WASHINGTON—The ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee called the Department of Transportation’s guidelines for international code-sharing arrangements a significant step toward ensuring the highest air safety standards world-wide. The DOT issued the guidelines today.

Under a code-sharing arrangement, an American airline can book its passengers on a foreign carrier, but still use its own flight number. The passenger’s ticket and itinerary carry the U.S. carrier’s name and flight information, but he will be flying on a foreign carrier’s aircraft.

"When a passenger buys a ticket on an American air carrier for an international trip, he is more likely than ever to find that at least one leg of his flight is on a foreign airline. From 1994 to 1999, the number of code-sharing agreements between U.S. airlines and carriers from other countries doubled. These may continue to increase as economic and competitive factors make such arrangements more attractive to the airlines," said Rep. James Oberstar (Minn.), Ranking Democratic Member of the committee.

"Such a passenger deserves the utmost assurance that his flight will be conducted with the highest regard to safety, regardless of the color of the airplane, the name on its fuselage or the flag on its tail," Oberstar said. "Today’s announcement by the DOT is a significant step toward that."

Under the DOT guidelines, a U.S. airline wishing to enter into a code-sharing arrangement may establish a DOT-approved program for conducting safety audits of its foreign partner. In addition, the Federal Aviation Administration will determine whether the airline is properly conducting the audits and will review the results.

Last May Oberstar introduced the Aviation Code-Share Safety Act of 1999, H.R. 2024, to address the issue of safety audits for international code-sharing partners. The Oberstar bill goes further than the DOT guidelines, however. It makes the safety audits mandatory and requires the U.S. carrier to conduct on-site inspections of its code-share partner as part of the audit process. The bill also sets precise requirements for the safety items to be included in the audit.

Oberstar’s bill is pending before the Subcommittee on Aviation.