PUBLISHED_60_Day_FR_2105-0537_CodeSharingLongTermWetLease

Federal Register / Vol. 82, No. 175 / Tuesday, September 12, 2017 / Notices
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Office of the Secretary
[OST Docket No. DOT–OST–2011–0170]

Notice of Submission of Proposed
Information Collection to OMB Agency
Request for Renewal of a Previously
Approved Collection: Disclosure of
Code-Sharing Arrangements and
Long-Term Wet Leases
Office of the Secretary,
Department of Transportation.
ACTION: Notice and request for
comments.
AGENCY:

In accordance with the
Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 this
notice announces the Department of
Transportation’s (Department) intention
to reinstate an Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) control number as
related to the Disclosure of CodeSharing Arrangements and Long-Term
Wet Leases. The growth in the use of
code-sharing, wet-leasing, and similar
marketing tools, particularly in
international air transportation, led the
Department on March 15, 1999, to adopt
specific regulations requiring the
disclosure of code-sharing arrangements
and long-term wet leases by air carriers
(U.S. and foreign) and ticket agents via
oral, written, and internet
communications. In a recent final rule
published in the Federal Register on
November 3, 2016, titled ‘‘Enhancing
Airline Passenger Protections’’, the
Department, among other things,
amended the code-share disclosure
regulation to require that carriers and
ticket agents must disclose any codeshare arrangements on their Web sites,
including mobile Web sites and
applications; clarify the format in which
that information must be displayed; and
specify that verbal code-share
disclosures should be made the first
time a flight involving a code-share
arrangement is offered to consumers or
the first time a consumer inquiries about
such a flight whether by telephone or in
person conversations.
DATES: Written comments should be
submitted by November 13, 2017.
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments
(identified by DOT Docket Number
OST–2011–0170) through one of the
following methods:
• Federal eRulemaking Portal: http://
www.regulations.gov. Follow the online
instructions for submitting comments.
• Hand Delivery: U.S. Department of
Transportation, West Building Ground
Floor, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE.,
Room W12–140, Washington, DC 20590,
between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday

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SUMMARY:

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through Friday, except on Federal
Holidays. The telephone number is 202–
366–9329.
• Mail: Docket Management Facility;
U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200
New Jersey Avenue SE., West Building,
Room W12–140, Washington, DC 20590.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Daeleen Chesley, (202) 366–6792,
[email protected], Office of the
Assistant General Counsel for Aviation
Enforcement and Proceedings (C–70),
U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200
New Jersey Avenue SE., Washington,
DC 20590.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
OMB Control Number: 2105–0537.
Title: Disclosure of Code-Sharing
Arrangements and Long-Term Wet
Leases.
Abstract: Code-sharing is the name
given to a common airline industry
marketing practice where, by mutual
agreement between cooperating carriers,
at least one of the airline designator
codes used on a flight is different from
that of the airline operating the aircraft.
In one version of code-sharing, two or
more airlines each use their own
designator codes on the same aircraft
operation. Although only one airline
operates the flight, each airline in a
code-sharing arrangement may hold out,
market, and sell the flight as its own in
published schedules. Code-sharing also
refers to other arrangements, such as
when a code on a passenger’s ticket is
not that of the operator of the flight, but
where the operator does not hold out
the service in its own name. Such codesharing arrangements are common
between commuter air carriers and their
larger affiliates. In a wet lease situation,
a leasing arrangement is made whereby
the lessor provides both an aircraft and
crew to a lessee dedicated to a certain
route under either an agreement that
lasts more than 60 days or under a series
of such lease agreements that amount to
a continuing arrangement lasting more
than 60 days.
Although code-sharing and wet-lease
arrangements can offer significant
consumer benefits, they can also be
misleading unless consumers know the
identity of the airline operating the
flight. The growth in the use of codesharing and wet-leasing, particularly in
international air transportation, led the
Department to adopt specific regulations
requiring the disclosure of code-sharing
arrangements and long-term wet leases
on March 15, 1999 (14 CFR part 257).
More specifically, the rule requires
carriers to provide information about
their code-share relationships in written
or electronic schedule information
provided by carriers to the public (e.g.,

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the Official Airline Guide/OAG). The
rule also requires carriers and ticket
agents to disclose code-share
information in written notice at the time
of a ticket purchase. Further, the
regulation requires those entities to tell
prospective consumers in all oral
communications that the transporting
airline is not the airline whose
designator code will appear on travel
documents and to identify the
transporting airline by its corporate
name and any other name under which
that service is held out to the public.
In 2010, to further enhance these
consumer protections, Congress enacted
by Public Law 111–216, sec. 210
(August 1, 2010), which was codified as
49 U.S.C. 41712(c). Among other things,
the statute requires ticket agents and air
carriers (U.S. and foreign) to disclose in
oral communication or in written or
electronic communications (including
on the internet), prior to the purchase of
a ticket, the name of the air carrier
providing the air transportation and, if
the flight has more than one segment,
the name of each air carrier providing
the air transportation for each flight
segment. The statute also requires ticket
agents and air carriers (U.S. and foreign)
that sell tickets on an Internet Web site
to disclose the required information on
the first display of their Web site
following a consumer’s search of a
requested itinerary in a format that is
easily visible.
In a recent final rule, Enhancing
Airline Passenger Protections III (81 FR
76800, November 3, 2016), the
Department clarified its code-share
disclosure regulation to ensure that
carriers and ticket agents disclose codeshare arrangements in schedules,
advertisements, and communications
with consumers. The rule amended the
Department’s code-share disclosure
regulation to codify the statutory
requirement that carriers and ticket
agents must in a format that is easily
visible to a viewer disclose any codeshare arrangements on the first display
of the Web site following itinerary
search results; clarify that the
requirement for code-share disclosures
in flight itinerary search results and
flight schedule displays includes
information provided by airlines via
mobile Web sites and applications;
clarify the format in which that
information must be displayed; and
specify that verbal code-share
disclosures should be made the first
time a flight involving a code-share
arrangement is offered to consumers or
inquired about by consumers during
telephone or in person conversations.
As most of these provisions are
implementing the statutory requirement

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Federal Register / Vol. 82, No. 175 / Tuesday, September 12, 2017 / Notices

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enacted in 2010, carriers and ticket
agents should already be complying
with most of the requirements.1 The
aspect of the provision which is new is
the specification of when during a
telephone or in-person booking process
a carrier or ticket agent must disclose
the code-share information, which may
result in additional compliance costs for
some carriers and ticket agents. Those
additional costs would be borne by
those carriers and ticket agents that
currently do not present code-share
information at the first mention of a
flight during a reservation call or inperson booking. As such, these carriers
and ticket agents may have slightly
longer reservation calls and longer inperson bookings. However, the
disclosure at a point during the
information gathering and decisionmaking process was already required so
the additional time, if any, would be
minimal.
In addition to costs for additional
agent time during some calls and inperson bookings, some respondents may
have a slight increase in their training
costs, as they modify their trainings to
note that code-share information must
be shared when the flight is first
presented to the consumer.2 These
additional training costs are likely to be
incurred only by those respondents
which do not already present code-share
information at the first mention of a
flight.
A Federal agency generally cannot
conduct or sponsor a collection of
information, and the public is generally
not required to respond to an
information collection, unless it is
approved by the OMB under the PRA
and displays a currently valid OMB
Control Number. In addition,
notwithstanding any other provisions of
law, no person shall generally be subject
to penalty for failing to comply with a
collection of information if the
collection of information does not
display a valid OMB Control Number.
See 5 CFR 1320.5(a) and 1320.6.
This notice addresses the information
collection requirements set forth in the
Department’s regulation requiring
disclosure of code-share and wet-leases,
1 The regulated entities that have a Web site
should already have the required information
programmed in their systems and that information
should already appear on their Web sites. Thus, the
incremental costs to add the information to mobile
Web sites and applications should be small. To the
extent there are any costs, they could be minimized
if any necessary changes were incorporated at the
same time as another upgrade.
2 The costs are minimal if this change is
incorporated into agent curricula during the same
time as other updates and/or sent in an update
bulletin via the carrier’s/travel agent’s intranet
system.

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14 CFR 257. The reinstated OMB control
number will be applicable to all the
provisions set forth in this notice. The
title, a description of the respondents,
and an estimate of the annual
recordkeeping and periodic reporting
burden are set forth below:
Title: Disclosure of Code-Sharing
Arrangements and Long Term Wet
Leases in Flight Itineraries and
Schedules, Oral Communications with
Prospective Consumers, Ticket
Confirmations, and Advertisements.
Respondents: All U.S. air carriers,
foreign air carriers, Global Distribution
Systems (GDSs, formerly known as
computer reservations systems), and
travel agents doing business in the
United States.
Number of Respondents: 5,031
(estimated 48 marketing carriers and
4,983 travel agents/GDSs).
Frequency:
For transactions involving oral
communications: 15 seconds per call (to
reveal the code-share information) and
an average of 1.5 calls per trip (a total
of 22.5 seconds per respondent) for the
approximately 25% to 39% (using 2016
Bureau of Transportation Statistic’s
((BTS)) data) of itineraries that involve
personal contact/phone call and a codeshare itinerary.3
For transactions involving written and
internet disclosure: The burden should
be minimal to non-existent as many
airlines are already required to submit
certain code-share related information
to BTS 4 and/or already have code-share
information available on their Web
sites.5 In addition, the marketing
airlines currently provide information
about their code-share flights to the
GDSs who, in turn, provide that
information to travel agents. As the
code-share information is integrated
into the data provided by the airlines to
GDSs and travel agents, the code-share
information is automatically displayed
3 Per BTS data, there were 932 million
enplanements in 2016 (34% of these flights involve
a one-way ticket and 66% involve round-trip
travel). It is estimated that 20% of these travelers
make a call to an airline or travel agent to book a
ticket or obtain information about a flight and each
traveler will only need to obtain the information
once per travel itinerary. Of those travel itineraries,
25% to 39% involve a code-share flight in which
an agent must reveal that information.
4 Large U.S. carriers must provide BTS with
information for the ‘‘Airline Passenger and
Destination Survey.’’ The reported information
must include the name of the marketing carrier, as
well as the operating carrier of the flight (which
may be a regional or foreign carrier).
5 For example, many ‘‘reporting’’ carriers (e.g.,
United Airlines) disclose on their Web sites on-time
performance information for their domestic codeshare flights.

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on the internet/computer, as well as on
a printed version of an itinerary/ticket.
Total Annual Burden: Annual
reporting burden for this data collection
is estimated at 195,138 to 304,415hours for all travel agents and airline
ticket agents who have personal contact
with a consumer. Most of this data
collection is accomplished through
travelers using highly automated
computerized systems to make their air
travel reservation(s) and the data is
already available on the regulated
entities Web sites and/or is programmed
into their database/reservation systems.
Public Comments Invited: You are
asked to comment on any aspect of this
information collection, including (a)
whether the proposed collection of
information is necessary for the
Department’s performance; (b) the
accuracy of the estimated burden; (c)
ways for the Department to enhance the
quality, utility, and clarity of the
information collection; and (d) ways
that the burden could be minimized
without reducing the quality of the
collected information.
Authority: The Paperwork Reduction Act
of 1995; 44 U.S.C. Chapter 35, as amended;
and 49 CFR 1:48.
Issued in Washington, DC, on August 28,
2017.
Blane A. Workie,
Assistant General Counsel for Aviation
Enforcement and Proceedings.
[FR Doc. 2017–18828 Filed 9–11–17; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4910–9X–P

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
Office of Foreign Assets Control
Notice of OFAC Sanctions Actions
Office of Foreign Assets
Control, Treasury.
ACTION: Notice.
AGENCY:

The Department of the
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets
Control (OFAC) is publishing the names
of one or more persons that have been
placed on OFAC’s Specially Designated
Nationals and Blocked Persons List
based on OFAC’s determination that one
or more applicable legal criteria were
satisfied. All property and interests in
property subject to U.S. jurisdiction of
these persons are blocked, and U.S.
persons are generally prohibited from
engaging in transactions with them.
DATES: See SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
section.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
OFAC: Associate Director for Global
Targeting, tel.: 202–622–2420, Assistant
SUMMARY:

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