Air travel woes put Buttigieg in hot seat
Southwest debacle, FAA outage spark demands for action
WASHINGTON — Appearing on late-night television in September, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg expressed confidence that airlines would improve their performance after a dismal summer of flight delays and cancellations.
“I think it’s going to get better by the holidays,” Buttigieg told the host, James Corden.
His prediction did not age well.
Around Christmas, a winter storm plunged Southwest Airlines into an operational meltdown, causing thousands of flights to be canceled and stranding passengers for days during the busy holiday travel season. And last week, a Federal Aviation Administration system outage forced departures to be halted nationwide for about 90 minutes, setting off another wave of chaos at airports around the country.
The back-to-back air travel debacles have placed an unwelcome spotlight on Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who rose from obscurity to contend for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and later became the first openly gay person to be confirmed by the Senate to a Cabinet post.
Until the past few weeks, Buttigieg, 41, had enjoyed a relatively smooth glide as transportation secretary. He has traveled the country promoting the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law, appearing with grateful local leaders to trumpet the money headed their way. He has also been a go-to messenger for the White House on topics beyond roads and bridges, jousting on Fox News and appearing on Sunday talk shows to promote President Joe Biden’s agenda.
But the recent aviation woes present a formidable challenge for a Cabinet member whose prior managerial experience came on a far smaller stage. Even before Southwest’s meltdown, the Transportation Department received a flood of consumer complaints about flight delays and cancellations, and Buttigieg faced calls to take more aggressive action to penalize airlines for their failings.
“Unfortunately, the Department of Transportation has been hesitant to hold the airlines accountable,” said John Breyault, the vice president for public policy at the National Consumers League. “While Secretary Buttigieg has talked a tough talk, particularly over the past few months, we have yet to see that really translate into action.”
Buttigieg responded to the Southwest fiasco by calling the disruptions unacceptable and reminding the airline of its obligations to consumers, including providing prompt refunds for canceled flights and reimbursing travel expenses.
“Southwest is responsible for getting their house in order,” Buttigieg said in an interview. “But what we’ll be doing is putting them under a microscope, both in terms of their customer service and whether they’re living up to that responsibility, and what they have to do in order to not be as vulnerable in the future.”
The FAA outage, which occurred when a system that sends safety alerts to pilots went down, fell more directly under Buttigieg ’s watch, and it came at a time when the FAA lacks a permanent leader. Buttigieg quickly took responsibility for the mess, telling reporters, “When there’s a problem with a government system, we’re going to own it, we’re going to find it, and we’re going to fix it.”
The FAA said Thursday a preliminary review of the incident found that contract personnel had “unintentionally deleted files” while working on the system.
Buttigieg became transportation secretary in early 2021, as demand for air travel was rebounding following its steep decline at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic. His tenure has coincided with a period when airlines have struggled with staffing issues and travelers have endured a slew of mishaps.
Last year, 20.4 percent of scheduled flights were delayed and 2.3 percent were canceled, according
to FlightAware, a flight tracking service. Both figures were up from 2021, when 16.1 percent of flights were delayed and 1.5 percent were canceled. In the first three quarters of last year, the Transportation Department received nearly 49,000 consumer complaints about air travel, an increase of 27 percent from the same period the year before and far higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Buttigieg pointed to a number of steps his department had taken over the past year to protect air travelers. In August, the department proposed tightening the rules for when airlines are obligated to provide refunds to customers. In September, it rolled out an online dashboard that shows the services that airlines have committed to providing travelers in the event of delays or cancellations. Administration officials said its creation had
spurred airlines to improve their policies.
Under Buttigieg, the Transportation Department has also fined air carriers $16 million, including $12 million for issues related to customer
refunds. Buttigieg said the penalties assessed last year amounted to a record for the agency.