H.R. 3477, Ensuring Airline Resiliency to Reduce Delays and Cancellations Act

H.R. 3477 would require passenger air carriers to develop and regularly update a strategy to prevent or limit the effects of severe weather and other anticipated disruptions on passengers. The bill would require the Department of Transportation to develop a method to protect the confidentiality of trade secrets or proprietary information in those strategies. In addition, H.R. 3477 would require the Government Accountability Office to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies and report to the Congress.

Based on the cost of similar activities, CBO estimates that implementing the bill would cost $1 million over the 2025-2030 period. Any related spending would be subject to the availability of appropriated funds.

The bill would impose a private-sector mandate as defined in the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act (UMRA) by requiring passenger air carriers to develop a strategy for preventing or limiting the effect of weather and other foreseeable disruptions on passengers. This would marginally expand existing requirements on air carriers to plan for, and respond to, certain disruptions in service. CBO expects that because carriers would build on existing operational policies for responding to those events, the cost of compliance would fall well below the threshold established in UMRA for private-sector mandates ($206 million in 2025, adjusted annually for inflation).

H.R. 3477 would not impose intergovernmental mandates as defined in UMRA.

The CBO staff contacts for this estimate are Aaron Krupkin (for federal costs) and Brandon Lever (for mandates). The estimate was reviewed by H. Samuel Papenfuss, Deputy Director of Budget Analysis.