Lawmakers Urge Rapid Airlines Relief

By JIM ABRAMS
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - An airline industry executive asked Congress Wednesday for $17.5 billion to help it recover from the aftereffects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Delta Airlines Chairman Leo Mullin, representating the industry at a hearing of the House Transportation Committee, also urged passage of legislation to limit the airlines' liability and said Washington should bear much of the cost of enhanced security measures.

Without federal help, Mullin said, "almost no airline is strong enough to survive for long, facing the upcoming challenges."

Saying the industry faces $24 billion in short-term losses resulting directly from the terrorist attacks, he asked for $5 billion in immediate aid and another $12.5 billion in loans and credit. On Tuesday, at a meeting with congressional leaders, Mullin said three major carriers face the possibility of bankruptcy without federal relief, sources said. He did not name them.

Lawmakers were generally receptive to moving quickly to assist the industry, stricken by layoffs, reduced schedules and the prospects of bankruptcy in the wake of last week's terrorist attacks.

"We have to get this done as soon as possible or we will not have an air transportation system," the House Transportation Committee chairman, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, said at the opening of the hearing on the economic viability of the industry.

Lawmakers and labor representatives also said legislation should include help for the estimated 100,000 industry workers expected to be laid off because fewer people are flying. Congress should consider including financial relief for displaced workers to any bailout, said Teamsters president James Hoffa.

Mullin said carriers have already laid off 51,000 workers and that figure could hit 100,000 even with federal assistance. American, Continental, Delta, Northwest and United have scaled back schedules by 20 percent in an effort to remain solvent.

The effort to rescue the airline industry came just days after Congress came together on a multibillion-dollar plan to help victims of last week's terrorism.

On Friday, moving with rare speed and bipartisanship, Congress approved a $40 billion plan to assist the victims of the attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, improve airport security and track down the perpetrators of the attack.

That spirit of cooperation and urgency was evident again with Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, after meeting with airline representatives, saying the administration hoped to have a package ready to go by early next week. Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the House GOP leadership, said the House could move on legislation as early as this week.

Mineta and congressional leaders said they still needed to digest the increasingly dire data the industry was giving them before deciding on the final shape of the package.

Blunt said that any direct assistance would specifically go to compensate airlines for revenues lost when the government ordered the grounding of all domestic flights following the hijacking of four planes by terrorists. Two were crashed into the World Trade Center, another into the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside.

He said he didn't know if the package would have to be "substantially larger" than the $15 billion originally proposed in the House.

Both on Capitol Hill and the administration there has been some concern about the need to craft legislation that compensates the industry for losses directly related to the terrorist attacks without subsidizing it for economic problems existing before those attacks.

"There may be some short-term things that absolutely need to be done" to help the industry, presidential counselor Karen Hughes said. "But you don't want to subsidize ... bad business practices."