Aviation

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) should not issue subpoenas for documents related to the National Labor Relations Board's legal complaint against airplane manufacturer Boeing, a group of legal experts said Friday.

Thirty-four law professors signed a letter to Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, saying he should let the case proceed with requesting documents from the NLRB.

The labor oversight panel has alleged that Boeing decided to build a plant in South Carolina to retaliate for labor strikes at its existing facilities in Washington state. Issa has launched an investigation into the case, saying it appears to be politically motivated.

"This is not some Washington inside game," said the head of the union for flight attendants.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

Two passengers were arrested within 20 minutes of each other by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport for having guns.

Lockheed Martin has won a $72 million TSA contract.

Ridership on Philadelphia's Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority is at a 22-year high.

A suspected "sickout" led to the cancellation of 24 United and Continental airlines flights at Newark, N.J.'s Liberty International Airport.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) refuted Democratic claims that the partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was really about labor provisions in a larger funding bill, not about eliminating rural airport subsidies as Mica has argued.

In a letter to his colleagues in the House, Mica said the shutdown of the FAA could not be a fight about labor because there is not any language about unions in the bill passed by the chamber last week.

"Senate Democrats are also arguing that the House-passed extension is about a labor provision, but the fact is there is no labor provision in the extension," Mica wrote to House members Thursday. "The Senate has chosen to complain about the legislative process and its supposed need for a 'clean' extension, rather than taking up the House-passed extension which would immediately end the FAA shutdown and put people back to work."

Democratic transportation leaders in the Senate challenged U.S. airlines Thursday to prove they were not pocketing revenue that would have gone to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) if the agency had not been partially shut down last week.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and Aviation subcommittee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said that largest airlines in the country should reveal their recent ticket profits to prove they were not keeping the $30 million a day that is normally collected under the FAA authorization bill.

"We are writing to confirm whether your company is one of the airlines generating profits by exploiting its own customers,” Sens. Rockefeller and Cantwell said in the letters. “Like the ‘ancillary fees’ that many airlines now charge for blankets, checked luggage, priority seating and itinerary changes, this recent fare increase has further damaged the industry’s relationship with airline passengers.”

The partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration proves Republicans do not really care about reducing the federal deficit, liberal commentator Markos Moulitsas said Thursday on his Daily Kos website.

Moulitsas, who founded the liberal blog at the height of the popularity of the Bush administration in 2002, said if Republicans really wanted to reduce the debt, they'd want the $30 million a day that the shutdown is costing the government in federal coffers.

"Rather than be overt in their anti-union agenda, Republicans claim they are holding the FAA reauthorization hostage in order to cut $16.5 million in funding for a small number of rural airports," Moulitsas wrote Thursday.

Transportation Secretary LaHood warned airlines not to use money that normally goes into the Aviation Trust Fund to pad profits.

Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) has proposed that the government continue paying the nearly 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) workers who have been furloughed since Saturday.

Rockefeller and 12 other Senate Democrats introduced S. 1433, which would allow payment of salaries and benefits for the FAA workers. Under the bill, amounts now in the Airport and Airway Trust Fund could be used to pay them.

Democrats allege money not allocated to the Federal Aviation Administration because of a congressional impasse is going to airlines’ profits.

The National Labor Relations Board said this week that a Seattle judge's ruling that its case against airplane manufacturer Boeing should go forward supported its contention that documents about the issue should be made available to a congressional oversight committee only as they come out in the case.

Administrative Law Judge Clifford Anderson rejected a motion from Boeing last month to dismiss the NLRB case, which alleges that the company decided to build a plant in South Carolina to retaliate for labor strikes at its existing facilities in Washington state.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has launched an investigation into the case, saying it appears to be politically motivated. Issa has threatened to subpoena documents about the case, but the NLRB has said it would provide only "discoverable" information.

In a letter to Issa that was obtained by The Hill, NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon said Anderson's ruling showed the panel's stance was correct.

"It remains my belief that premature disclosure of the Boeing case file would severely impact the parties' due process rights and the Agency's legal process," he wrote to Issa in a letter dated Tuesday.