HR9135-118

Reported

To direct the Secretary of Transportation to require certain air carriers to develop and regularly update an operational resiliency strategy, and for other purposes.

118th Congress Introduced Jul 25, 2024

Analysis under review: This bill has generated analysis that may be too generic or incomplete. Clause-level evidence remains available below.

Summary

What This Bill Does

This bill requires major airlines to create and maintain plans for handling severe weather, IT outages, and other events that cause flight delays and cancellations. The Secretary of Transportation must enforce these requirements, and the Government Accountability Office will audit how well the plans work after 3 years.

Who Benefits and How

Airline passengers benefit from stronger protections against flight disruptions, as airlines must now plan for staffing, technology failures, and cybersecurity risks. Consumer advocacy groups benefit from increased airline accountability and mandatory government oversight of airline resiliency planning.

Who Bears the Burden and How

Major airlines (covered carriers) must develop, regularly update, and submit detailed operational resiliency strategies, creating new compliance and administrative costs. They must disclose information about their IT systems, staffing models, and cybersecurity practices, though the bill protects trade secrets.

Key Provisions

  • Airlines must submit resiliency plans within 1 year covering weather, staffing, IT systems, and cybersecurity
  • Secretary of Transportation must protect confidential business information in submitted plans
  • GAO must audit airline resiliency strategies within 3 years and report findings to Congress

Evidence Chain:

This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers.

At a Glance

What This Bill Does

Requires major airlines to develop operational resiliency plans to prevent flight disruptions and protect passengers from delays and cancellations caused by severe weather, IT failures, and other disruptive events

Key Policy Areas

Transportation, Aviation, Consumer Protection

Primary Purpose

Requires major airlines to develop operational resiliency plans to prevent flight disruptions and protect passengers from delays and cancellations caused by severe weather, IT failures, and other disruptive events

Policy Domains

Transportation Aviation Consumer Protection

Main Bill

Identified Gains
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
  • Airline passengers
  • Consumer advocacy groups
  • Department of Transportation
Model: N/A | Version: bill_summary_v2 | Source: rh

Contextual inference, no direct clause citation

Identified Costs
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
  • Major airlines (covered carriers)
  • Airline IT departments
  • Airline operations staff
Model: N/A | Version: bill_summary_v2 | Source: rh

Contextual inference, no direct clause citation

Legislative Progress

Reported
Introduced Committee Passed
Dec 18, 2024

Additional sponsors: Mr. Stanton, Mr. Garamendi, Mrs. Napolitano, Ms. Brownley, …

Dec 18, 2024

Reported with an amendment, committed to the Committee of the …

Jul 25, 2024

Mr. Larsen of Washington (for himself and Mr. Cohen) introduced …

Stakeholder Effects

cui bono?

How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.

Transportation
2 mentions across 1 clause
-2 negative

Airline IT and technology departments, Major scheduled passenger airlines (covered carriers)

Government
2 mentions across 1 clause
-1 negative ?1 uncertain

Department of Transportation, Government Accountability Office

Consumers
1 mention across 1 clause
+1 positive

Airline passengers and travelers

2/2
sections analyzed
Full impact breakdown

Bill Structure & Actor Mappings

Who is "The Secretary" in each section?

Domains
Transportation Aviation Consumer Protection
Actor Mappings
"the_secretary"
→ Secretary of Transportation
"the_comptroller_general"
→ Comptroller General of the United States

Key Definitions

Terms defined in this bill

1 term
"covered carrier" §2(f)

Has the meaning given such term in section 259.3 of title 14, Code of Federal Regulations (or successor regulations), which refers to major scheduled passenger airlines

We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.

Learn more about our methodology