The Fallout of Sequester Cuts

While every community has, in some way, been affected by the "sequester" imposed on March 1 of this year, it took almost 2 months for the general public - the traveling kind anyway - to start feeling its widespread effects. On Sunday, April 20th, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration furloughed all 47,000 agency employees, including almost 15,000 controllers, and closed 149 contract air traffic control towers in an effort to meet the imposed budget cuts of approximately $600 million this year.

This step caused more than 2,250 flight delays on Monday and Tuesday. The airports hit hardest on Monday were Charlotte, which had more than one third of its flights delayed, and New York's LaGuardia airport, with over half of the scheduled flights leaving or arriving late.

According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, 5,800 flights were delayed across the U.S. - including weather-related delays -  in the first three days of the furloughs compared with 2,500 delays in the corresponding period a year ago.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/04/24/4001009/another-day-of-flight-delays-in.html#storylink=cpy

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta stated on Wednesday that flight delays in the United States linked to the furlough of thousands of air traffic controllers have not been as bad as expected so far. According to him, the agency could not find the kind of "sizeable" non-payroll budget cuts that would have avoided furloughs and the resulting flight delays. It has cut spending on contracts, information technology, travel and other non-payroll expenses, but since 70 percent of its operations budget goes to pay it was left with no other choice.

US Airways, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, and Southwest Airlines have warned that furloughs could cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year in lost revenue.

"We can't do this for long without having major disruption to the flying public," US Airways CEO Doug Parker said in an interview on Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is currently reviewing a motion filed last Friday, April 19th, by two airline industry associations, Airlines for America (A4A) and the Regional Airline Association (RAA), requesting a moratorium of the tarmac delay rule which places a three-hour limit on the length of time airlines can keep passengers waiting inside planes on the tarmac without giving them the opportunity to return to a terminal. Airlines can be fined as much as $27,500 per passenger for violating the limit.

The Associated Press writes that "under growing pressure, the Obama administration signaled Wednesday it might accept legislation eliminating Federal Aviation Administration furloughs blamed for lengthy delays affecting airline passengers, while leaving the rest of $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts in place."

Author: Heidi Lind, International Group Coordinator, BridgehouseLaw Charlotte

Complaints About Changed Pat-Downs at Airports

As previous reported on our blog, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has changed the way it manually searches passengers. In the three weeks since the TSA began more aggressive pat-downs of passengers at airport security checkpoints, traveler complaints have poured in.

As reported in today's NY Times, some offer graphic accounts of genital contact, others tell of agents gawking or making inappropriate comments, and many express a general sense of powerlessness and humiliation. In general passengers are saying they are surprised by the intimacy of a physical search usually reserved for police encounters.

The agency has so far responded to the complaints by calling for cooperation and patience from passengers, citing polls showing broad support for the full-body scanning machines. Still, it remains to be seen whether travelers approve of the pat-downs, especially as millions more people experience them for the first time during the holiday travel season.

Critics also question whether the pat-downs will survive legal scrutiny. On Tuesday, two pilots filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, claiming that the new screening procedures violate Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. But legal experts are divided over whether the courts will find the searches reasonable.

“For Fourth Amendment purposes, you can’t touch somebody like this unless you’re checking them into a jail or you’ve got reasonable suspicion that they’ve got a gun,” said John Wesley Hall, a criminal defense lawyer who specializes in search and seizure law. “Here there is no reasonable suspicion,” he said. “It’s the pure act of getting on a plane.”

But Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, said the courts had generally supported the government’s claims in cases involving airport screening, although new cases would have to balance the more invasive nature of current search procedures with the government’s security needs. “Reasonableness is a murky standard, so there’s room for a new legal challenge,” Professor Kerr said. “But the tenor of earlier cases is pretty deferential to the government.”

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has also filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that the body scanners violate Fourth Amendment protections as well as other federal laws. The group is weighing how to respond to the pat-downs, calling for a stronger response from the government to passenger concerns.

In an effort to give travelers more of a voice, groups including the privacy center, the U.S. Travel Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, are soliciting feedback about passengers’ experiences at airport checkpoints, collectively gathering more than 2,000 reports since the new pat-down policy took effect late last month.

“What I’m hearing is some real inconsistency,” said Kate Hanni, executive director of FlyersRights.org, which operates a hot line for passenger complaints. “There seems to be a huge variation in how they’re patting people down.”

Representatives from the various groups say reports about security agents’ behavior run the gamut from respectful and apologetic to aggressive and hostile, with male and female passengers seemingly equally bothered by the searches. Disabled travelers, parents traveling with children, victims of sexual assault and people with medical devices or health issues have expressed concerns about how the new policy affects their ability to fly.