Who is This Guy ?

Following up on my post, “Searching For Excuses.” It appears Mr. David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, is quite the mystery man. Just ten minutes worth of searching on the internet has raised all sorts of questions.

From The New York Times -- ” But the Air Travelers Association, which once charged annual fees and sold travel insurance and various other travel-related services, no longer accepts members. And Mr. Stempler declines to say how many members his group has.“


From The Cranky Flier -- ” My biggest question is about who he is trying to support here. In his release, he says, “The Air Travelers Association is the airline passenger/consumer representative on the U.S. DOT’s New York Aviation Rulemaking Committee . . . .” He is clearly connected to someone if he made it on this committee, but as many others have asked, is he really supporting passengers?“


From CharterX -- ”Stempler was asked how many airline passengers his for-profit association represented, but he declined comment. When he was asked if he had any data to substantiate claims that airline passengers were complaining about corporate jets not paying their fair share for air traffic control services, he said he didn’t have that data. “

Who is this guy and why is he on a Transportation Department task force “...to draft suggestions on how the federal government should deal with the problem of air traffic congestion in the New York area...” ?

Thanks to Evan Sparks’s Aviation Policy Blog for the point out.

Don Brown
March 6, 2008