PRA - OST - Air Taxi (DOT Form 4507) - Emerency Request

April 30, 2012

The Honorable Cass R. Sunstein

Administrator, OIRA

Office of Management and Budget

Eisenhower Executive Office Building

1650 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20503

Dear Mr. Sunstein:

I am writing to request emergency clearance on or before May 1, 2012, of a new collection of information by the Department of Transportation that is required under the Part 298 of Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations. This information collection involves the registration of a class of air carriers called air taxi operators primarily conducting passenger charter operations.

Under Part 298, air taxi operators are required to register with DOT’s Office of the Secretary (OST). OST, in turn, has transferred the functions involving registration for air taxi operators to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Flight Standards Service, including responsibility for the information collection. Therefore, air taxi registration information, and amendments to such registrations, is currently collected by the FAA under OMB control number 2120-0633, which expires today, April 30, 2012.

In February 2012, OST published a notice is the Federal Register stating that the FAA would no longer be responsible for the information collecting associated with air taxi registrations and amendments, and that responsibility for the information collection was being transferred back to OST.

With respect to the OMB control number, rather requesting that FAA’s control number be transferred to OST, FAA’s control number was requested to be cancelled and a new OST control number was not requested at that time. Thus, OST is requesting emergency clearance processing of its information collection request to prevent a disruption of approvals in the air taxi registration program. Going through the normal approval process would interrupt OST’s ability to register air taxi operators or to permit existing air taxi operator to make changes to their businesses, which are typically small businesses, causing economic harm.

As mentioned previously, we have issued a notice in the Federal Register with a 60‑day comment period concerning this information collection. As required, we are issuing a second notice in the Federal Register notice with a 30-day comment period. Thank you, in advance, for your assistance in this matter

Sincerely,

Claire W. Barrett

Departmental Chief Privacy and Information Asset Officer