| | | | | |  | | By Kayla Guo and Alex Daugherty | With help from James Bikales
| | — The coming summer of air travel will be a test of the system, as the industry faces challenges from runway collisions to workforces to leadership. — The White House and House Republicans work out a debt ceiling deal. — The Biden administration is pushing female crash test dummies as traffic deaths soar — and meeting headwinds from some conservatives. IT’S TUESDAY: You’re reading Morning Transportation, your Washington policy guide to everything that moves. I’m your host, Kayla Guo, and today's my last MT as I close out my internship. Thanks for reading and reaching out — it's been a blast. Find us on Twitter @kaylaguo_, @alextdaugherty and @TSnyderDC. “Just say those words, we'll whip those birds/Down to Acapulco Bay/It is perfect (perfect) for a flying honeymoon, they do say, hey/Come on, fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away.”
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| | TEST OF THE SYSTEM: Air travel is projected to exceed pre-pandemic levels this summer, and the crush of passengers couldn’t come at a worse time. Airline and air traffic controller workforces are strained, leaving passengers waiting even on normal days. The industry is grappling with a spate of near-collisions. And amid it all, the Federal Aviation Administration is about to lose its acting head, with no permanent leader in sight. Alex has more. — But airlines and DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg took a more optimistic tone heading into the holiday weekend, vowing to work together in an effort to stave off flight delays and cancellations. Last summer’s on-time rate sank below 75 percent from June through August, a number that no one finds acceptable. There was collaboration between the FAA and airlines over a plan to fly fewer but bigger planes out of New York City area airports, where air traffic control staffing levels are at their lowest. — But that’s a short-term solution. Airlines for America President and CEO Nicholas Calio said, “I’m not sure that’s a model that can last forever,” and Senate Aviation Subcommittee Chair Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) called the idea a “band-aid.” But the idea is to use the band-aid to buy time for the airlines to continue their rapid hiring rates and figure out how best to staff flights in a post-Covid world. The airlines acknowledge that more staff is needed to fly planes on time now than in 2019. “Hopefully, the airlines have had a year to learn,” said Jim Higgins, a University of North Dakota aviation operations professor and former pilot. “The trick is going to be, have we learned enough to overcome the additional travelers we’re going to see this summer? If I had to guess, my guess is it would be similar to last summer.” — Despite the challenges, flight cancellations throughout Memorial Day weekend appeared to be relatively minimal. Buttigieg tweeted that cancellation rates were below 1 percent through Sunday.
| | DEAL REACHED: The newly released legislative text enshrining the debt-limit compromise lifts the $31.4 trillion ceiling through 2024 and places new limits on federal spending. But the details included some surprises. — In one unexpected development, the bill would approve all the remaining permits to complete the stalled Mountain Valley Pipeline, an Appalachian natural gas project that has been a top priority of West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito. As POLITICO had reported before the bill’s release, the text makes only modest updates to environmental permitting rules governing both fossil fuel and clean energy projects. This means that the major changes that members of both parties had sought will be left for Congress to hash out for some future legislation. — Expect wrangling on the Hill this week, but our Congress team reports that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his counterpart, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, will likely have the votes to pass the bill this week, according to more than a half-dozen lawmakers and aides from both parties
| | TESTING WOMEN IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT: Congress wants the Biden administration to move faster on addressing the gender gap in vehicle crash testing — something safety advocates have urged for years amid soaring traffic fatalities. NHTSA’s New Car Assessment Program, which rates vehicles’ safety, doesn’t use female crash test dummies in the driver’s seat in a key test, and the female dummy used across tests is a scaled-down version of the male dummy. Advocates say that discrepancy means that hundreds of women needlessly die in crashes every year. Your MT host has more. — Tucked into the fiscal 2023 House bill is language prodding the administration to act. At a budget hearing in April, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) called more funding for female crash test dummies “critical” — sparking mockery from some conservatives, including former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson. — The administration, meanwhile, says it wants to move faster, but it has a problem: money. DOT’s fiscal 2024 budget request asks for $5 million to help NHTSA accelerate the deployment of a more advanced and anatomically accurate female dummy for side-impact crash testing. But the request, and NHTSA’s active rulemaking on dummies, make no mention of the THOR-5F, another advanced female dummy at the top of lawmakers’ and advocates’ wish list. And lawmakers and advocates alike are left scratching their heads why. We also caught up with Chris O'Connor, CEO of Humanetics Group, which develops the THOR dummies. NHTSA has active rulemaking on the male dummy now. And Humanetics completed "quite minor" durability improvements to the female THOR dummy this past fall, as NHTSA requested — so from a technical standpoint, O'Connor said, both dummies are ready to be deployed. DEMS PUSH TRUCK CHARGING CORRIDOR: Democratic lawmakers from California are urging DOT to fork over $700 million to support a multi-state network of charging and hydrogen fueling stations for heavy-duty trucks traversing the West Coast. California, Oregon and Washington applied for funds under DOT’s $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure grant program to help build the project, and 41 lawmakers wrote in a letter led by Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) that the money would be “critical to scaling the zero-emission truck industry and job creation."
| | SAFETY PRESSURE? Ahead of the long weekend, Buttigieg was asked on CNBC about United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby’s comments that the additional fines the Biden administration is proposing for excessive delays could cause potential safety issues — the logic being that an airline could face pressure to fly instead of waiting to avoid a hefty fine. “The idea an airline can’t operate safely while also compensating passengers if you get stuck, by covering your hotel or giving you cash compensation, makes no sense to me,” Buttigieg said. “What I do agree with him on is that we need to grow our air traffic controller workforce.”
| | | | — “See the moments after a passenger opened a plane door during flight.” The Associated Press. — “Self-driving delivery trucks are already on North Texas highways. How safe are they?” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. — "Berlin’s efforts to reduce driving stalled by German car culture." Bloomberg. — "China’s 1st domestically made passenger plane completes maiden commercial flight." The Associated Press. — "Citi Bike, 10 Years old and part of New York’s street life." New York Times. — "A $189 airport travel hack is no longer working very well." Bloomberg. — "Soaring airline customer complaints push global legislators to act." Reuters. | | | | DON’T MISS POLITICO’S HEALTH CARE SUMMIT: The Covid-19 pandemic helped spur innovation in health care, from the wide adoption of telemedicine, health apps and online pharmacies to mRNA vaccines. But what will the next health care innovations look like? Join POLITICO on Wednesday June 7 for our Health Care Summit to explore how tech and innovation are transforming care and the challenges ahead for access and delivery in the United States. REGISTER NOW. | | | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
