Trump will push to expand drilling in Arctic, Atlantic
United Airlines moved to staunch criticism and any customer defections by reaching a settlement Thursday with a passenger dragged off one of its planes two weeks ago and issuing new policies designed to prevent similar customer-service failures.
On April 9, Kentucky physician David Dao was forcibly removed from a flight after refusing to give up his seat to a crew member. The incident ignited a debate about poor service and a lack of customerfriendly policies on U.S. airlines.
United and lawyers for Dao declined to disclose financial terms of the settlement Thursday. Earlier, United announced steps it would take to reduce overbooking of flights. Among other things, the airline said it will raise the limit on payments to customers who give up seats on oversold flights to $10,000, and it will improve training of employees.
Dao’s lead attorney, Thomas Demetrio, praised the airline and its CEO, Oscar Munoz, for accepting responsibility and not blaming others, including the city of Chicago, whose airport security officers yanked Dao from his seat and dragged him off the United Express plane. Dao never filed a lawsuit against United, but Demetrio had said legal action was likely.
Dao was waiting to fly to Louisville, Kentucky, on April 9 when the airline decided it needed four seats for Republic Airline crew members who needed to travel to work another United Express flight in Louisville the next morning. When Dao and his wife were selected for bumping, he refused to leave.
Video of the incident has sparked more than two weeks of withering criticism and mockery of United. Munoz initially blamed Dao, but later said he was horrified by the event and called it a failure on United’s part.
New policies enacted
On Thursday, United released a report on the incident that outlined new policies to prevent a repeat. The airline vowed to reduce, but not eliminate, overbooking — the selling of more tickets than there are seats on the plane.
United won’t say whether ticket sales have dropped, but the airline’s CEO acknowledged the Dao incident could be damaging.
“I breached public trust with this event and how we responded,” Oscar Munoz told The Associated Press. “People are upset, and I suspect that there are a lot of people potentially thinking of not flying us.”
To head off customer defections, United had already announced that it will no longer call police to remove passengers from overbooked flights, and will require airline crews traveling for work to check in sooner.
President Donald Trump will take a major step Friday to expand oil and gas drilling off U.S. shores, directing the Interior Department to lift restrictions that President Barack Obama imposed in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. But local political considerations and the global energy market are likely to influence future exploration far more than an executive order in Washington.
Several industry officials and experts predict that oil and gas firms will bid on areas the administration plans to open to drilling, including those off the East Coast. But the targeted Arctic areas are much less attractive to investors right now, and even potential drilling in the Atlantic could be complicated by long-standing resistance from coastal communities.
Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former Obama energy and environment adviser, said that while the Trump administration can rescind the former president’s efforts to end exploration in the two regions, that process would be complex and involve at least two years of revamping the government’s long-term drilling plans.
“The question then is, does anybody show up, and does anybody want these (leases)?” Bordoff said. “It depends quite a bit on what the oil market looks like in two years.”
If it looks anything like it does today, with relatively low oil prices and most industry growth taking place onshore, Trump’s new policy might have little practical effect.
National Ocean Industries Association President Randall Luthi, who headed the Minerals Management Service under President George W. Bush, said what matters most is that there has been “just a complete change of attitude” toward offshore development since Trump took office.
The hope with the executive order is “that once the economics fall into place, the federal and regulatory regime will be right for increased leasing off the outer continental shelf,” Luthi said.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has made clear he wants to boost drilling in federal waters to generate more royalties. While this money goes directly to the U.S. treasury, Zinke suggested in a speech Tuesday that the royalties should be spent on a maintenance backlog within the national parks system.
“If you go back to 2008, the department made $15.5 billion more a year, just in offshore, than we do today,” Zinke said. “That’s enough to pay for infrastructure.”
But even with the new administration’s support for offshore drilling, opposition remains intense among politicians of both parties in the Southeast.