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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 165 / Monday, August 30, 2021 / Notices designated hours on a semiannual basis for each winter and summer scheduling season based on the IATA WASG
Calendar of Coordination Activities and provide updates throughout the year when there are significant schedule changes.
The FAA estimates that all information from carriers is submitted electronically from data stored in carrier scheduling and operational databases.
Requests for unscheduled flight reservations are submitted electronically via the internet. The FAA also proposes to re-name the collection to FAA
Runway Slot Administration and Schedule Analysis to more accurately reflect the collection of information related to multiple airports subject to different FAA regulatory and voluntary processes.
Summary of Comments: On April 5, 2021, the FAA received an email from Airlines for America A4A requesting further supporting information for the FAAs March 16, 2021, 60-day notice.
Specifically A4A requested the estimates used to derive the total annual burden of 5602.6 hours expressed in the March 16, 2021, notice. In response, the FAA placed a summary of communication and draft detailed annual hourly burden tables to the docket.3
The FAA received three comments during the 60-day comment period from Exhaustless Inc., Eastern Airlines, LLC
Eastern, and A4A. Exhaustless, Inc.
objects to this information collection and questions the FAAs legal authority to manage slots and schedules at constrained airports in the United States. Comments submitted by Exhaustless, Inc. are outside the scope of this Paperwork Reduction Act proceeding. The purpose of this proceeding is to update the Agencys estimates of the information collection burden associated with established FAA
rules, regulations, orders, policy and processes associated with the FAAs administration of runway slots and schedule review at affected airports in the United States. However, the FAA
nevertheless reiterates that the FAA
Administrator is required to develop plans and policy for the use of the navigable airspace and assign by regulation or order the use of the airspace necessary to ensure the safety of aircraft and the efficient use of airspace, and to issue regulations for using the navigable airspace efficiently. 49 U.S.C. 40103b. The FAAs administration of the runway slot program, including the establishment of runway schedule limits and facilitation 3 See
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of schedules at Level 2 airports, is adopted under the Administrators mandate to efficiently manage the NAS.
Eastern supports the information collection and provides its recommendations to maximize the public benefit including: 1 Collecting information about the size of aircraft used in each slot; 2 collecting additional information on slot trades and transfers including consideration provided; 3 publishing slot administration reports in a machinereadable format; and 4 harmonizing slot administration data collection and reporting on a bi-monthly basis.
Easterns recommendations for collecting the size of the aircraft used in each slot, collecting additional information on slot trades and transfers including consideration provided, and harmonizing slot administration data collection and reporting among all the FAA slot controlled airports on a bimonthly basis are suggestions that are also outside the scope of this Paperwork Reduction Act proceeding. These recommendations do not relate to the burden associated with existing rules and policy in effect and instead, would require changes to the existing rules, orders and policies currently in effect.
Easterns recommendation that FAA
should publish slot administration reports in a machine-readable format is valuable feedback, though unrelated to the collection of information. The FAA
currently publishes slot holder and operator reports, and uneven transfer reports in a PDF file format at https
www.faa.gov/about/office_org/
headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/
systemops/perf_analysis/slot_
administration/data/ and intends to review options for publishing additional data in a more accessible format for data analysis by interested stakeholders.
A4As comment requests a different and simplified information collection process for managing the slot holdings of carriers with combined inventory and marketing control to drastically reduce information collection burdens.
Essentially, A4A proposes programmatic changes to allow mainline and regional carriers to transfer slots among one another without requiring notification of each individual transfer to the FAA. A4A
also asserts that FAA has underestimated the burden associated with transfers and provided data that they believe more accurately reflects the volume of transfers and associated burden. A4A indicates it conducted a survey of members to determine the actual number of slot transfers between operating and marketing carriers at DCA, LGA, and JFK for the month of
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July 2019, and found there were 36,180
such slot transfers. There were 14,125
slot transfers at DCA, 14,897 slot transfers at LGA, and 7,158 slot transfers at JFK, this is aggregated data, not estimates. Using the FAAs estimate of 6 minutes per slot transfer, A4A
comments this results in 3,618 hours for the month of July 2019 or an annual burden of 43,416 hours or more than 770% of FAAs burden estimate. A4A
asserts that this data further supports a change in the process for how transfers are managed because both FAA and carriers could benefit from reduced burden.
The FAA has reviewed the data presented by A4A as aggregated from information on actual transfers provided by its members. For July 2019, the data is generally consistent with the number of FAA slot transfers in effect during that month between carriers with combined inventory and marketing control. The A4A data is also generally consistent with published flight schedules when looking at the breakdown between the marketing and operating carriers. The large disparity between the FAA and A4A estimates appears to be a result of A4A using a different methodology for determining the volume of transfer requests submitted to the FAA.
The A4A calculations appear to consider each day that a slot transfer is in effect as a unique transfer that creates a unique burden-producing event with associated costs. Under the methodology used by A4A, the transfer of a daily slot for the entire month of July 2019 at a single airport would create 31 unique burdens. The transfer of the daily slot extrapolated on an annual basis would have created 365
unique burdens in 2019. The FAA does not agree with the methodology or burden estimates as proposed by A4A as it does not reflect how slot transfers between carriers under combined inventory and marketing control or those between other carriers are typically submitted to the FAA. Most slot transfers are not submitted by carriers to the FAA for single effective dates but rather for longer periods. The most common effective dates are for several weeks, months, or for all or most of a scheduling season. The FAA
considers each slot transfer request from carriers, as well as the FAA reply, as a burden-producing event rather than the number of days in which a transfer is effective.
A4As requested change for a different and simplified information collection process for managing the slot holdings of carriers with combined inventory and marketing control is outside the scope of
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