The National Business Travel Association (NBTA) filed official comments with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding a CDC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) intended to…
The National Business Travel Association (NBTA) filed official comments with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding a CDC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) intended to expand the agency’s access to passenger manifests and other passenger and crew data from international and interstate air carriers, as well as international water carriers, in response to the threat of several communicable diseases.
The proposal would place the cost and burden of passenger information collection onto airlines, travel agencies, and global distribution systems by requiring these providers to retain passenger data for 60 days and remit it to the CDC upon demand. By requiring collection of data points that are not currently collected as part of the reservation process, the proposed rule would also add cost burden to corporate purchasers of travel.
While NBTA supports the intent of the NPRM to ensure safe travel and to respond to the threat of communicable disease, the association’s comments informed CDC that the corporate travel industry believes there are better ways to meet these goals without creating the burdens the NPRM would place on travel service providers and companies that travel:
“The association supports federal efforts to ensure the viability of safe travel and ensure that the federal government is poised to respond to the threat of communicable disease. Yet, we believe that the NPRM, in its current form, may not produce the desired outcome. NBTA asserts that the NPRM (1) is a burdensome rule that unduly places informational requirements on travel providers (airlines, global distribution systems, travel agencies) instead of considering alternatives that would utilize current federal systems that collect passenger information and (2) does not adequately consider the distributional effects of new regulations on businesses and corporations that conduct significant amounts of travel.”
NBTA President and CEO, Suzanne Fletcher, remarked: “As the leading advocate for the corporate travel industry, NBTA felt it was important to voice the industry’s opinion on CDC’s proposed rule change that would place unnecessary cost on business travel suppliers and buyers. The cascading travel information requirements from various U.S. governmental agencies create new, costly challenges for the business travel industry each time a rule change takes effect, which in turn has a negative impact on the economy. Rather than CDC creating new requirements and a new system for data collection, retention and remittance, we encourage the various agencies working on issues of national health and security to work together to find common travel information solution that will enable them to continue protecting the American people while avoiding the creation of undue costs to businesses. NBTA would like to see a move away from multiple, varying requirements to a system that enabled travel providers to submit data one time in one format for use by all of the relevant agencies.”
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
