The Department of Transportation took the rare opportunity to rankle against a study that suggest the Passenger Bill of Rights recently passed by Congress to keep airline passengers from getting stuck on a tarmac for hours is hurting air transportation.
The study, which was paid for by aviation consultants, says the new law hurts consumers instead of helping them because more flights were canceled in May 2010 than in 2009.
Naturally, DOT thinks this is just not true, as Congress would never pass a law that hurts consumers under the guise of helping consumers. So first it blasts the fact the authors are airline consultants and then blasts the study.
“Airlines know the rules and they know they have to take passenger protections into account when making scheduling and operational decisions,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “The Department of Transportation is committed to protecting the rights of airline passengers — starting with firm limits on tarmac delays — and no one should be misled by this unreliable study.”
The “unreliable” part of the study is that the study only looked at one month of data — in part because there was only one month of data available since the law was passed. In that small sample, cancellations jumped 30 percent in May compared to the same month in 2009.
The DOT called this a “slight” increase and noted that when you manipulate the data — something the consultants should have done to provide results more favorable to the DOT, cancellations are actually down. (We’re not making this up,) this is what the DOT says:
“While there was a slight increase in airline cancellations in May 2010 compared with May 2009, an analysis of May cancellations over the last 15 years shows that cancellations in May 2010 were below average. In fact, the rate of airline cancellations in May 2010 was below the average rate for all 15 previous Mays with comparable data: 1.24% in May 2010 compared to the average of 1.51%.”
In fairness to the DOT, tarmac delays are down significantly during May, as thousands of fewer passengers have been stuck on the runway. Instead, they were back in the terminal trying to reschedule their canceled flight. The DOT doesn’t count that — but we’re sure, if it can figure out a way to find more favorable math, it will — changing a potential minus into a plus.
