Former American Airlines Chairman Doug Parker shared how he championed his airline’s cause using the federal government to try to take out a small competitor. In March he went on the Airlines Confidential podcast and shared that a year earlier he and Southwest Airlines Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson button-holed David Pekoske, asking him to stop allowing JSX from operating out of private terminals without TSA screeners.

American Airlines and Southwest joined pilot unions in trying to get the government to put JSX out of business, because JSX offers a better experience – skipping commercial terminals and showing up 20 minutes before your flights; no security lines; first class seats, no bag fees and free drinks on board; and generally friendly staff – and because JSX’s model gives them access to recently-retired senior captains from American and Southwest, as well as junior co-pilots.

In response to Parker’s efforts, TSA agreed to reconsider Twelve-Five Standard Security Program requirements for public charter flights. In the case of JSX,

• Every passenger goes through a weapons detector
  
• Passenger IDs are screened against government targeting databases
  
• All bags are swabbed

Thirty seat planes operating short flights aren’t the same kind of target that a 274-seat American Airlines widebody represents. There have been no known security lapses with JSX, which can’t be said of American.

Parker may not have realized it but both American Airlines and Southwest both charter planes that avoid TSA screening.

Administrator Pekoske went on the Airlines Confidential podcast, and Scott McCartney asked him about where their plans to update security requirements for charter operators stands. And Pekoske made it sounds like,

• They’re updating their plans. I’d add that they have to do something when called out, or else if something bad does happen they were warned and failed to act.

• But they aren’t likely to require public charter operators to fly out of commercial terminals with TSA screeners, as Parker would have wanted.

Pekoske offers that they look at “new risks that might be developing” (though public charters aren’t a new risk, and private terminal operations haven’t grown substantially) and seek to “mitigate those risks to a level that satisfies us.”

• They do see “additional risk of public charter flights”
  
• As I’ve written previously, they “notified public charter carriers of [TSA] intent to change their security plans and given them the opportunity to comment…on those changes.”
  
• Comments were due back at the end of June. TSA will consider the “perspective of the [affected] carriers and others whose comments may have come back to us.” TSA had previously told me only affected carriers would be offered the opportunity to comment.
  
• They expect to share required changes to security plans “in the next couple of months.”

Asked by McCartney whether this would mean the need for more TSA screeners and more funding, Pekoske said that it would not, that there are “many ways you can address security vulnerabilities you want to close” and that it’s “not TSA officers screening passengers in every situation.”

He suggested that TSA wouldn’t impose a requirement that they provide screening for private terminal departures.

Instead, “we put requirements on the carriers.” That’s the Twelve-Five Standard Security Program. He talked about screening that air carriers perform directly, and “pre-vetting that’s done” (like JSX running passenger names against targeting databases). And he notes that “this happens in air cargo as well.”

Put another way, the TSA Administrator appears to suggest that the agency will largely require public charter operations to engage in security procedures like the ones JSX already uses, which exceeds the standards TSA previously had in place – and that the efforts of American Airlines and Southwest to crack down on JSX through TSA will fail. Pekoske did not comment on the appropriateness of taking up an action prompted by lobbying from one competitor against another.

The FAA, though, still plans a rulemaking that could crack down on public charter operators thanks to the lobbying of pilot unions, American Airlines and Southwest – an effort that current American CEO admits is about putting a competitor out of business.