With help from Brianna Gurciullo
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Morning Transportation will not be published from Monday, Aug. 26, through Monday, Sept. 2. We’ll be back on our normal schedule on Tuesday, Sept. 3.
Story Continued Below
Editor’s Note: This edition of Morning Transportation is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro Transportation subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. Learn more about POLITICO Pro’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, at politicopro.com.
— A group of international authorities is readying recommendations for the FAA following two Boeing 737 MAX crashes, as the company prepares for getting the grounded planes back in the sky.
— A follow-up to our story about navigation apps ignoring an NTSB recommendation on rail crossings reveals one transit agency’s “Sisyphean” struggle to get its data onto Waze.
— All 50 states asked the FCC to preserve the 5.9 GHz spectrum band for vehicle communications in a letter this week.
IT’S WEDNESDAY: Thanks for tuning in to POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on all things trains, planes, automobiles and ports. Get in touch with tips, feedback or song lyric suggestions at smintz@politico.com or @samjmintz.
“I know the nervous walking / I know the dirty beard hangs / Out by the box car waiting / Take me away to nowhere plains.” (h/t Darell Wilson)
LISTEN HERE: Follow MT’s playlist on Spotify. What better way to start your day than with songs (picked by us and readers) about roads, rails, rivers and runways?
ONE BOEING REVIEW WRAPPING UP SOON? The international group that’s been looking at the FAA’s approval of the automated flight control system on the Boeing 737 MAX will suggest changes to the agency’s process for certifying airplanes as early as next week, CNN reported Tuesday. The FAA has said the Joint Authorities Technical Review is supposed to deliver recommendations by Aug. 30, but a source with knowledge of the process indicated to MT on Tuesday that the timeline could slip. “I say end of the month-ish, with a big emphasis on ‘ish,’” the source said.
The Joint Authorities Technical Review was set up to recommend how the certification process could be made “more robust,” the source said. “Obviously the process had some defects as we can see in this scenario, so the question is how to keep those defects from happening in the future.”
Among the issues the group has homed in on is automation. “As the automation gets more complex, you’re more likely to encounter scenarios where there is no regulation that specifically addresses it, so then what do you do?” the source said. “And that’s where we’re going to have to focus more on using safety as the guideline, rather than compliance as the guideline.” The FAA, as well as the regulators of other nations, also need to mull whether “standards on how long it takes pilots to recognize problems need to be revisited in this new day and age,” the source said.
In other MAX news: Boeing plans to hire hundreds of temporary employees to work on the grounded fleet and prepare the planes for service once regulators clear them to fly, the Seattle Times reports. Meanwhile, the FAA warned airport workers in a notice on Aug. 14 to be careful around the sensors that failed in the two recent 737 MAX crashes, saying they can be damaged during maintenance and service, according to Bloomberg.
If it goes on: Airlines might have to rework their fleets if the MAX grounding continues, according to the top economist at the trade group Airlines for America. Carriers have already suspended some routes, rerouted passengers, acquired used airplanes, sped up other orders or deliveries or scaled back their growth plans for this year, A4A’s John Heimlich said. And if it continues for a long time, “then they’ll have to look at alternative fleet types,” although he thinks the MAX will be back in flight before they have to take such “extreme measures.” Pros can read more from our Brianna Gurciullo.
DOJ TRYING TO BLOCK AIRLINE TICKETING ACQUISITION: The Justice Department has sued to block Sabre’s planned acquisition of Farelogix, as Brianna reports, arguing a merger of the two airline ticketing services could raise prices and hurt quality for consumers. Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim said in a statement that Sabre is aiming to “take out a disruptive competitor that has been an important source of competition and innovation.” The company disputes that characterization, saying the two offer “complementary services” and the “transaction is the continuation of an already successful collaboration between the two companies.”
MAILBAG: Eight aviation groups in a letter called on the FAA to include airspace efficiency as it develops a final rule to revamp commercial space launch licensing. The agency should “develop a performance-based final rule that incorporates airspace efficiency into the licensing process and considers the effects on all” users of the national airspace system, they wrote to new FAA Administrator Steve Dickson. Read more for Pros.
AIRLINES VS. AIRPORTS: A trade group representing airports used an announcement from airlines about record travel expected for Labor Day weekend to renew a push for increasing the passenger facility charge, which passengers pay when they fly and goes toward airport infrastructure improvements. “Airlines Confirm: It’s Time to Increase the PFC,” was the headline of an Airports Council International press release on Tuesday. MT would guess that the airlines, which have fought against increasing the cap on PFC fees, might disagree with that interpretation.
AMTRAK’S GOOGLE REQUEST IGNORED, TOO: The Philadelphia Inquirer this week followed up on your host’s story about how navigation apps have ignored federal safety officials’ requests to add rail crossing data. The Inquirer’s report has some interesting new details, including that Amtrak’s police department asked Google last month to add grade crossing alerts to its maps, but it so far hasn’t received a reply.
And then there’s this: Pennsylvania transit operator SEPTA has tried to make its 148 crossings safer by collaborating with Waze, the mapping app owned by Google, but it’s been a frustrating process for transit officials. According to reporter Jason Laughlin: “Waze allows SEPTA to add notifications of those crossings to the app but won’t make them permanent. So SEPTA has made staff engage in the Sisyphean task of entering the locations of all the agency’s grade crossings onto Waze every morning.” A SEPTA official said the process can take hours.
STATES ASK FCC TO KEEP SPECTRUM FOR VEHICLE COMMS: The transportation heads of all 50 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico wrote to the FCC this week asking the agency to preserve the 5.9 GHz band of spectrum for vehicle communications. As your host reports, the letter comes a few months after FCC chief Ajit Pai indicated he’s interested in opening up the valuable band to other users like wireless and cable companies. Safety advocates and automakers have said that despite a lack of cohesion in the auto industry about how best to proceed with so-called V2X technology, the FCC shouldn’t mess with the existing system.
TRUMP’S AUTO EMISSIONS ROLLBACK IN ‘DISARRAY’: A senior adviser to President Donald Trump summoned three automakers to the White House last month where they were pressed to stick by the president’s auto emissions plan, The New York Times reports. One of the three (which were Toyota, Fiat Chrysler and General Motors) is planning to stick to the current federal standards, joining a group of five other automakers that have sided with California, Coral Davenport and Hiroko Tabuchi report.
Trump’s mood: “Mr. Trump, described by three people as enraged by California’s deal, has also demanded that his staffers step up the pace to complete his plan,” the story says. And at one White House meeting, “Trump went so far as to propose scrapping his own rollback plan and keeping the Obama regulations, while still revoking California’s legal authority to set its own standards.”
— “Waymo will test autonomous cars in Florida downpours.” Orlando Sentinel.
— “Days after moped-sharing service launches, one of the vehicles crashes.” DCIst.
— “Service animal proposed rule under OMB review.” POLITICO Pro.
— “The car seat industry helped delay a child safety regulation — again.” ProPublica.
— “South Korea fines Volkswagen over Dieselgate.” POLITICO Europe.
DOT appropriations run out in 40 days. The FAA reauthorization expires in 1,501 days. Highway and transit policy is up for renewal in 406 days.
