Pete Buttigieg has been a particularly consistent secretary of the Department of Transportation. During his tenure, the agency adopted a slew of new consumer protection measures and generally took a more active stance in regulating and sanctioning the industries under its umbrella.
As Buttigieg prepares to return to living as a private citizen, he sat down with USA TODAY in New York to reflect on his time in the department and talk about what he hopes Travelers will see in the next administration. He also said he was mentally preparing to become a regular member of the traveling public again — he just signed up for Global Entry — and took a moment to remind everyone why fish divers, which the DOT funds, exist in places where fishing is an important industrial and recreational sector. activity, are so important.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reflects on his time in the department before the new administration change.
Q: You passed and implemented many consumer protection measures during your tenure as DOT Secretary. Which of these provisions are you most proud of?
Buttigieg: Well, I’m very proud of the automatic refund rule and now the law for two reasons. One of them is the simple fact that people get their money. But the great thing about this provision is that there is also an indirect effect: by changing the standard to make refunds automatic, it actually changes the economics of the flight, so an airline has to think twice about something like a realistic planning.
I also think that the dashboard work was a powerful lesson in how good information and transparency can lead to very concrete results, because within days of us notifying the airlines about the dashboard, they actually changed their written policy, which now is enforceable and supported by our department.
Q: What should travelers know about how the consumer protections your department has implemented might change under a new administration? Are you afraid they will be reversed?
B: With any good policy that we believe in, I worry about policy changes in the future, but I would like to say a few things that should be reassuring.
One, when it comes to things like the refund rule, it’s not just a rule, it’s now a law. It is supported by the FAA reauthorization, which means that automatic reimbursement provisions are something that would require an act of Congress to undo, and were done on a bipartisan basis.
The second thing I would say is that this work has such bipartisan support among the traveling public that undermining it would have real consequences.
Q: One of the biggest issues we’ve seen during your tenure is FAA staffing. What is the route there?
B: To put it succinctly, the FAA workforce was declining, then it stabilized under the Biden administration, and now it’s actually going up. It’s not that we got it done overnight, but that we changed the trajectory from a problem that was getting worse to a problem that was getting better.
I am not here to pretend that the problems in some sectors of air traffic control are not real. They are. It’s something that has sometimes set my hair on fire, so we took action and changed the texture.
Whenever there is legitimate criticism or an issue within our control, we naturally want to address it, and we do, but they cannot be used as an excuse to minimize the extent to which airlines must take responsibility. what they do.
Q: Under the Biden administration, we saw the JetBlue and Spirit merger fall through, but the Alaska and Hawaiian mergers did. What do you see as the future of airline mergers?
B: When you have regulatory agencies, that means you also have responsibilities, and there were tools that the DOT hadn’t picked up yet that I thought we should, and that’s why we got involved with JetBlue-Spirit. We saw an industry that was consolidated over and over again, and you know – whether we’re talking about railroads, whether we’re talking about airlines, whether we’re talking about ocean carriers or, for that matter, whether we’re talking about the agricultural industry – nothing good comes from losing competition.
And so we got involved, but based on a lot of market analysis and legal analysis, so we’re not dogmatic about it – and so ultimately there was a different response to Alaska-Hawaiian, but that’s also what we were. I won’t let that happen without strong passenger protection.
At the time of deregulation, it was confidently predicted that there would be about 100 airlines competing in the US market, and that simply didn’t happen. I think the fewer players you have, the more hands-on policymakers have to be to keep them honest.
Question: Speaking of airline mileage programs, what is the status of research into consumer protection?
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reflects on his time in the department before the new administration change.
B: So the deadline has come and they’ve all submitted something. Our team is now trying to gauge whether what they submitted meets the request.
The bottom line is that the airlines owe not only the DOT but also the public some transparency about these programs that in many cases have become more profitable for them than the part of their business related to actually flying planes.
These are part of our savings for so many passengers. For example, Chasten and I hope to take a vacation after this job is completed.
If you have cash in the bank, it is protected by the FDIC as a deposit, but if you have miles in an account, there is a company that can change it almost at will.
The biggest question is: did they do that? Anecdotally, most of us have noticed that more miles are needed, and that it seems harder to book a ticket than it was 10 or 20 years ago, but we don’t make policy based on anecdotes, and that’s exactly why we requesting the data.
Q: What happens to this work once the Trump administration is inaugurated?
B: That’s where the public needs to ask the new administration, “Hey, what did you do with this?”
I would not assume or expect that any other administration would handle these processes, decisions or data in the same manner as I would have, but these processes are ongoing. This data is coming in. The public wants to know: what are you going to do about it?
Q: What do you consider your greatest legacy?
B: Three things in particular:
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The infrastructure package. We have passed the 1,500 mark alone in the number of airports where we are making improvements. That’s just the airports. We sit next to one of the largest public works projects in modern American history in the Hudson Tunnels, which had no funding at the start of the Biden administration. But there are also projects with six figures who repair an intersection somewhere that will save lives.
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Which brings me to the second and least publicized of the important things we have done, which is to reverse the rise in road deaths in this country. We are on nine consecutive quarters of declines from that number. We are thrown into action when something happens on an airplane and someone could get hurt, and yet every day we allow a full planeload of people to die in car accidents on our roads. We still have a long way to go, but we have continuously improved in that area as a country.
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And third is using our tools, enforcement and transparency to make things better for airline passengers, rail workers and many other people who rely on this department for protection.
Q: What’s next for you and Chasten?
B: I love this job, but it’s very 24/7, so I’m ready to catch my breath. I’m ready to spend more time with our children.
I haven’t made any major life decisions yet, and I won’t until I’ve had a little more time.
Q: What’s on your travel bucket list?
B: So much. In the US I can’t get enough of New Mexico.
Two places I hadn’t been to enough or not enough were Alaska and Hawaii, which I find fascinating.
There are a number of places in the world that I would like to explore or see more of.
Question: You’re probably looking forward to traveling without a whole entourage.
B: Yes. Although I will have to get used to it too.
I’ll have to reacquaint myself with the TSA checkpoints. I just had to sit down and do my Global Entry interview.
Q: You’d think that would just be an extra. For example, once you have been DOT Secretary, you get a kind of Global Entry for life.
I think my credit card covers the cost, so that’s nice, but you still have to fill out the little form like everyone else online, and get your photo taken and fingerprinted, which is only fair.
Q: As a regular passenger, what kind of policies or changes that you haven’t been able to implement do you hope to see to improve your own travels?
B: Well, I’d like to see the continuation of the family sitting work that we’ve started. We are still working on it by the way.
Especially as a parent of toddlers, I find this very important, both politically and personally.
As an individual, I also have a lot at stake in the transparency and fairness of these miles and points programs.
The truth is that these things are important and interesting to work on. But the only thing that really matters is: can it continue to be the case that every time I step on a plane, I know that I am traveling in the safest way possible?
The rest is pretty secondary compared to safety.
Q: You’ve been doing a lot of these interviews as your term comes to an end. What haven’t you been able to talk enough about yet?
B: More should be written about the fish divers.
Question: About what?
B: Fish divers.
Q: Oh, the fish divers.
B: Yes, we do divers. It’s a big problem, especially for anadromous fish.
(Editor’s note: A fish culvert is a tunnel-like structure that helps fish get around an obstacle such as a road or railroad.)
Whether you’re in Michigan and you’re just really into trout, or you’re in the Pacific Northwest or Alaska and your livelihood or even culture is tied to fish, it’s actually a very important program.
Maybe not considered the sexiest to many, but we have so many things like that.
I understand why they don’t get as much attention as the multi-billion dollar projects, but I think those things are very important as part of the bread and butter.
On a more down-to-earth note, the broader resilience agenda, in a world where a 1,000-year flood happens every two years, we don’t just build a road back in exactly the same place and the same way every time it washes away. actually move it. We’ve put billions of dollars into that, but that’s going to be a bigger part of the story in the coming years, and I think this deserves a little more attention than it’s getting.
Zach Wichter is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in New York. You can reach him at zwicher@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pete Buttigieg says safety record is his proudest DOT legacy
