WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has passed a $105 billion bill designed to improve safety and customer service for air travelers, a day before the law governing the Federal Aviation Administration expires.
The bipartisan bill, which comes after a series of close calls between planes at the nation’s airports, aims to boost the number of air traffic controllers amid a shortage, improve safety standards and make it easier for customers to get refunds after flights are delayed or canceled, among other measures.
After passing the legislation on a strong 88-4 vote, the Senate passed a one-week extension to ensure that the law doesn't expire before the House considers the bill next week. The FAA has said it would have had to furlough around 3,600 workers if the law expired at midnight Friday.
The bill stalled for several days this week after senators from Virginia and Maryland objected to a provision that would allow an additional 10 flights a day to and from the heavily trafficked Reagan Washington National Airport. Other senators tried to add unrelated provisions, as well, seeing it as a prime chance to enact their legislative priorities.
But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called a vote Thursday evening after it became clear that senators would not be able to agree on amendments to the bill before the law expired. The Senate then passed the one-week extension that the House had already passed, sending that to President Joe Biden's desk.
The FAA has been under scrutiny since it approved Boeing jets that were involved in two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019. The Senate legislation would govern FAA operations for the next five years and put several new safety standards in place.
The bill “gives the FAA the stability it needs to fulfill its primary mission — advancing aviation safety — while also making travel more convenient and accessible,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
The legislation aims to increase the number of air traffic controllers, provides for more safety inspectors at manufacturing facilities and requires the FAA to use new technology designed to prevent collisions between planes on runways. It would require new airline planes to have cockpit voice recorders capable of saving 25 hours of audio, up from the current two hours, to help investigators after safety incidents.
It would try to improve customer service for flyers by requiring airlines to pay a refund to customers for flight delays — three hours for a domestic flight and six for an international one. Lawmakers tweaked the bill this week to make it even easier for customers to receive refunds, revising language that would have put most of the onus on the customers to request them. The change put the Senate bill more in line with new regulations issued by the Biden administration last week.
In addition, the bill would prohibit airlines from charging extra for families to sit together and triple the maximum fines for airlines that violate consumer laws. And it would require the Transportation Department to create a “dashboard” so consumers can compare seat sizes on different airlines.
The legislation would also improve access for passengers with disabilities, requiring airlines to accommodate seating requests for disability-related needs, setting new training standards for airline personnel who handle and store wheelchairs and awarding grants for airport accessibility upgrades.
Failure to pass the popular bipartisan bill by May 10 would have been the latest setback after months of delays on the measure, and the last-minute deal to pass it was the most recent example of Congress struggling to pass major legislation that had broad bipartisan support.
Schumer, who had urged lawmakers to drop their objections and come to agreement on the legislation, said after passage that “passing this FAA bill is the best thing Congress can do to give Americans the peace of mind they deserve.”
Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both Democrats, had pushed for a vote on their amendment to block the additional long-haul flights at Virginia's Reagan National. They say the airport is restricted in size and too busy already, pointing to a close call there between two planes earlier in April that they said is a “flashing red warning light.”
Several Western lawmakers have argued for more flights at the airport, saying it is unfair to consumers that there is a restriction on long-haul flights. The provision’s chief proponent is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, who is up for reelection this year and has argued that San Antonio should have a direct flight from the airport. Cruz blocked a vote on Kaine and Warner's amendment when Schumer tried to bring it up shortly before final passage.
Like lawmakers, airlines are also split on the idea of additional flights at Reagan National. Delta Airlines has argued for more flights, while United Airlines, with a major operation at farther-out Dulles Airport, has lobbied against the increase.
The House last year passed its own version of the FAA legislation without additional Reagan National flights after intense, last-minute lobbying from the Virginia delegation — a bipartisan vote on an amendment to the FAA bill that saw members aligning not by party but geographic location. Lawmakers use the airport frequently because it is the closest Washington airport to the Capitol, and Congress has long tried to have a say in which routes have service there.
“Some of our colleagues were too afraid to let the experts make the call,” Kaine and Warner said in a joint statement Thursday evening, after Cruz blocked a vote on their amendment. “They didn’t want to show the American people that they care more about a few lawmakers’ desire for direct flights than they care about the safety and convenience of the traveling public. That is shameful and an embarrassment.”
Kaine, Warner and Maryland's two senators, Democrats Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, were the only four senators to vote against final passage.
Associated Press writer David Koenig contributed from Dallas.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks to reporters following Democratic strategy session, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
JERUSALEM (AP) — The helicopter crash in which Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and other officials were killed is likely to reverberate across the Middle East, where Iran’s influence runs wide and deep.
That's because Iran has spent decades supporting armed groups and militants in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian territories, allowing it to project power and potentially deter attacks from the United States or Israel, the sworn enemies of its 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Tensions have never been higher than they were last month, when Iran under Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel in response to an airstrike on an Iranian Consulate in Syria that killed two Iranian generals and five officers.
Israel, with the help of the United States, Britain, Jordan and others, intercepted nearly all the projectiles. In response, Israel apparently launched its own strike against an air defense radar system in the Iranian city of Isfahan, causing no casualties but sending an unmistakable message.
The sides have waged a shadow war of covert operations and cyberattacks for years, but the exchange of fire in April was their first direct military confrontation.
The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has drawn in other Iranian allies, with each attack and counterattack threatening to set off a wider war.
It's a combustible mix that could be ignited by unexpected events, such as Sunday's deadly crash.
Israel has long viewed Iran as its greatest threat because of Tehran's controversial nuclear program, its ballistic missiles and its support for armed groups sworn to Israel's destruction.
Iran views itself as the chief patron of Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule, and top officials for years have called for Israel to be wiped off the map.
Raisi, who was a hard-liner viewed as a protégé and possible successor of Khamenei, chastised Israel last month, saying “the Zionist Israeli regime has been committing oppression against the people of Palestine for 75 years.”
“First of all we have to expel the usurpers, secondly we should make them pay the cost for all the damages they have created, and thirdly, we have to bring to justice the oppressor and usurper," he said.
Israel is believed to have carried out numerous attacks over the years targeting senior Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists.
There is no evidence Israel was involved in Sunday's helicopter crash, and Israeli officials have not commented on the incident.
Arab countries on the Persian Gulf have also long viewed Iran with suspicion, a key factor in the decision of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize relations with Israel in 2020, and of Saudi Arabia to consider such a move.
Iran has provided financial and other support over the years to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which led the Oct. 7 attack into Israel that triggered the Gaza war, and the smaller but more radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which took part in it. But there is no evidence that Iran was directly involved in the attack.
Since the start of the war, Iran's leaders have expressed solidarity with the Palestinians. Their allies in the region have gone much further.
Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, Iran's most militarily advanced proxy, has waged a low-intensity conflict with Israel since the start of the Gaza war. The two sides have traded strikes on a near-daily basis along the Israel-Lebanon border, forcing tens of thousands of people on both sides to flee.
So far, however, the conflict has not boiled over into a full-blown war that would be disastrous for both countries.
Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq launched repeated attacks on U.S. bases in the opening months of the war but pulled back after U.S. retaliatory strikes for a drone attack that killed three American soldiers in January.
Yemen's Houthi rebels, another ally of Iran, have repeatedly targeted international shipping in what they portray as a blockade of Israel. Those strikes, which often target ships with no apparent links to Israel, have also drawn U.S.-led retaliation.
Iran's influence extends beyond the Middle East and its rivalry with Israel.
Israel and Western countries have long suspected Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons in the guise of a peaceful atomic program in what they see as a threat to non-proliferation everywhere.
Then-President Donald Trump's withdrawal from a landmark nuclear pact between Iran and world powers in 2018, and his imposition of crushing sanctions, led Iran to gradually abandon all the limits placed on its program by the deal.
These days, Iran is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity — near weapons-grade levels of 90%. Surveillance cameras installed by the U.N. nuclear agency have been disrupted, and Iran has barred some of the agency's most experienced inspectors. Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes, but the United States and others believe it had an active nuclear weapons program until 2003.
Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East but has never acknowledged having such weapons.
Iran has also emerged as a key ally of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, and is widely accused of supplying exploding drones that have wreaked havoc on Ukraine's cities. Raisi himself denied the allegations last fall in an interview with The Associated Press, saying Iran had not supplied such weapons since the outbreak of hostilities in February 2022.
Iranian officials have made contradictory comments about the drones, while U.S. and European officials say the sheer number being used in the war in Ukraine shows that the flow of such weapons has intensified since the war began.
In this photo provided by Moj News Agency, rescue teams' vehicles are seen near the site of the incident of the helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Varzaghan in northwestern Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (Azin Haghighi/Moj News Agency via AP)
An Iranian woman prays for President Ebrahim Raisi in a ceremony at Vali-e-Asr square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People pray for President Ebrahim Raisi in a ceremony at Vali-e-Asr square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
FILE - People gather around a component from an intercepted ballistic missile that fell near the Dead Sea in Israel, Saturday, April 20, 2024. The apparent crash of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other top officials is likely to reverberate across the Middle East. Tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and Israel and Iran directly traded fire for the first time ever in April. (AP Photo/Itamar Grinberg, File)
FILE - Iranian worshippers chant slogans during an anti-Israeli gathering after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran, Friday, April 19, 2024. The apparent crash of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other top officials is likely to reverberate across the Middle East. Tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and Israel and Iran directly traded fire for the first time ever in April. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
