A Questionable Approach

Reading the mission of the Business Travel Coalition (BTC), via its website (www.btcweb.biz), finds the following: “Our organization seeks to bring transparency to travel industry policies and practices so that customers can influence industry and public policy issues of strategic importance to them.†Founded in 1994 and based in Radnor, PA, the BTC does a good job of getting its PR into the general media. Its most recent position, however, is one that seems a bit farfetched.  On June 1, BTC came out in support of a call by the U.S. House to have the General Accountability Office (GAO) study the “best use of a Dallas Love Field closed to commercial airline traffic.†This falls in line with BTC’s other position concerning Love: It is calling for Southwest Airlines to move all its airline operations over to DFW, which it calls underutilized.  A more logical and far-thinking proposal came recently from DFW itself – a call for a regional authority to oversee the airports in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex. While quite restrictive in its original outline, DFW has at least opened the door to a new approach. In line with that should be the outright repeal of the Wright Amendment. Let the market forces determine air carrier growth in the Metroplex, not a federal law that really has created for a different era. Dallas-Ft. Worth today is a massive population base that could use regional thinking, not restrictive thinking.  The BTC proposal only appears to cloud up even more a very murky issue.  Thanks for reading.  jfi