BEFORE THE

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
WASHINGTON, D.C.

)
CONTINUATION OF CERTAIN AIR SERVICE )
)
) Docket DOT-OST-2020-0037
Under Public Law 116-136 §§ 4005 and 4114(b) )
)

FIRST SUPPLEMENTAL REQUEST OF DELTA AIR LINES, INC. FOR

EXEMPTION FROM SERVICE OBLIGATION

Communications with respect to this document should be sent to:

Peter Carter Alexander Krulic

Executive Vice President Associate General Counsel
& Chief Legal Officer Christopher Walker
J. Scott McClain Director – Regulatory & International Affairs
Associate General Counsel Steven J. Seiden
DELTA AIR LINES, INC. Director – Regulatory Affairs
1030 Delta Boulevard DELTA AIR LINES, INC.
Atlanta, Georgia 30320 1212 New York Avenue, NW Suite 200
Washington, DC 20005
Tel. 202-216-0700
alex.krulic@delta.com
chris.walker@delta.com
steven.seiden@delta.com

April 27, 2020

 BEFORE THE
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
WASHINGTON, D.C.

)
CONTINUATION OF CERTAIN AIR SERVICE )
)
) Docket DOT-OST-2020-0037
Under Public Law 116-136 §§ 4005 and 4114(b) )
)

FIRST SUPPLEMENTAL REQUEST OF DELTA AIR LINES, INC. FOR

EXEMPTION FROM SERVICE OBLIGATION

SUMMARY

Delta remains committed to ensuring that every community it serves will continue to

receive convenient access to its domestic network during this public health emergency.

However, nothing is more important to Delta than the safety of its employees and customers.

During this pandemic, airport employees and crews must place themselves at risk to staff each

flight and Delta seeks to reduce this risk as much as possible. One way Delta seeks to

minimize health risks to its workforce is by limiting the number of airport stations that remain

open for business during the COVID-19 health emergency to reduce the total number of airport

staff who must report to frontline work. Order 2020-4-2 provides some flexibility to accomplish

this by allowing service to certain communities via any combination of airports that serve that

community. However, in other cases, Delta’s plan will require an exemption. Therefore, Delta

requests an exemption permitting it to suspend service to the nine stations listed below, whose

communities Delta will continue to serve via alternative points within a driving distance of

approximately 60-minutes or less of those airports.

 ARGUMENT AND AUTHORITIES

The safety of its customers and employees is Delta’s number one priority. In this

unprecedented public health emergency, Delta has rapidly implemented a number of new

procedures and protocols intended to protect their health and safety by minimizing the risk of

virus exposure in the course of Delta’s operations. These measures include, for example:

• Conducting temperature screenings at work locations across our system to protect

employees in Delta workplaces.

• Providing hand sanitizer in work stations and lounges, offering sanitizing wipes and
gloves on board and cleaning flight decks daily as part of an enhanced flight deck
cleaning program.

• Using the same electrostatic spraying – or "fogging" – that we use across our aircraft
to administer a safe, high-grade, EPA-registered disinfectant that is highly effective
against many communicable diseases, including coronaviruses, at all Reservations &
Customer Engagement Centers.

• Temporarily blocking seats around jump seats, where flight attendants are often
seated, and implementing other seating protocols for crew consistent with FAA
regulations to allow additional distance between crew members on flights.

• Providing our Airport Customer Service team with protective gloves and masks, along
with readily available hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes to clean surfaces in high-
traffic customer and employee areas.

• Offering paid protection for employees who meet the CDC's criteria of being at higher
risk for severe illness so they can stay home from work without worry.

• Encouraging Delta people to wear a personal cloth face covering or mask at work in
accordance with CDC recommendations, as well as providing face masks to employees
interacting with ill customers, using sources that will not impact the critical needs of
healthcare workers.

• Encouraging all employees without operational critical roles to work from home.

• Reducing the number of customers on each flight and blocking middle seats in Main
Cabin, Delta Comfort+ and Delta Premium Select across all flights.

• Pausing automatic upgrades and processing them at the gate to allow gate agents to
determine how to best seat consistent with both social distancing and aircraft weight-
and-balance restrictions. 

2
These efforts are ongoing, and Delta continues to identify and implement further safety

measures.

But while most Americans are being ordered to shelter in place and work from home to

protect themselves and their families from the pandemic, airport workers must report to the

front line to keep our network operational. Delta seeks to minimize this risk by exposing as

few airport workers as possible to public contact while continuing to ensure reasonable access

to its domestic network for all communities that Delta currently serves.

The Department has already facilitated this by granting carriers flexibility to meet their

minimum Service Obligation for many points identified in Appendix B by serving any of multiple

airports classified as within the same metropolitan area by the Bureau of Transportation

Statistics (BTS). As the Department observed, “the ability of carriers to consolidate operations

at a single airport serving a point is an important flexibility that furthers the objectives of the

CARES Act.”1 Delta appreciates this flexibility for those airports.

However, Delta has identified an additional nine airports at which it also believes

flexibility should be permitted, for the purpose of protecting the health and safety of airport

workers. These airports are listed as Exemption Request Points in Table 1 below. Each of

the communities served by these airports will continue to enjoy reasonable access to Delta’s

domestic network. As reflected in Table 1, each is within a driving distance of approximately

60 minutes or less of another airport where Delta will continue service pursuant to Order 2020-

4-2.

1 Order 2020-4-2, at 4.
3
TABLE 1: EXEMPTION REQUEST POINTS

Driving Distance to Alternative Access Point for Delta Service

EXEMPTION ALTERNATIVE Driving Passengers Per

REQUEST ACCESS POINT FOR Distance Drive Time Flown Load Factor Day Each Way
POINT DELTA SERVICE (miles) (mins) (April 1-22) (April 1-22)
Hilton Head, SC Savannah, GA 43 48 7% 4
Lansing, MI Grand Rapids, MI 54 54 9% 6
Pocatello, ID Idaho Falls, ID 56 54 Unavailable Unavailable
Bloomington/
Peoria, IL Normal, IL 49 55 7% 3
Kalamazoo, MI Grand Rapids, MI 58 56 8% 5
Brunswick, GA Jacksonville, FL 62 58 6% 3
Worcester, MA Boston, MA 54 58 4% 1
Melbourne, FL Orlando, FL 61 60 13% 14
Flint, MI Detroit, MI 74 63 11% 8
Notes: Driving distance and drive time estimates between airports generated by Google Maps. Load factor and passenger data is based
on internal Delta data. Information not available for Pocatello, in which local inventory is managed by SkyWest.

Delta recognizes that the grant of this exemption may result in inconvenience to some

members of the traveling public who will need to drive further to access Delta’s air

transportation network. However, that inconvenience is outweighed by the public health and

safety of the employees that Delta is trying to protect. This is especially true given the limited

number of passengers who will be affected, as reflected in the passenger counts included in

Table 1.

Moreover, these proposed alternative airports are clearly adequate substitutes for the

corresponding Exemption Request Points. For example, Worcester, MA (ORH), is an airport

located in the greater Boston metropolitan area, managed by the same airport authority as

Boston (BOS), and closer to BOS than either Providence, RI (PVD) or Manchester, NH (MHT).

Delta is scheduled to operate far more than the minimum service obligation at BOS. PVD and

MHT are both deemed by the final order to be adequately served with service to BOS. The

estimated driving time from MHT to BOS is 52 minutes, just a few minutes less than for ORH.

The driving time from PVD to BOS is 59 minutes, slightly longer than for ORH. Given these

4
facts, there is no rational basis for concluding that BOS is not an adequate substitute for ORH

service, particularly given that Delta is currently only carrying 1 passenger per day each way

from that airport.

Similarly, Savannah, GA (SAV) is an adequate substitute for Hilton Head, SC (HHH),

and Orlando, FL (MCO) is an adequate substitute for Melbourne, FL (MLB), as evidenced by

the fact that SAV is actually called the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport and MLB is

called the Orlando Melbourne International Airport.

Delta is aware that the Department recently denied United’s request for exemptions

with respect to Green Bay, Gunnison, Ithaca, Kalamazoo, Santa Fe, and Valparaiso.2 United

sought relief for those points for solely economic reasons, highlighting historically low load

factors. In denying United’s request as to those six points, the Department emphasized that

Order 2020-4-2 was deliberately crafted to “strike a balance between the needs of

communities to retain at least minimal connections to the national air transportation system

during the public health emergency, as required by the CARES Act, and the economic needs

of the airline industry” – and that United’s filing had not persuaded the Department to strike a

different balance.3 Here, by contrast, Delta seeks an exemption to protect the health and

safety of airport staff by reducing their exposure to the health risks associated with COVID-

19. Delta submits that the public interest in protecting airport workers from the risk of exposure

to a potentially deadly virus outweighs the inconvenience of the additional driving distance to

access Delta’s network for such a small number of passengers.

2 See Notice of Action Taken dated April 25, 2020 in this docket, at 3.
3 Id. (emphasis added).
5
 CONCLUSION

Delta urges the Department to grant this exemption request to provide Delta with as

much flexibility as possible in its efforts to protect the health and safety of airport staff while

still ensuring that all of the communities that it serves have reasonable access to its domestic

network during this emergency. If the Department concludes that the inconvenience to the

traveling public caused by the additional driving distance precludes an exemption for any of

the airports on this list, Delta respectfully requests that the Department grant the requested

exemption for as many airports as possible. The current crisis is dynamic, and Delta reserves

the right to seek additional exemptions as conditions change.

Respectfully submitted,

_____________________________
J. Scott McClain

6
 CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

A copy of the foregoing document has been served this 27th day of April 2020, upon the
following persons via email:

Air Carriers

Air Carrier Name Email Address

Alaska David Heffernan dheffernan@cozen.com

Allegiant Aaron Goerlich agoerlich@ggh-airlaw.com
American Robert Wirick robert.wirick@aa.com
American Bruce Wark Bruce.wark@aa.com
Amerijet Joan Canny jcanny@amerijet.com
Atlas Russ Pommer rpommer@atlasair.com
Atlas Naveen Rao naveen.rao@atlasair.com
Federal Express Anne Bechdolt anne.bechdolt@fedex.com
Federal Express Courtney Felts cefelts@fedex.com
Frontier Howard Diamond howard.diamond@flyfrontier.com
Hawaiian Parker Erkmann perkmann@cooley.com
JetBlue Robert Land robert.land@jetblue.com
JetBlue Reese Davidson reese.davidson@jetblue.com
JetBlue Adam Schless adam.schless@jetblue.com
Kalitta Air Mark Atwood matwood@cozen.com
National Airlines Malcolm Benge mlbenge@zsrlaw.com
National Airlines John Richardson jrichardson@johnlrichardson.com
Polar Air Cargo Kevin Montgomery kevin.montgomery@polaraircargo.com
Southwest Bob Kneisley bob.kneisley@wnco.com
Southwest Leslie Abbott leslie.abbott@wnco.com
Spirit Airlines David Kirstein dkirstein@yklaw.com
Spirit Airlines Joanne Young jyoung@yklaw.com
Sun Country Brandon Carmack brandon.carmack@suncountry.com
Sun Country Victoria Palpant victoria.palpant@suncountry.com
United Dan Weiss dan.weiss@united.com
United Steve Morrissey steve.morrissey@united.com
United Amna Arshad amna.arshad@freshfields.com
United Marc Warren mwarren@jenner.com
UPS Dontai Smalls dsmalls@ups.com
UPS Anita Mosner anita.mosner@hklaw.com

FAA/DOT

Name Email Address

Joel Szabat joel.szabat@dot.gov

David Short david.short@dot.gov
Todd Homan todd.homan@dot.gov
Peter Irvine peter.irvine@dot.gov
Kevin Bryan kevin.bryan@dot.gov
AJ Muldoon albert.muldoon@dot.gov
Fahad Ahmad fahad.ahmad@dot.gov
Cindy Baraban cindy.baraban@dot.gov
John Duncan john.s.duncan@faa.gov
Airport and Community Contacts
Airport/Point Name/Title
Kalamazoo, MI (AZO) Craig Williams, Airport Director
Kalamazoo, MI (AZO) David Anderson, Mayor
Brunswick, GA (BQK) Robert Burr, Executive Director,
BQK
Brunswick, GA (BQK) Cornell Harvey, Mayor
Hilton Head, SC (HHH) Gregory B. Kelly, Executive
Director
Hilton Head, SC (HHH) John J. McCann, Mayor
Lansing, MI (LAN) Robert Bernstein, Interim CEO
Lansing, MI (LAN) Andy Schor, Mayor
Melbourne, FL (MLB) Greg Donovan, Executive
Director
Melbourne, FL (MLB) Kathy Meehan, Mayor
Worcester, MA (ORH) Joseph M. Petty – Mayor,
Worcester, MA
Worcester, MA (ORH) Andrew B. Davis – Airport
Director, Worcester Regional
Airport (Massport)
Peoria, IL (PIA) Jim Ardis – Mayor, Peoria, IL
Peoria, IL (PIA) Gene Olson – Director of
Airports, Peoria International
Airport
Pocatello, ID (PIH) Brian Blad – Mayor, Pocatello, ID
Pocatello, ID (PIH) Alan Evans – Airport Manager,
Pocatello Regional Airport
Flint, MI (FNT) Sheldon Neeley, Mayor
Flint, MI (FNT) Nino Sapone, Director
Email Address
cawill@kalcounty.com
mayor@kalamazoocity.org
rburr@flygcairports.com
mayorcharvey@cityofbrunswick-
ga.gov
info@savannahairport.com
JohnM@hiltonheadislandsc.gov
info@craa.com
Lansing.Mayor@lansingmi.gov
Authority@mlbair.com
Kathy.Meehan@mlbfl.org
mayor@worcesterma.gov
adavis@massport.com
JArdis@peoriagov.org
golson@flypia.com
mayor@pocatello.us
aevans@pocatello.us
mayor@cityofflint.com
info@bishopairport.org