Washington Wire - 1996-07-29

<H1> Washington Wire</H1><H3>House oks Ticket Tax</H3>The<B> Senate</B> has cleared legislation that would reinstate the lapsed aviation taxes-including the 10 percent ticket tax-until April 15, 1997. Although the bill as a whole was designed to provide tax breaks for small businesses, it also was used by proponents to reimpose the aviation levies. The <B>House</B> earlier passed the same bill without the aviation tax rider.

A conference committee composed of members of both houses must be appointed to determine the final makeup of the legislation. That conference is expected to be held in August. The aviation tax reinstatement also applies to the $6 per person international departure tax, as well as a 6.25 percent air cargo waybill tax and a non-commercial jet fuel tax.

<H3>ATA Sets Interline E-Ticket Standards</H3>The <B>Air Transport Association</B>, which represents the nation's carriers, has approved an industry standard that will allow ticketless travel to be sold on an interline basis. Although several carriers already have their own systems for selling and issuing electronic tickets, so far interlining, or tickets using more than one airline, have not been sold this way.

The ATA said the new standard defines the elements of an electronic ticket, the messages airlines and travel agents will have to use for conducting electronic transactions and the computer standards needed to transmit data. It will be up to individual airlines to implement agreements with each other to use the new system. Several airlines are expected to offer the electronic ticketing option beginning this fall, the ATA said.

<H3>'Bigger' Black Boxes</H3>The <B>Federal Aviation Administration</B> has proposed an increase in the data capacity of commercial airline flight data recorders, or "black boxes."

The proposed rule requires that the number of specific categories of flight information recorded by the boxes would increase from 11 to 17 for older aircraft and to 88 for aircraft certified in the future. The rule also would mandate a retrofit of the affected aircraft within four years of final adoption of the rule. Cost to the industry of the proposed retrofitting is estimated to be $316.4 million.

Although the <B>National Transportation Safety Board </B>had encouraged the FAA to boost the recorders' capacity, NTSB chairman Jim Hall said he is "discouraged" by the FAA's proposed regulation. Hall pointed to the protracted timetable adopted by the FAA for the retrofitting of aircraft, saying it should be done immediately for <B>Boeing</B> 737 aircraft and on a faster timetable for all other types of aircraft. Hall explained that two unsolved 737 accidents "provide grim testimony to the importance of better data recording capabilities." The 737 crashes that Hall referred to took place in 1991 in Colorado Springs and in Pittsburgh in 1994.

<H3>Blowing The Whistle</H3>Transportation Secretary Federico Pe&ntilde;a is backing whistle-blower legislation under consideration in <B>Congress</B>, saying it would induce aviation employees to report safety violations to the government.

In a letter to Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the <B>House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee,</B> Pe&ntilde;a noted that the <B>Federal Aviation Administration</B> has a safety hotline that allows individuals to anonymously bring safety information to the agency's attention. However, he said, "it can be impractical in some cases to aggressively pursue safety concerns under these limitations." The bill would safeguard airline workers' jobs while providing needed information to the government, he said.