Date: August 3rd 2010

To Members of the Press:

Business Travel Coalition (BTC) has been asked as an outside expert to provide a statement tomorrow, Wednesday regarding airline passenger rights before the U.S. DOT’s Future of Aviation Committee, Subcommittee on Competition, which is convening in Chicago.

BTC’s statement will focus primarily on federal preemption. Airline passengers are unique in having virtually no legal rights under consumer protection and many traditional common law claims at the state level, and no protections from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that apply in virtually all other retail industries. As such, airline passengers are in a consumer protection “no man’s land.”

Federal preemption is central to the passenger rights debate and the DOT’s currently open Notice of Proposed Rule Making but has not received much media attention.

Please let me know via email if you would like to receive an embargoed copy of the BTC statement. Stories can be written for publication after 4:00pm (EDT) on Wednesday, August 4. (Wire embargo: Wire services may distribute stories, but clients must hold for release until 4:00pm (EDT) on Wednesday, August 4.)

If you agree to these rules and would like an embargoed copy of the survey results, please so indicate in an email to mitchell@BusinessTravelCoalition.com

Kevin Mitchell
Chairman
Business Travel Coalition
610-341-1850