On the recordFebruary 17, 2011
I thought the prospect of working this out was absolutely gone. I thought that once again the Senate would walk away from the idea of trying to come up with a way to have a more competitive market-oriented system in the aviation sector. Obviously, this is not all that needs to be done, but this issue of slots, I would say to colleagues and the folks who are listening, is not about adding more gambling machines; this is about the right to land a plane. In much of our country, we have crowded airports, and folks are very concerned about that because it really relates to the business climate and it relates to quality of life. And it is not just in my part of the country but lots of other parts. So this morning we still had three or four outstanding issues. A group of Senators, on a bipartisan basis, got together. We were just a little ways up here in the building, and in good faith we worked through a variety of issues--issues to make sure everybody was treated fairly in terms of scheduling, issues to ensure fairness with respect to the new flights and to something called conversion, which essentially involves taking short distance of flights and turning them into long distance flights.
