What Pete Buttigieg Wants Airline CEOs to Know
Photo Credit: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg speaks at the NewDEAL conference in Washington, D.C. Department of Transportation/Flickr Department of Transportation
Skift Take
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke with Skift about his tenure at the department, mergers and approach to consumer regulations.
Pete Buttigieg might be one of the most high-profile Transportation Secretaries in recent history. During his tenure as head of the DOT, he oversaw the airline industry’s post-pandemic recovery, meltdowns, a safety and quality crisis at Boeing and two mergers, one of which was blocked.
The department under Buttigieg’s leadership also implemented a slate of consumer regulations ranging from automatic refunds to free family seating. It’s unclear how Buttigieg’s expected successor — former Fox Business host Sean Duffy — will shape the DOT under an incoming Trump administration, but many of the regulations Buttigieg has championed have received praise from Congress and criticism from airline executives.
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said there was a “level of overreach” during the Biden administration. Airlines for America, the trade group that represents most major U.S. airlines, sued the DOT for regulatory overreach for a rule on junk f
