Alaska Accounting and Reporting Directives
Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Office
of Airline Information, Alaska Mail Rates
Number 3
Issue Date: November 11, 2003
Effective Date: Immediately
T-100 Reports
There
appears to be some confusion concerning how carriers should report
inter-village traffic. In October 2003, the United States Postal Service held
five training classes for Alaskan air carriers that report traffic to the
Postal Service. The carriers were instructed to report inter-village traffic
as if the traffic were enplaned at the bush hub. These instructions only apply
to the reports sent to the Postal Service. For T-100 reporting, carriers must
report market data for the actual points of enplanement and deplanement. The
segment records are reported to show the actual movement of the aircraft.
The
Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) performs data validation edit checks
on the nonstop segment and on-flight market data submitted by Alaskan carriers
in their T-100 reports. The edit process is designed to identify obvious errors
that the affected carrier needs to investigate and resubmit corrected data. If
the obvious errors are not corrected prior to BTS sending the data to the
Postal Service, the edit procedures zero out all market data for airports where
the carrier reports more market passengers or freight than segment passengers
or freight. The reasoning behind this action is the fact not all passengers
and freight leaving an airport are market traffic, because the traffic may have
boarded the flight at an up-line point. BTS is unable to determine which
markets are in error and, as a result, must rely on the reporting air carrier
to make the necessary corrections. BTS, OST and the Postal Service agree that
carriers reporting correctly should not be disadvantaged by other carriers’
overstated market reports.
The same edit procedures can be performed for destination airports, namely
market deplanements can not be higher than segment traffic landing at that
airport.
In
order to lessen the number of report resubmissions, carriers are encouraged to
perform these two edits on their own data before submitting T-100 reports to
BTS. Please be cautious to perform these edits on an airport basis. The edits
may be invalid on a city pair basis. For example if a carrier has a routing
from A – B – C – D, the carrier will have A-C and A-D market traffic but no A-C
and A-D segment traffic.
This action is taken under authority delegated in 14 CFR Part 385.19(b)
of the Department’s Organizational Regulations.
Donald W. Bright
Assistant Director
Airline Information
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