United Coordinated With Senators, Lobbyists to Undercut Delta

United Airlines lobbyists worked with aides to Virginia lawmakers and airport authority employees to orchestrate messaging and strategy in a high-stakes fight against adding more flights at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Details of behind-the-scenes cooperation were revealed in emails obtained via public records requests by a competing coalition and shared first with Bloomberg Government. The communications, from the second quarter of 2023, offer rare insight into a major lobbying campaign that is at the forefront on Capitol Hill this week as lawmakers consider a Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization. That compromise measure would increase the number of flights by five daily round-trips.

The disclosure of the lobbying details injects further drama into an already inflamed fight that could make it harder for lawmakers to pass the FAA measure by a May 10 deadline.

Delta Wins Round Against United in Washington Airport Fight

United Airlines’ government affairs team helped draft messages and talking points as it sought allies against the new flights at National, according to the emails between the company, congressional staffers, and airport officials including from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), which oversees National and Dulles International Airport, both in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. United has a hub at Dulles. Both airports compete for travelers heading to and from the US capital, with National being closer to downtown.

Such efforts are common in lobbying and messaging campaigns. They’re just typically not made public.

MWAA and United are among members of the Coalition to Protect America’s Regional Airports, working to oppose added flights. One of the emails included an invoice from a consulting firm, billing the coalition for $2.5 million for communications support last June, the month after the coalition officially launched.

Rob Yingling, a spokesman for the MWAA, declined to verify the authenticity of the emails or to comment.

Delta Air Lines, along with the Capital Access Alliance, is on the other side, pressing for the additional flights at National, also known as DCA for its airport code. Those pushing for more flights initially sought nearly 30 per day.

In one example of the coordinated efforts, a United employee wrote in an email to Mike Stewart, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Airport Commission, that the company’s “Government Affairs team is drafting” a letter for lawmakers. Stewart then sent a letter to Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the chair and ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, opposing new flights at DCA.

Stewart, in an email to Bloomberg Government this week, said he didn’t recall precisely but was sure United’s team would have been involved.

In another instance, United lobbyist Theresa Fariello asked MWAA in one of the emails from mid-May when the airports authority would have a rebuttal to a study by the Boston Consulting Group that said the DCA perimeter rule, which restricts nonstop flights beyond a 1,250-mile zone, was no longer necessary.

“I think it’s super important to start rebutting that study,” Fariello wrote.

Big Money

The lobbying and messaging efforts took place as United posted a record quarterly spend on federal lobbying for the period covering April through June of last year. The company initially disclosed spending $3.6 million that quarter, but later revised it up to $3.8 million, according to a filing posted Dec. 5.

Delta over the same time frame last year spent $1.3 million on federal lobbying, disclosures show.

A United spokesperson, Leslie Scott, said the company is proud of the work it’s done on the issue.

“We are proud to work closely with anyone who shares the commonsense understanding that shoehorning additional flights into America’s busiest runway has the potential to put safety at risk,” Scott said in an email. “We don’t see anything wrong with engaging with our network of stakeholders who are aligned in supporting safety above the ill-conceived demands of those wishing to put their own financial gains first.”

In recent days, lawmakers, including Virginia Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both Democrats who oppose the added flights, have said more flights would put passenger safety at risk. The emails show how some of the messages began to take shape last year. Security issues would resonate most with members on the Commerce Committee, Kaine aide Nick Barbash wrote on May 19.

Kaine’s “top priority is passenger safety and avoiding deadly disasters like the one that almost occurred” in April when two aircraft came within 300 feet of crashing, a Kaine spokesperson said this week in an email.

‘Work in Progress’

Jay Swanson, an aide to Warner, wrote in an email chain that included airports authority and United lobbyists and other Hill aides that he had “texted someone from Northrop just to let them know what a big issue this is and that they should talk to us before making any decisions.” He added that he had a “discouraging” conversation with an aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, adding “I gave him all our arguments…” Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and defense company, is based in Falls Church, Va., between National and Dulles airports.

“I suspect Schumer will be a work in progress,” Fariello replied.

Rachel Cohen, Warner’s communications director, said the emails contained “no secrets here.”

“Senator Warner’s top priority has been and remains safety and reliability at DCA, which is why he has been so consistent – in public and in private – in making the case to his colleagues and the flying public that adding even more flights to an overburdened runway should be a dangerous non-starter,” she said in an email.

The Capital Access Alliance, which wants to expand the number of flights out of DCA, declined to provide its internal communications.

“The airports of our nation’s capital region are owned by American taxpayers, not any one airline,” Brian Walsh, spokesman for the Capital Access Alliance, said in a statement. “But instead of working to support air travelers, these emails reveal public officials at both MWAA and on Capitol Hill working hand-in-glove with airline lobbyists to prioritize the financial interests of one big airline ahead of the traveling public. It raises serious questions for both MWAA and Virginia’s two Senators over who they’re really looking out for in this debate.”

Michael Cooper, who manages state and local government relations for MWAA, wrote to an organizer of the Coalition to Protect America’s Regional Airports, that he wanted all to be “on the same page” and requested several pieces of information, including which lawmakers sit on the committees of jurisdiction and whether they were inside or outside of the perimeter.

The answers were “paramount to coordinating an effective and coordinated initial strategy for blocking adverse markup language in the FAA bill,” he wrote in a May 23, email.

A follow-up email included a spreadsheet listing whether senators were inside or outside a 1,250-mile perimeter, dating to the 1960s, restricting nonstop flights beyond that zone.