[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Airline, FAA staff switch seats often[/FONT] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Regulators come from, and go back to, industry positions[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Last updated April 17, 2008 8:27 p.m. PT[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]By RITA BEAMISH AND SHARON THEIMER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
[/FONT] WASHINGTON -- What the airline industry wants from Washington it often gets, and no wonder. The people who regulate airlines on one day can become company executives the next -- and the other way around.
Industry leaders who were once under the Federal Aviation Administration's authority now sit in top positions at the agency. Many former FAA officials and congressional aides have found lucrative jobs in the air travel industry or with its lobbying groups. One top official left the FAA two years ago to become the airline industry's top lobbyist.
Just Thursday, the law firm Jones Day announced that former FAA attorney Andrew Steinberg, until recently the Transportation Department's assistant secretary of aviation and international affairs, will join the firm's government regulation practice as a partner.
Throw in millions of dollars in campaign and lobbying money, and factor in the airlines' importance to lawmakers' home cities and states, and it adds up to a powerful industry that even some of the nation's most frequent fliers -- members of Congress -- can be reluctant to tackle. Broad deregulation and multibillion-dollar government bailouts are among the industry's major victories in recent decades.
The FAA says it hires experienced people who understand how airlines operate, and that its ethics rules prohibit officials in many cases from regulating their former employers. However, it plans to expand restrictions on safety inspectors who quit to take jobs with airlines. Former FAA employees who earned more than $148,000 there already are barred from contacting the FAA on behalf of new employers for a year. All former FAA employees are banned for two years from contacting the agency about subjects they worked on during their final year with the government.
The FAA plans to extend the ban for safety inspectors so they can't work on inspection issues for the first two years at a new job, spokeswoman Laura Brown said.
Airlines have had few problems finding lawmakers to compliment them or help them. This year's presidential candidates are no exception, according to correspondence from the candidates, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Two months after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Sen. John McCain wrote to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta urging him not to let his agency's new focus on airline security distract it from a review of a proposed business deal between American Airlines and British Airways. Though an obscure issue for most Americans, airlines compete fiercely for international routes.
At the time, McCain was the top Republican on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which handles airline issues. Mineta assured McCain he wouldn't rush a decision.
Sen. Barack Obama, then an Illinois state lawmaker, pressed Mineta to approve United Airlines' application for a $1.8 billion federal loan guarantee, writing that the economic health of Illinois was "inextricably linked with United Airlines' financial condition."
Despite pressure from Obama and other Illinois lawmakers, the government turned down that and other loan applications from United, rejections that forced it to go through bankruptcy proceedings to cover its debts.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Mineta in 2006 to consider JetBlue Airways' application for permission to offer flights from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport to Cancun in Mexico.
"JetBlue hopes to offer low fare connecting service to Cancun from these important parts of New York," wrote Clinton, D-N.Y., "and I am hopeful that their plans for expanding service will produce positive economic and other benefits to New York and our nation."
JetBlue got the route.
