Major U.S. airlines ran to the government to try to quash competition and a better inflight product option for passengers. Their first attempt, with the Department of Transportation, may not be working. But their next play with TSA can be done in secret and stands a better chance.
Dallas-based JSX flies regional jets that usually hold 50 seats with just 30 first class seats. This allows them to:
- operate from private terminals, instead of the main terminal at airports
- hire senior captains, often recently-retired from American Airlines and Southwest, as well as co-pilots with fewer hours in the cockpit
They do this by selling seats (part 380) on public charter flights (part 135), rather than as a regularly scheduled airline. It’s a brilliant business model that benefits from long-standing regulations, and provides a unique product to customers – show up at the airport 20 minutes before your flight, walk out to a shared private jet.
Former American Airlines Chairman and CEO has waged a public and disingenuous campaign to cajole and scare TSA into quashing competition.
He says that selling flights that depart from private terminals without TSA screening is a “national disaster just waiting to happen” that is “hopefully not being ignored, but not as urgently addressed as I think it should be.” American Airlines sells flights from private terminals without TSA screening, and did so when he was CEO of the airline.
Parker offered weird third person scare stories that don’t at all support his argument
- That a friend bottle of vodka a JSX flight and how can that be permitted? No liquid rules! Of course, airports sell ‘to go’ alcohol to passengers and JSX simply doesn’t have the inflight disturbances and diversions due to unruly passengers that American Airlines faces.
- That a friend was surprised to see JSX “look at [his] ID to make sure it matches the boarding pass” which follows the airline’s TSA-approved security program.
- And that JSX has planes, much smaller and with fewer passengers than American Airlines holds, that could be commandeered by terrorists – though everyone going onto the aircraft is screened for weapons and TSA’s record catching contraband through checkpoints is far from spotless.
Moreover, Parker never mentions or objects to the more than 4 million private flights per year that lack TSA security and indeed usually any security screening at all.
JSX Weapons Detector
It turns out that Parker’s stated concerns about JSX, with its security program that exceeds TSA standards for public charter operations and for the facilities out of which they fly, applies far more to American Airlines-sold and operated services than to JSX. Parker is indicting his own former company.
As noted by Enilria, American Airlines will sell flights departing from private terminals. They promote that TSA is optional.
The ability to customize your origin, destination, arrival or departure time, catering, and depending on your travel needs, private handling and screening as well.
You can choose to use the ‘more economical’ option of going through TSA, or pay American more to leave from a private terminal:
I asked American Airlines whether their security procedures measure up to what JSX puts passengers through – matching IDs (that Parker said was crucial) against government watchlists, scanning everyone for weapons. They chose not to answer, with a spokesperson offering this non-response to the question:
Aviation safety experts and workers, along with bipartisan Members of Congress, have raised serious concerns about security vulnerabilities that exist with scheduled public charter operations. These public charters are putting out a schedule to the public, they sell tickets by the seat and they operate the aircraft with more than nine seats – just like commercial airliners. Yet, they are exploiting a loophole which actively skirts security rules and regulations that were put in place after 9/11 to keep passengers safe. It is appropriate and necessary to have different rules for different operations, but any airline business model built to evade traditional security measures is concerning.
JSX security procedures exceed those of TSA’s Twelve Five Standard Security Program and is TSA-approved. Indeed, TSA expressed no concerns with JSX procedures until (as Parker explains it) the ex-American CEO and Southwest Airlines COO Andrew Watterson met with the TSA Administrator a year ago in an off the record conversation.
Southwest Airlines also, by the way, offers to sell flights from private terminals. In fact, Southwest even promotes the option of both flying private or as a public charter, the latter being what JSX sells.
I asked Southwest whether they match JSX security requirements, and they did not respond.
Separately, I also asked American Airlines the following questions which they would not answer:
- whether they feel that their own FBO departures represent a threat to national security, since that’s what Parker seems to argue?
- if Doug Parker, when he was CEO of American, ever raised the concern that his airline was operating using practices he and they now argue are unsafe?
- whether American has concerns over the safety of Gol flights operated by co-pilots who have under 1,500 hours of flying? Has American used its influence as an owner and codeshare partner to advocate for a change in pilot qualifications at Gol?
None of this effort on the part of American and Southwest is genuine. They are the two large Dallas-based airlines lobbying to shut down a Dallas-based carrier, much as major airlines tried unsuccessfully to shut down Southwest Airlines when it first launched. Behind closed doors American’s current CEO Robert Isom even admits it.
As Robert Isom put it in a meeting with employees, where his comments leaked, “If you don’t have to deal with the same DOT provisions, the same FAA provisions, the same security TSA provisions that’s not fair…. I’m quite certain that the FAA, the DOT, and TSA will take a look at what’s going on and make sure that no one is advantaged..” (Emphasis mine.)
They say that ‘consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,’ we surely can’t expect Parker to refrain from making a case to advance the commercial interest of the company he merged with US Airways (and reportedly Parker himself remains a major shareholder) even when his arguments seem to suggest he believes that airline was operating unsafely under his own watch. And now the pilot union at American alleges significant spikes in safety problems at the carrier… but Parker focuses on imagined threats at a competitor.
