, or you were trying to move a crew to get to their other airline. United is my primary carrier. So one of the things i get when i get delayed it comes up on my app saying awaiting inbound crew. What i dont understand, why dont you just keep the crew with the airplane . Why do the crews have to connect . Why cant we put the same crew with the same airline and take that one issue off the table . I think its a great thought. But there are rules and safety implications of making sure people get rest. And so the ability to keep crews , on the same flight for an extended period of time is just not something thats easily doable. All right. And then i have one other question for mrs. Philipovitch about american. Were seeing report information the media about your new uniform having Adverse Reactions with over 3000 Flight Attendants and now with pilots. My concern is not only with the safety of the crew, but also, if there are toxic fumes or something thats released as a result of circulating air or the heat on the airplane, theres a potential risk for passengers. What is your airline doing to address the uniform issue . Or if youre not in a position to answer that, can you get somebody who can to give me the info . No, im happy to give you info, information. First, i just want to make sure to state that the safety and comfort of both our customers and our employees is absolutely our top priority. We launched a new uniform last fall. And for about 75,000 of our team members. And the vast majority of them really liked the product that we launched. And team members were involved in developing it as well. Shortly after launch, we did start get something reports some some reports that some of our employees were experiencing some reaction to the uniform, despite the fact that we put it through a couple rounds of testing to ensure that it meets and exceeds industry standards. Weve been working with those team members to make sure that they have alternative uniforms that they can wear. Both different fabrics from the initial manufacturer of our program. And then also recently we just , announced an additional manufacturer that can provide uniforms for our employees. So, well continue to work with team members. Its an issue were taking very seriously and were putting emphasis on it. I hear the tapping. I think the gentleman. I also point out, sometimes, we put these rules and laws into place that these situations occur because the airlines are living with them. And its not just the airlines. Its industries across america. So, weve got to pay close attention to what we do in response to an industry. With that, i recognize mr. Capuano. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. Heres the problem. It is that the flying experience, and again, we all do it on a regular basis, the flying experience is like Everything Else in life. The truth is, my flying experience is reasonable. 90 of the time. But it has a lot to do with lowered expectations. When i was a kid, i grew up in a neighborhood that every single playground was full of broken glass, broken basketball hoops, and no swings, and everybody just accepted it because thats the way it was. Well, its not like that anymore. It took us 20 years to change the attitude. People that i grew up would never accept that, because the level of expectations has been risen. The problem with the flying experience is across the board. We all know its a terrible experience, starting from the minute i go on the computer to try to figure out which flight i want to take. I have to go to several different websites. And even when i do that, i have to go into the depth of the website to get truly comparable prices. Because some dont charge fees. Some do charge fees. Some charge fees for baggage. Some charge fees for oxygen. Who knows . I cant get comparable prices. So before i buy the ticket, im frustrated. I personally have shut that computer down repeatedly for many years, because i have to go back to it, because youre right, i got to fly. And you got to go back and you got to dig your way through it. From the very start, but we all expect it to be a miserable experience. And then, when i get to the airport, after going through the tsa lines, which now being a , regular flyer, i go through the express line, but now the , express lines are full of people that dont know to take their keys out of their pocket. Frustrated. Then i get to the gate. Planes late. Planes not late. Never explained why. Now, honestly, up until last week, bumping was not a problem. Ive been bumped on occasion but its been handled reasonably. By the way, mr. Munoz, i want to know how to get that 10,000 thing, because believe me, ill be flying united a lot more, you can figure that out. [laughter] heres the problem, and even with these fees, its interesting, i get the airlines coming in, complaining about the facilities we have, and yet i , see in the latest year, 2015, the latest year we have 3. 3 , billion in fees which dont pay the ticket tax, which means almost 300 million that could have been put into improving those facilities didnt. Because you dont want to tell us what your tickets cost. Its all, to me were kind of sick of it as consuming americans. Weve got to fly. Youve got us. Youve got us. And if you want to keep treating us this way fine. , i guess we can only do so much. But there will come a day when Congress Wont accept it anymore on behalf of the American People. And that shouldnt happen. Mr. Munoz, you had a particular problem last week. I accept your apology. I think its genuine, i think you mean it. But heres the problem. The apology is the beginning and the policies seem reasonable. The ones you have now. I dont mean to pick on you, but, you know, its your turn. The problem is, every year, i say, you know what, im going to the gym. Im going to lose five pounds. Im going to get in shape again. By february, im kind of out of it. Ahh, i give up on it. Every person i know that ever committed a crime has basically apologized for it. Didnt mean to. And the apology is good. Im not saying and again, i do accept it. I hope and believe its sincere today. But i hope you all know that this doesnt stop today. And you will be judged on how it is implemented. And its not just you, mr. Munoz. Again, it happened to be you today. But it could be any one of you tomorrow. I presume youve all rechecked your own rules and regulations about how you do it. Seeing, im sure you dont want to be in the hot seat the next time. So, the truth is, i dont really have any questions because, again, i do think youve addressed the immediate situation, but if you walked out of here thinking that the immediate situation is the only problem the American Public has with the flying experience, you would have missed the point. We have a problem. A problem that shouldnt be as bad and as the unpleasant as it is. And youre the only people that can fix it. And i encourage you to do so. So that we can get back to the point of nobody is against you making money. I dont want to yell at you. I just want to be able to go to the airport and gate from point a to point b with a more pleasant experience. And if i do, believe me, ill go back to your airlines more often when that happens. Mr. Chairman, i apologize for not having a question, but i think all the questions i have have been answered. The response to that is well said. Thank you. With that, i yield to mr. Gibbs. Mr. Gibbs thank you, mr. Chairman. You know, i was thinking about this, we really have a cultural problem for this to happen on united with the doctor. Its unbelievable to me that the pilot or crew or anybody would have let that happen when you have a person on there forcibly removed thats not a Security Risk or whatever. So, im glad to see that uniteds putting in the policy of compensation. And thats why i think we solve the problem. I think overbooking, we have heard today, has its positives. It helps keep fares down for everybody. But when overbooking does happen we ought to let the , Market Forces work. I think the 10,000 deal will be a stampede to get to that gate first. Nd to take benefit of that that would be a positive issue, i think. But the cultural issue, you know, i think it the other airlines, its your job as leaders to improve the culture because its definitely ail cultural issue. I fly basically weekly. Theres times illing out on the there is times we will be out on the tarmac because of weather delays. Its nice when the pilot comes on and says, weve just heard from air Traffic Control, well be delayed 20 or 30 minutes. Because of issues here mdc or whatever. Onre has been times, parked the tarmac, they say it is alright to go to the restroom, use the restroom. You can turn on your phone and well tell you when to turn it back off. Versus they stop and dont do anything. And so thats the whole cultural , thing. Im glad to see it has to function, the market has to work. My question i have, and i dont know the answer, do airlines still have reciprocity agreements or not . At United Airlines, we have interline agreements to carry customers on most of our competing airlines. In fact, certainly with american, with delta. Mr. Gibbs i just wanted to make sure, because i know in years past, when issues came up, go to the gate, x, y, z or line, we can get you on. That still happens . Congressman, can i address that . Mr. Gibbs yes. Prior to the regulation in 1978, as i stated earlier, interline agreements were ubiquitous, so basically it was on the airline not the passenger. Airline a with overbooking, delay, cancellation, the passenger would be accommodated for the face value of the ticket at another carrier. Those interline agreements post deregulation were sustained on the part of the airlines in some case and not in others. And when there was an influx of lowcost carriers in the 1990s, major carriers started using interline agreements as a competitive tool at the expense of passengers by not interlining with startup and newer airlines. And now, we have a situation where even some Major Airlines dont interline with one other. Now, their feuds are one thing, but the fact is, this affects passengers in a very negative way. Way. Mr. Gibbs anybody else want to respond . Go ahead. Yeah, i would just say, broad generalizations are one thing. But i think most all Major Airlines have interline agreements with other airlines, and that is most certainly the case with Alaska Airlines. I think let the market work with some agreement. I think competitive with competition, the situation arises where it is completely out of control, we need to put customers first. Thats how you Keep Congress off your back. I mean, put the customers first. Lets make sure youre expounding a culture out there that puts customers first. Because that is to happen. If the culture is right, coming from the top, i dont believe that would have happened because there would have been you cant tell me theres not other paying customers on that flight that wouldnt jump at a chance for 1000 or 2000 to take a flight a couple hours later. Its hard to believe thats the case. So, i guess thats what my criticism is, definitely a cultural problem. Im glad to see, in your written testimony, your oral testimony, youre fixing to address that. Because i think thats really where it starts. And i think if all of your team members understand that the customers come first, make it work the best, this is how we solve this problem. Let the Market Forces work. I yield back. Mr. Gibbs i think the gentleman. Im going to have to step out for a little bit. I think ill be back before this is over. But i just want to make sure that i say this, because i think its so important that, you know, in every bad situation, theres a Silver Lining. You usually find a Silver Lining. And if the Airline Industry doesnt find a Silver Lining to get together collectively and figure this out, because if you dont, just like mr. Gibbs said and mr. Capuano said, were going to act. And if we act, its going to be one size fits all. It might be ok for united and american, but it is not going to be good for alaska or jetblue or whoever the case is. Im pretty sure ill be back but im sure that should be the takeaway from today. Seize this opportunity, because if you dont, were going to come, and youre not going to like it. So with that, i will hand the gavel over to mr. Duncan. And i recognize miss napolitano for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. One of the things that you recognize, the selfregulation that youre going to ensure that you Pay Attention to it. But i would wonder whether its going to be a irregularly or inconsistent. How often would you review yourselves to be able to be sure there are problems being addressed . I think in a regular course at united between ourselves internally, our board. How often . Our boards meet five times a year. So, at least that many times. Internally to the open public, we have 186 million customers out there every day. To everyones concerns and thoughts, we hear from them very frequently, with regards to those. I have an old saying from a long time ago that its about proof and not promises. So what youve seen from united, in the 18 months ive been there anyway, everything we said we were going to do, we delivered upon. So, it will be a constant stream of new announcements that enhance what weve talked about. And a followup on the issues. With regard to the policies we put in place, everyone will have to be a judgment. To the rest of you . Congresswoman, in the case of Alaska Airlines, we are constantly holding ourselves accountable from a Customer Service and a Customer Satisfaction standpoint. So much so that we actually have Customer Satisfaction metrics as part of our employee compensation. As part of our employee incentives. Those are watching very closely by all of our employees, all 19,000 of us, and those are addressed every month. Congresswoman i would say the , same for southwest. Customer service measures are particularly our leaders are compensated. So we review those often. Second, with the change, we will no longer overbook as part of the oversale. And we expect that to go down to boarding 80 . And we will watch that every single week. We receive Customer Feedback in multiple forms and we Pay Attention to all of it and take it seriously. We have a team at america that we call our Customer Advocacy Team that consists of Senior Leaders around the airline and we meet monthly to review feedback, review our policies and make changes to continue to , improve. Rep. Napolitano but are they implemented immediately . Theyre implemented as quickly as we can. If it is a simple policy change yes, immediately. , if its something that requires a technology change, it may take us a little longer to get it done. Rep. Napolitano do you have any comments . Yes, thank you, congresswoman. Weve heard a lot about retraining and improvements. And we certainly want to give credit where its due for that. But i do think that theres an underlying issue here, and that is that it really shouldnt take a media event and a viral social media, you know, outcry to make executives in this industry rethink how they treat their customers. Rep. Napolitano thank you. Mr. Mcgee do you have any , comment in the training that is afforded the employees in so in so far as Mental Health is included . Anything to help the employee deal with customers who are acting odd . Or on a personal basis, or selfimprovement, i fly twice a week. So, ive seen it all. Yet. Ive encountered every now and then a very rough attendant. Would it be because of stress, . Would you indicate that any training is given to them to be able to deal with Mental Health problems if they arise . I think its an excellent question, congresswoman. Because as i stated earlier, this is an industry that heavily outsources. Im a former Airline Employee myself. I should point that out. Im a licensed aircraft dispatcher. I spent seven years working in ground operations and management. I was proud to work at panam, an airline that was renowned for Customer Service. But right now, we have a situation where employees are understand tremendous strain. I think its 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 safety and evacuation, and things like that. Weve asked them to be bouncers and Police Officers and all kinds of other things. So theres no question that theres an issue of training as well. Rep. Napolitano i ask any of you to quickly reply. Im running out of time. Simply put, we agree. And in fact, support a united supporting 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. And other things rep. Napolitano does it include Mental Health training . We do have a practice that were implementing for our pilots. Rep. Napolitano may is Mental Health month, i urge you to take a look and make sure that is taken care of. Thank you. Mr. Davis . Mr. Davis 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. Thats why i along with my colleague sent a letter to ask secretary chao asking 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 doesnt happen again. Thats the Customer Service solution that we here on this committee are looking for. I dont believe government can solve your problems. I dont believe this committee ought to solve any Customer Service problem. Frankly, thats 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, ive 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 hubs 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. So im 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 . Mr. Munoz i believe so, yes. Thanknapolitano you, thank you. 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 2000 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 theyve ever been mistreated by an Airline Employee. So, thats good news. However, when asked if they felt the airlines were focused on good Customer Service, 60 said no. Rep. Davis mr. Jordan, one of the most consistent responses in our survey was an overall satisfaction with your airline. Did you hack my system . [laughter] mr. Jordan i do not believe we hacked it. Rep. Davis thank you. Beverly said southwest employees are friendly. Mary from staunton said southwest employees 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 . Mr. Jordan congressman, yes, the nps score is how we measure Customer Service are very high, high 60s to 70s range. They rank in the nordstrom, google, apple nps scores we find that all across. We find that across all airports and the Customer Experience journey, not just due to changes we have made but the wonderful employees of Southwest Airlines. Rep. Davis i fly American Airlines. That is when i fly most. I will tell you, an overwhelming majority of the time, every Airline Employee is very respect for, does their job extremely well, and provides great Customer Service, but it is just like in our business. Sometimes, they do not number the good service. Sometimes, it is that incident that leads to all of you sitting in his hearing room today, talking to us and answering questions. I tried working with many of the airlines to address a Customer Service problem that i saw and witnessed many times. Childrenents line with , getting to the airport and being told they are not sitting by their Young Children on the airplane before they even get there. Many of you. Many of your airline, can you maybe devise a way to fix this . I had to write language called the family flying together act that is part of the faa reauthorization that would require anybody who is purchasing an advanced ticket in young, and if they have children, maybe there is a pop up on the reservation that says you are 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, and you know as well as i do that that is something that needs to be addressed. I was hoping we would not have to address it here, but that is a shining example of when you do not act, we have to. That is exactly what chairman shuster just said. Do not make us have to act and put a onesizefitsall approach to fixing problems that we obviously see it exists. 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 its not addressed. So, thank you. Good comments. Mr. Lipinski. 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 its important context, that the position that the airlines are in right now, financially. I want to commend united and southwest for some of their policy change that they have made in recent weeks. I encourage other airlines to follow suit with those changes. 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 thenRanking Member of the aviation subcommittee, mr. Duncan was chairman of that the federal government will once again after regulate. Things there are some that wa we may need to bring back. Said that united does airlines, but i want to read from uniteds contract carriage. Uniteds solen discretion at the passengers request, and i actually think this is one of the Better Airline orabout things in the contract of carriage. Rule we have to go back to 240 that says an airline with the delayed or canceled flight has to another carrier, if the second passenger can get to the airline more quickly. I know you will balance each other in this type of situation. Restriction in some on how much one airline can charge. It seems to me that if we want to help passengers out and protect passengers, this is not to go after the airline. To have these types of toeements, this is a way make sure more people get to the destination at a closer time to when they were supposed to get there. Each one. En it up to is there a problem . With this be a problem for you to do this . When we start with united could let me start with united. We have used them less and less as we became more reliable. S and money to reinvest in the business to improve reliability. With regards to interline alliances, we are strong believers. Rep. Lipinski how often do you use them . Mr. Kirby a lot less often than we used to because we dont need to. Rep. Lipinski would you be willing to change the contract of the carriage that says happy to request it . Mr. Kirby ill leave that language to someone who is more versed in it. I think its pretty customer oriented and we also dont gouge with our agreements like others. Rep. Lipinski thats good to hear. Congressman, i think ultimately, what youre 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 . So its going to be a small number of customers that need to be accommodated. We do not have official interline agreements. We have informal interline agreements at the airport. A lot of times, what we actually do is we empower our employees to buy tickets on other carriers to move our passengers to their destination. Given theovitch disruptions that are sometimes inevitable in the Airline Industry service is one of our , Top Priorities at american, and were constantly working to improve the tools that we use both behind the scenes and that are available to the employees and selfservice 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. Well continue to do that as well. Rep. Lipinski i do not want to regulate but i know i have to. Id prefer not to. I now know i will act every time have been told at times by southwest that we do not have any interline agreement we cant , put you on another airline. I want to make sure people know to ask if this ever happens to them. Maybe we can solve this problem. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. Mr. Banden. Yes, sir. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Im brian banden, from the state of texas. I was a Small Businessman for over 30 years. I know the importance of Customer Service and courtesy. Running your business according to the golden rule, i dont know how significant it is if you have a disgruntled customer. If you treat everybody like you would want to be treated, i think this world would be a a lot better place. Some of you may have already answered this question. But id 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 ms. 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 id like to know what you guys do in terms of keeping data and Customer Service . Mr. Munoz 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 werent 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 if you did not, why not . And we had pictures to major, whether it is luggage, Customer Service. And the importance of that is clarity and specificity, and more importantly, we take that data immediately as opposed to a week or a month later for people run that airport so they can actually fix it. That is the level of information we correct, and more about the action that supports it versus just gathering of the data. Rep. Banden id like to ask mr. Jordan same question. Mr. Jordan 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 inflight experience. We use that to provide feedback to constantly improve. Rep. Banden i appreciate that very much. Im going to run out of time so i have other things id like to address. In terms weve talked about ticket change costs. I think on the other side of the aisle, they mentioned amazing differences in cost between changing a ticket. Some, is either free, 15. Some of them 200 to 300. And im very disappointed in the differences between that 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 its gotten to be a very onerous task since i fly about six, seven hours a week. And id like to see a little more under want to regulate them im a conservative republican. I dont 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. Thats been another problem weve 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 ive seen. And also heard complaints. So whats going on there . If you dont mind, with united since i fly you most of the , time. Thank you for the business congressman. ,at united, that is one of the things were focused on. How we can run a more reliable operation including the aircraft. One of the things weve recently start said measuring every single step in the process including what you just described. At the gate they should be there , to meet their plane, not just the gate, but the ground crew as well. Thats one of the things were measuring and well have available to every one of our stations. Anytime we fail on that, well have data to go out and figure out corrective action or policy changes or staffing changes or anything we need to address that. Rep. Banden 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 theres differences in between Customer Service and satisfaction. And i think airlines are at a low ebb, right now, in the public opinion. And 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 very much. Mr. . 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 shouldnt be treated that way. But the problem weve 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 for executives, and less for 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. Spirits the worst. I think skyblue is good, but probably alaskas ok. Its 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. Rep. Cohen if you could briefly give me the answer. Yes sir, safety 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 thats done under the guise of the faa, so all of our aircraft, not just United Airlines, but at every airline in the country rep. Cohen and can you get everybody off in three minutes . Yes, sir. And has the continuation of pitch not made it more difficult . Sir, we still meet those standards. Rep. Cohen do you have a film with that which my staff and i can view . We actually do have films of that. Rep. Cohen great. We thank you for filling the void that delta left after mr. Anderson testified before this committee that cincinnati and memphis would not be hurt, they would still be loved and there would not be a changes with the merger. Yesterday, i flew on Air Wisconsin and that is the worst seat i have ever had in my life. I refused it. I made a mistake. Im going to come earlier to get a better airplane. They are buses with propellers. Use Air Wisconsin and put passengers in those awful seats with probably the worst pitch, worse than spirit, and the worst width . Thank you for your business in memphis. We are glad to welcome you on board. We work with regional partners to allow us to have different size aircraft, so we can serve small and mediumsize communities and we are proud to do that. Ms. Philipovitch we know 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. Rep. Cohen that is what i expected. Instead, i got on, you know, air 1941. It was like a civil rights bus from the 1960s that had been preserved and had propellers put on it. Ms. Philipovitch i apologize you had an uncomfortable flight and please know were working to , improve and standardize the experience our customers have, regardless of who operates the flight when they buy an american ticket. Rep. Cohen thank you. Mr. Mcgee, do you believe the pitch and width have hurt customer safety, as well as maybe imperilled diminished comfort . Mr. Mcgee yes absolutely. , its not just a comfort and value issue, its a safety issue in terms of evacuation, its a health issue, as you noted in terms of dvt. Consumers 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 dont reflect realworld 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 dont reflect accurate realworld seat pitch, as you pointed out, so there are Unanswered Questions there about the most primary issue of all, which is safety. Rep. Cohen thank you, sir. My times expired, but to the airlines, think memphis, we need more flights. Thank you very much, mr. Smucker. Mr. Smucker thank you, mr. Chairman. Theres 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 were 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 onetime 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 , uh, 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 im a member of the general public, seeing your reaction, seeing the reaction of united initially and in the few weeks after the incident, theres 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 ill 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 . Mr. Munoz yes, sir. With regards to the initial response, i think it was theres no excuse. It was an act based upon me trying to understand facts and circumstances. Its 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 rep. Smucker could i interrupt you, im sorry. I only have five minutes, i was apolled by your comments the i have only five minutes. I was appalled by your comments the first day, sent a letter the morning of the next day, april 11th, which mr. Chairman, id like to submit into the record if i could do so. Without objection. Rep. Smucker there 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. Its not mentioned in your report. Would you care to respond to that . Sir, we prefered, 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. Rep. Smucker 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. Im very disappointed that youre not changing or at least not mentioning a change to the policy of how you would select a passenger for removal. Thats unbelievable to me that after that has occurred, you would not take, for instance, the very last passenger that shows up at the date rather than , some other algorithm to choose an employee. So im very disappointed in your response to that regard. Mr. Munoz thank you. The situation is a difficult one, because if someone arrives late because they were delivering a baby or something, its 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, making sure crews get there on time, and most importantly, once youre 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 weve covered most of those issues and, of course, well offer incentives and financial remuneration, along with alternative solutions to get to your destination. So its a start, sir, and youll see us move forward youll see , us do that and i hope i do earn your trust. Rep. Smucker thank you. I am out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Chairman. First of all, you know, the optics of what happened are awful for your industry. And i know youre uncomfortable sitting before us, but you know whats 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 lifelong friends, and last summer, i have friends of mine that travel to europe, out of newark, which i present part of it. Rep. Sires 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 cant manage . I mean, youre 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. Industry is getting out of 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. Rep. Sires you can do that with Smaller Airlines and still, you know one big humongous airline. With all due respect, sir, its 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, its 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 dont think i can make it on a plane in 23 minutes. In 3 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 youre saying that it has to do with the price of the ticket and Everything Else, but pretty soon youre going to charge to use the restrooms. Sir, were 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, youre 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 weve 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 didnt 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. Theres 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 theres competition from lowcost 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 lowcost 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 dont need to get into today, but im 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 lowcost carrier, thats 250, thats a 61 increase in seven hours and 36 minutes. There arent 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 thats gone wrong, and im going to give you the opportunity and well start with mr. Munoz, so whats going right . Sir, thank you for asking that question. Whats 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 were finishing first in the four publicly recorded metrics, so weve learned, ive 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. Its improved mightily. Second, its an issue of concern with customers is flexibility. Were almost 100yearold company. Safety is a main driver for us and safety is so important that the rigorous application of policies and procedures is a discipline thats carried over into our Customer Service area. Thats where we have to make the changes, thats been our next sort of approach. Lastly with regards to information, if somethings going wrong, tell me the hell its going wrong and tell me as quickly as you can so you dont upset my timing and schedule. So thats what weve been working on those things and the incident a few weeks ago was a horrible incident that were 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, wasnt that long ago the notion of being able to do email onboard a flight at 30,000 feet would be unheard of, yet were taking that on and well be installing satellite wifi across our fleets so we can improve that part of our Customer Experience. Thats an example, to answer your question very directly, one of the things thats 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 im 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 theyve been in the last three years, 11 points higher. Otp is 11 points higher, mis mishandled bag rates are the lowest theyve 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 lower. A lot is going very well on the Customer Service side. We are in the middle of retrofitting the fleet with a new seat. That is actually so i think there are a number of things that are going better for the customer in terms of Customer Experience. We added more than 10,000 team members. We increased competition by 35 . And our 100 new routes team members have delivered amazing results and removing reliability. Satisfaction going up at a time we are making unprecedented investments in our product and Customer Experience, so were 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, ive often heard my friend, whos 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 doesnt want to have to buy breakfast for some angry customer like mr. Capuano here when they get here because theyve lost their bag or had to wait for an hour to get a cab or had an unpleasant flight experience, and im sure you dont want to deal with that same kind of customer either, but its no wonder that they exist. Weve 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 email or whatever when you get on the plane, its no wonder that people come kind of girded for battle. So i have some sympathy for what youre having to deal with, but this is my question, weve 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 thats going to be controlled by yall, by the airlines, and youll be able to run it as you see fit. Im opposed to that for a number of reasons, primarily because how its going to leave customers in the lurch, but my question is, what do you have to show that means youre 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 youll 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 yall could just tell me some of the things youre 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 were 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 its 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 faas doing a bad job, they do a wonderful job, but the process is designed to be difficult and particularly for making longterm 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. Whats better for our customers is better for the air traffic system, its better for our economy, and we have the same set of incentives. If we can fly more efficiently, thats good for our customers to get in there faster, but also good for fuel burning. Im sorry, we have to take a fiveminute recess at this time. Well be in recess exactly five minutes. Well 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 its got to be somewhat gratifying given the Good Financial Health you appear to be in to proven Warren Buffett wrong. Thats a good thing, when the guy said the industry is a death trap for investors is now investing in airlines. I think thats 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. Theres 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 its every mans way to travel. So, having said all of this, and i dont want to focus on let me start with this, and ill open it up with mr. Munoz, and that is theres 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 youve got capacity so constrained and theres one hiccup, whether its weather or crew or anything, youre going to have a ripple effect. Would reforming atc have an effect . And what kind of an effect . Its 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 wouldnt 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, its 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. Theres one thing you do none of the other airlines operating dont do and that is you put the bags within the ticket price. It seems to me again theres 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 thats because we have separated or the excise tag doesnt apply to baggage. You havent gone down that road. Are the critics right, is there a problem with boarding . I know weve 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 youre 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 whats 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 id 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 thats why were here. Youre not just in the transportation business. Youre in the Customer Service business. And weve 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 ive 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 were seeing, four of the airlines controlling 85 of the traffic, when i fly from hartford, connecticut, i dont have a lot of choices, and thats true for my colleagues and more importantly true for our constituents. They have very little choice. Youre in a near monopoly position and thats why so many of us are concerned and youre 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 dont want to see violence on airlines, but unless we figure out a way to guarantee that customers are coming first, youre going to see more of that. My colleague, richard 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 theres 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 were 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 shouldnt be legislation in place, that i dont 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 couldnt someone roll stairs over . I was getting calls from the plane to my office saying, cant you do something . We can see the stairs. No one will tell us whats 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, youve 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 thats happened, because i think its really important, you know, we talk about the importance of customers being able to vote with their dollars, my constituents dont have that choice. When im looking at flights, i dont have that choice. If i need to be here in time for votes, i dont have that choice. I dont have that. And i can no longer take a 3 00 flight and think im going to get here in time. I have to back it up because i cant 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 thats going to be the first thing on a bill im 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 were 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 dont 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 its 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. Im a frequent flyer, too, fly from the west coast to the east coast, its about a five hour on average flight. By and large it goes pretty well. We note theres 700 million customers that fly successfully every year, and i think thats 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, ok. Not like a landbased vehicle where you can just pull over. You dont 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. Weve all sat there when they are reprogramming the computer, something doesnt quite go right, they have a mechanical issue to look at. Id rather they do than they dont. 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 isnt available because i dont think the airline can keep the seats full, therefore, i dont 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 thats 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 . Thats correct. Thats abolished. For the rest of the airlines, will you quickly on that, did you ever have that or since abolished since this issue . Weve recommitted that we will never remove a seated passenger to accommodate another passenger. Thank you. And for southwest, same thing. Its our intent never to involuntarily deny somebody thats already boarded on to the aircraft. Not aware of us having done it at Alaska Airlines and same, its 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 dont always think theres a legislative remedy from people that arent in business that deal with it day in and day out, so im not quick to think legislation is needed from washington, d. C. , on this issue. I think lets 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 didnt see rule 25, denied boarding, about pulling anybody off the airline. Was there anything in print . No, sir, thats 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 youd 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. Theres a number of things at Alaska Airlines that even with some of the customer accolades weve 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 customerfacing 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 theyll do the right thing and that usually leads to the best outcome for all involved. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. A second. I had a very good experience watching a lady at the counter at the southwest in baltimore during the delay. She handle things like a pro, but she was a assertive enough with them noxious customers to get the job done for the rest of us. There is a very challenging line that has to be there. Alaska, i like your tail the best in best. Think the panel. You probably feel today like a lot of flyers, very claustrophobic and waiting for something bad to happen. I think you for your patience. My colleagues have done a very good job in pointing out some problems. I am not going to pile on. I want to start by thinking the thousands of professional Flight Attendants, pilots, counter work in this industry, who do very good jobs. And work very hard. I think we all can agree that policies and training make a difference. They can do their job, so does having a good Civil Justice system so people can have private recourse and it does not hurt to have a good cell camera. I have from self florida. We had 100 million visitors last year. Industry created 1. 3 Million Dollar jobs with the 44. 5 million payroll in our state. We have to get this right. Have three questions. Maybe one of you would try to answer each of these questions. First of all, i would 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 have talked a lot about overbooking. I would like to understand white might be that unintended consequences and how it might affect customers if we did not allow overbooking. Then i think policy that i know the rigiditates change policies, how extensive it is. I dont understand why in this digital age so do you want to take a shot at those three questions. Thank you for thinking our employees. On overbooking, we use overbooking to take care of that wes of customers would otherwise not be able to accommodate. One of the most common uses is in a situation where someone has a delayed or canceled flight. We will overbook those customers that may be full. What is the number of people to the him as opposed number of people who are accommodated. Sales comeour over from operational issues. Whether issues. At united, about 15 of the time only overbook a fight and we actually have more customer show up then are on the airplane. Time we are able to get volunteers. Particularly now that we have gone up to 10,000 limit, i think we will dry that number close to zero. If we stopped overbooking entirely, there are thousands of customers we either couldnt sell a ticket to or when there is an operational disruption, we couldnt 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 thats 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 thats 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 didnt even come. The chairman today noted that some of the airlines that were invited to this hearing didnt 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 thats the purpose of change fee. Thank you and i yield back. Thank you very much, mr. Woodall . Thank you, mr. Chairman. You know youre having a bad day when youre getting lectured on Customer Satisfaction by congress. Thats 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 . None of you do . Let me ask the other question then, who is it thats controlling the air space there on that runway thats not letting planes come and go . Is it the profitseeking airlines, or is it the consumerfriendly 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 weve 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, im sure folks intended that to be a floor, but it is, in fact, a ceiling that developed in the industry. If you cant roll the stairs to your plane, if you cant take off just because you want to take off, i want to understand if were in the safest Aviation Environment weve 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 nations history . So were the safest weve ever been, were the cheapest weve ever been, and we want to figure out how to do better for consumers and were 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 atlantas a different atlantas 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, deltas going back and forth. We dont 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 anyones airplane model allow me not to purchase a bigger seat if id like one . Has anybody eliminated the larger, more comfortable seats from the model . Nobody on this panel has done that. So we havent eliminated the larger, more comfortable seats. Whose model has added smaller, cheaper seats . Anybody . American added smaller, cheaper seats in the last ten years . Weve changed density on aircraft in some cases where weve added seats, but we havent changed the size of the seats. Has southwest added smaller, cheaper seats . We have moved to a new seat, but its actually wider and more effective pitch. I just cant i just cant understand who it is on this panel that believes we care more about your customers than you do. Ill ask my friends from united, mr. Kirby, youre crunching the numbers day in and day out, how much has united been advantaged in this past threeweek episode . Well, we certainly this was not something we regret and didnt help us financially, but it is going to help us, by the way, be better in the future, because were 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, were 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 Attendant instructions. Your Flight Attendants had instructions dont 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 dont believe that theres anyone in this town that cares more about your customers than you do. I dont believe the lesson of uniteds experience is customers dont 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. Ive 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 wont be repetitious and brow beat the issue. Were 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, ive been flying for a while. Im a little older than i look. Thats what im told, but no, i remember peoples express, who then became continental, who then became united. Their hub in my district, newark airport, for quite sometime. So ive seen the evolution and the consolidation. In some ways its 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, ive had the opportunity to meet with mr. Munoz on several occasions as united has really given back to the community where its hubbard in newark, new jersey. Each year students in my district are interns from north and east orange, jersey city. Its 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 uniteds reputation, but im glad to see Neither Company has responded in the changes that its made to create a more positive experience for your customers. Unfortunately a lot of times my colleagues on the other side talked about regulation regulation regulation. But unfortunately sometimes in the industry, a lot of things are reactive instead of being proactive. Im sure if it wasnt 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 thats what we want. We dont need to sit here and rehash rehash. Everyone knows what happened. How can we Work Together to make the experience more positive for customers. Thats 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 im new to this industry, ive worked in many other industries. Ive 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 doesnt apply to business needs. If theres some way we can do open debate between isles and companies, i think its important. It the old why cant we all get along. Its important to note as we govern the country, govern us, i think its important. The end all, it has to be a customer at the center of the universe from us. I think what youve heard from the panel is just that focus. Thank you. Chairman, ill yield back. Thank you very much. Miss comstock. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I guess weve 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 weve 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 youve come here to outline for us. I hope well 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, its a little different than some of the questions weve had before. I wanted to point out something we highlighted in working group, women in the workforce. Studies show, a little off what weve 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 youre 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 wasnt alerted as i normally would be the flight was canceled. When we got there, quite a few of us it wasnt united, i wont 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 youll 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, ill stay here a little longer, adjust, let me know. Also getting people when youre there in line and in that frustrating situation, all of us have our devices. Its 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 weve 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. Washington journal ill 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 thats one of the most exciting things and we dont have enough time to walk you through it. I mentioned it, the application. Weve 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 its 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 twersdiversity on the board as well. That sets the tone. Others dont have quite that good percentage but were 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. Im 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 id 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 dont want to be overbooked anywhere. When you take my reservation, i expect for you to honor that. Thats 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 thats here, because i have found every time there is a correction, lets give an example, we validate the enormous amount of fees on luggage because of fuel costs. Now were saying, now i heard today, were 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 dont 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. Ive had the counter clerk be so hostile to the the public, dont ask me any more questions, im telling you everything i know. He or she are overwhelmed. I had an example, it was none of you thats 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 youre on their flight. I dont 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 thats 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 were here today. I apologize if we seem frustrated but its my honor to come and reiterate the commitment to americans. Im 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 dont view this as a cost or something thats going to cause us to drive ticket prices up. Mr. Mcgee. Yes, thank you, congresswoman. Theres 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 theres 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 youve hit on a very key issue. Were told if we dont check a bag, were going to see a lower fare. I didnt check a bag yesterday. As i pointed out earlier, on my flight from the airport it was a 250 differential in seven hours. Its very hard to tell consumers they are going to see a lower fare when they do certain things and then they dont. 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 dont get right one day, you might get right the next. To to err is human i would go back. Some of what my colleagues just mentioned, it was equally disastrous. 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 yesterdays battle. What may be supposedly remedied turns out yet to produce another consequence people didnt see coming in term of higher bag pricing or whatever else. My question to each one of you all is to follow up on what was 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. Im going to let scott who has been in this industry and across, he probably has a good view on that. 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 backups in customs. Thats a government action. My colleagues 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. Thats really one of the biggest things we could do to ultimately serve customers better. Thats 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. Ok. Thats one. That would be one i have on my list as well. We dont have the ability ok. Thats one. Also regulation around gds, Global Distribution systems and how we sell and display our products. Relaxation there would be helpful. Ok. We are at two. 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. Youre a general. Could you be more specific. Yall place a lot of stuff on us. What . Im trying to get to three. I havent 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 were not adequately theres 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. Theres a host of specific rules in there. Could you i dont 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 . Im trying to see what he just handed you, then ill come to you, mr. Mcgee. My staff does that to me, so i get it. Caller 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. Its necessary. Yet the transparency on getting a full and complete fare inclusive of mandatory tacks and taxes 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 its been. Thank you. Ive gone over my time. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Im required to call a fiveminute recess at this point. Five minutes. Gerald connolly on the future of health care. The senior white house willspondent for bloomberg be talking about president trumps approach to wall street regulation. Journal is live now. Host it is the washington journal from may 3. The house is expecting to vote on a bill to keep the government open for september. Republican leadership searching for support for their bill that would change the Affordable Care act. James comey will be before the senate. You can see that hearing at 10 00 and watch for it at cspan3. For morepan. Org information. A response to a spending bill that didnt give the
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