With Southwest Airlines flight attendants rejecting
its latest contract offer last
month, the possibility of a strike looms.
So does the aspect of presidential involvement.
A United States President has the authority to
step in and block a strike if he believes it threatens the economy and welfare
of the country.
It’s rare, but it’s not unheard of for a president
to impact travel.
The first president to have an impact on travel
was Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the century when he became the first to
make an overseas trip. In 1906, Roosevelt traveled to Panama to oversee the
construction of the Panama Canal.
Every ensuing president has traveled outside
the country.
While Theodore Roosevelt may have set a
precedent with that trip, the most significant impact on travel in this country
was made in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan.
That was when Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic
controllers who suddenly walked off the job in a protest over wanting higher
wages. Reagan's action sent shockwaves not only across the travel industry but
across the American labor movement as well. Reagan invoked the clause after he
felt it would be detrimental to the American economy and terminated more than
11,000 of the 13,000 members of the union.
“When he made that speech in that Rose Garden, I just felt
betrayed, you know? You told us you were going to take care of this system and
take care of us, and you didn't,” air traffic controller Ron Palmer, one of
those who was fired more than 40 years ago, told NPR.
Donald Devine, who was in the Reagan
cabinet, said: “We had to get more people. We had to steal them from
the military controllers.”
Of course, it is essential to note that
there were far fewer airlines and fewer choices 40 years ago than today. Still,
in retrospect, it might have been the most high-profile example of presidential
involvement in the airline industry.
It was a gamble by the Reagan
administration, to be sure. Air traffic control students were even put on
accelerated learning courses as a backup.
The administration had to even coax people
out of retirement to get in the air traffic controller seats. Fortunately for
the Reagan administration and the flying public, the weather across much of the
country that summer was outstanding.
Reagan, known as the Great Communicator,
also won the public relations battle. He and his administration were able to
successfully flip the script and portray the air traffic controllers in a different
light.
Some might even say that he demonized them,
but he was able to paint them as the aggressors in a battle with the American
flying public. His handling of the situation quite literally became textbook
material for some college students.
Twenty years later came presidential
involvement, the likes of which we have never seen before.
President Bush and his administration shut
down air travel in this country due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was a
smart move until he and his cabinet could get a handle on the situation.
Airlines suffered greatly, however, and needed the government to bail out some
of them.
In 2015, President Barack Obama dipped his
hand into the world of travel when he Restored partial relations with Cuba
after more than 40 years. A sitting president had not traveled to the island
since John F. Kennedy in the 1960s. Many airlines started flights to Havana,
among other places in Cuba, and Americans no longer had to rely on charter
flights.
Most of those relations, however, were
rescinded when Donald Trump was voted in as president.
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