Business Travel And The Election

Image: Joseph Sohm

1 of 2 NEXT

After almost two years of campaigning, here is what we know about Democrat Barack Obama's and Republican John McCain's positions on issues that affect business travelers: Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Save for a passing reference to "port security" by Senator Obama in the second debate, the candidates have been mum about the panoply of topics that affect our lives on the road. This information blackout isn't new, of course. Presidential candidates never talk travel issues. Not even Al Gore, who had fronted a Clinton Administration "aviation safety and security commission," created after the TWA Flight 800 crash in 1996.

But just because the soon-to-be President Elect won't talk about business travel and his job comes with a nifty private jet and a cool personal helicopter doesn't mean that he won't have to address our concerns during the next four years. After all, the global business-travel market is worth an estimated $200 billion annually.

When you go to your polling place next Tuesday, keep these presidential-level travel issues in mind. We may not know where Obama or McCain stand, but we know that this is the landscape that all travelers must negotiate during the next four years.

Terror in the Skies
The current iteration of the global war on terror began at the airports on September 11, 2001, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warns that the bad guys know the electoral realities. "Any period of transition creates a greater vulnerability, meaning there's more likelihood of distraction," Chertoff told Bloomberg last week. "You have to be concerned it will create an operational opportunity for terrorists."

The next president will also have to assess the effectiveness of the Transportation Security Administration, which has grown bloated, bureaucratic, and inflexible in just seven years. Critics point out it has done little to secure our passenger-rail system, fully screen cargo on passenger aircraft, or create a viable and acceptably unobtrusive terrorist watch list. The new president's T.S.A. administrator will have to decide whether to lift the current—and much despised—restrictions on in-flight liquids; Chertoff hinted last month that it might be time to eliminate the so-called 3-1-1 rules.

The State of the Airline Industry
The challenges facing the next president and his new Secretary of Transportation are daunting. The six major network carriers have been trying to consolidate for years, but only the proposed Delta-Northwest merger has materialized. The Bush Administration may rule on that deal before it departs, of course, but that will only raise further questions: Are fewer, larger carriers a solution to the endemic problems in the airline industry? Or will further consolidation create airlines that are "too big to fail" and require a federal bailout?

Many critics feel the 1978 deregulation of the airline industry has been a failure. Until this year's financial meltdown, airline re-regulation seemed implausible. But now that the government is taking huge stakes in the financial industry, is it inconceivable that the government might take an ownership position in failing airlines? What of the calls for a passenger's "bill of rights," which would mandate minimum operational standards for everything from timeliness to in-flight service? And here's a scary thought: Airlines continue to outsource aircraft maintenance to third-party contractors around the world and government regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration have neither the money nor the manpower to conduct proper inspections and maintain effective oversight.

1 of 2 NEXT