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BELLEVILLE NEWS DEMOCRAT
Frequent-flier miles pay off: Costello is key aviation leader
BY DAVE MONTGOMERY
March 9, 2008
WASHINGTON --Like nearly every other member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Ill., is a frequent-flier, bounding back and forth between airports in St. Louis and Washington at the beginning and end of every congressional workweek.
For Costello, chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, the trips are more than just a tedious aerial commute. They constitute vital fact-finding missions.
Whenever he travels, the Belleville Democrat never fails to question fellow passengers about their flying experiences. The feedback, Costello said, provides him with grass-roots research that helps him perform his duties as a leading congressional watchdog over the nation's aviation system.
Since becoming chairman after the Democratic take-over of Congress more than a year ago, Costello has molded his subcommittee into a tough critic of the Federal Aviation Administration, a striking change from when Republicans dominated the panel.
"That's one of the things I committed to when I took over as chairman, is that we will ask tough questions," Costello said during a recent interview in his fourth-floor office in the Rayburn House Office Building. "We will provide aggressive oversight, and we will hold the FAA's feet to the fire, as well as others in the system."
While that posture frequently puts Costello and his subcommittee in an adversarial role against the Republican administration, his reputation is that of a hard-working legislative boss who remains attentive to colleagues on both sides of the aisle and avoids displays of partisanship.
"He's gotten off to a very good start as chairman," said Rep. Thomas Petri, R-Wis., the senior Republican on Costello's committee. "He's very concerned that we try to do a good job for the taxpayers."
House Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., whose committee includes Costello's aviation panel, praises the subcommittee chairman as a "superb" leader "who has taken charge of an extraordinarily complex area."
Costello also has earned high marks among the diverse constituencies -- Costello calls them "stakeholders" -- that form the nation's aviation community. Groups with oft-competing agendas -- ranging from air-traffic controllers and passenger advocates to airline lobbying groups -- all describe Costello as knowledgeable, even-handed and clearly committed to improving a troubled system.
The 58-year-old lawmaker, who grew up in East St. Louis, has taken a keen interest in transportation issues since entering Congress in August 1988. After nearly two decades in the 435-member House of Representatives, he ranks 58th in overall seniority and is the 34th most senior Democrat, just behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.
Together with a counterpart subcommittee in the Senate, his aviation panel is the prism through which Congress views aviation, and the picture is far from pretty. Accounts of hours-long delays on tarmacs, overworked and understaffed controllers and a troubling rise in near-misses on runways -- euphemistically called "runway incursions" -- represent some of the horror stories that flow into the subcommittee.
More passengers are flying than ever before -- 800 million -- and the number is expected to eclipse 1 billion by 2015. Last year was the second worst for airline delays, behind the year 2000.
The bureaucracy charged with overseeing the airlines and safeguarding passengers is also beset by problems. Senators are holding up the confirmation of a new FAA administrator to protest airline congestion in the Northeast. A House-passed $68 billion bill to reauthorize the FAA for another four years also has stalled in the Senate.
The latest blow to passenger confidence in airline safety came last week, when the FAA fined Dallas-based Southwest Airlines $10.2 million for allegedly flying old airliners with fuselage cracks after failing to have them inspected. Southwest officials said they had been working with the FAA and thought the matter had been resolved. They said the planes in question were all safe.
Amid the unsettling headlines, there are also bright spots. According to the FAA, there have been only two major U.S. crashes over the past seven years, one in November 2001 and another in August 2006. The agency's chief financial officer, Ramesh K. Punwani, calls this "the safest period in aviation history."
From his vantage point, Costello sees a mixed picture. "The good news is that our system is the safest in the world," he says. "And the bad news is that we're being challenged by the fact that more people are flying today than ever before."
Costello thinks the Bush Administration has dropped the ball in giving aviation the attention it needs. He said he plans to pressure the two nominees in this year's presidential race to commit to making aviation a "major priority" after the winner enters the White House next January.
"This is not partisan at all," he says. "I'm not a very partisan person, and I think most people will tell you that. But many of the business people who are involved in aviation will tell you that this administration has not made aviation a priority."
Costello's impatience was on display in early February when he presided over a hearing with FAA officials to review the agency's budget request for the 2009 fiscal year. Costello called the $14.6 billion budget "simply inadequate to meet the growing demand in travel and to keep pace with infrastructure needs of our aviation system.
"It's very difficult for me to understand why the administration wants to cut the FAA's total funding request by 1.8 percent at the same time it predicts that by 2014, without any change to the current air-traffic system, delays will be 62 percent higher than today," said the subcommittee chairman.
Costello has spotlighted two particularly worrisome trends: near-misses on runways and a precipitous decline in the number of air traffic controllers. In the February hearing, Costello said 3,300 controllers have left since 2005, a rate of attrition that is 23 percent higher than the FAA projected.
"We are headed toward a crisis if the FAA does not acknowledge that it has a serious controller-staffing problem," Costello said. Citing a study by the Government Accountability Office, Costello said the rate of runway incursions in 2007 -- 6.05 incidents per million operations -- was the highest since 2001. There have been 10 severe incidents in the first quarter of 2008, he said.
FAA spokeswoman Tammy Jones said the agency has a "professional relationship" with the subcommittee chairman and is working aggressively to correct problems in the system. "We've worked with the entire aviation community to make the U.S. aviation system the safest in the world," she said.
Since taking over as subcommittee chairman in January 2007, Costello has devoted roughly half his time to aviation issues, working with a diverse array of interests to find consensus on thorny issues.
On a typically exhaustive day last week, he had a 7 a.m. staff meeting, then presided over a closed two-hour discussion with more than 40 aviation "stakeholders" representing varied points of view. Later in the day, a group of aviation representatives from Indonesia met with him to express their interest about bringing their service to the United States.
Kate Hanni, a California real estate agent who was once stuck on a tarmac for more than nine hours, said she became a lasting fan of Costello's after he helped advance her cause for a passenger's bill of rights.
As a result of Costello's efforts, the House-passed FAA legislation now pending in the Senate would require airports and airlines to come up with a plan to help passengers endure tarmac delays, including adequate food, water and ventilation.
"He's a good man," said Hanni, who has been described as the "Ralph Nader of the Skies."
Pete Bunce, president and chief executive officer of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, calls Costello a "consensus-builder" who tries to meld varying points of view into a solution. Costello's approach, he said, is: "I want to make this better. I want to make it work."
Then there is Jerry Costello, airline passenger. He leaves his home in Belleville at the start of the week, heads to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and boards a nonstop American Airlines flight to the nation's capital. After Congress quits for the week, he's airborne again, heading back toward the metro-east.
Despite the vast litany of problems aired in his subcommittee, Costello says he has relatively few gripes as an air traveler and commends the service aboard American. But whether he's waiting at the terminal or settling into his coach-class seat, Costello always reaches out to fellow travelers to hear what's on their minds.
"We have been very inclusive in seeking as much information as possible," he said. "I get a lot of feedback."
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