[Federal Register Volume 88, Number 217 (Monday, November 13, 2023)]
[Notices]
[Pages 77667-77671]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2023-24885]


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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

Office of the Secretary

[Docket ID Number: DOT-OST-2018-0068]


Notice of Submission of Proposed Information Collection to OMB 
Agency Request for Reinstatement of Previously Approved Collections: 
Traveling by Air With Service Animals--U.S. Department of 
Transportation Service Animal Air Transportation Form and U.S. 
Department of Transportation Service Animal Relief Attestation Form

AGENCY: Office of the Secretary (OST), Department of Transportation 
(Department or DOT).

ACTION: Notice and request for comments.

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SUMMARY: In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this 
notice announces DOT's intention to reinstate an Office of Management 
and Budget (OMB) Control Number 2105-0576, ``U.S. Department of 
Transportation Service Animal Air Transportation Form,'' and to seek 
comment on formatting and clarifying amendments to this form. The 
Department also seeks to reinstate its ``U.S. Department of 
Transportation Service Animal Relief Attestation Form''; no amendments 
have been made to this form. The subject information collections are 
related to a requirement in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) that 
permits airlines to collect service animal documentation from 
passengers with a disability traveling by air with a service animal.

DATES: Interested persons are invited to submit comments regarding this 
proposal. Written comments should be submitted by January 12, 2024.

ADDRESSES: You may file comments identified by the docket number DOT-
OST-2018-0068 by any of the following methods:
     Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to https://www.regulations.gov and follow the online instructions for submitting 
comments. (You may access comments received for this notice at https://www.regulations.gov by searching docket DOT-OST-2018-0068.)
     Mail: Docket Management Facility, U.S. Department of 
Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Ave. SE, West Building Ground Floor 
Room, W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001;
     Hand Delivery: West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 
1200 New Jersey Ave. SE, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through 
Friday, except Federal holidays. The telephone number is 202-366-9329.
    Instructions: You must include the agency name and docket number 
DOT-OST-2010-0054 at the beginning of your comment. All comments 
received will be posted without change to https://www.regulations.gov, 
including any personal information provided.
    Privacy Act: Anyone is able to search the electronic form of all 
comments received in any of DOT's dockets by the name of the individual 
submitting the comment (or signing the comment, if submitted on behalf 
of an association, business, labor union, etc.). You may review DOT's 
complete Privacy Act Statement in the Federal Register published on 
April 11, 2000 (65 FR 19477-78).

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Maegan Johnson or Livaughn Chapman, 
Jr., Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, U.S. Department of 
Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590, 
Telephone Number (202) 366-9342 (voice), (202) 366-7152 (fax); 
[email protected] or [email protected] (email). 
Arrangements to receive this document in an alternative format may be 
made by contacting the above-named individuals.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 
    OMB Control Number: 2105-0576.
    Title: Traveling by Air with Service Animals.
    Type of Request: Reinstatement of information collections.
    Background: The U.S. Department of Transportation (Department or 
DOT) published a final rule to amend the Department's Air Carrier 
Access Act (ACAA) regulation on the transport of service animals by air 
in the Federal Register on December 10, 2020 (85 FR 79742). 14 CFR 
382.75 allows airlines to require passengers traveling with service 
animals to provide carriers with the following two forms of 
documentation developed by the Department as a condition of travel. The 
first form published in the rule, the U.S. Department of Transportation 
Service Animal Air Transportation Form (``Behavior and Health 
Attestation Form''), is designed to ensure and inform airlines of the 
service animal's good health, disability-related training, and good 
behavior; to educate passengers traveling with service animals on how 
service animals in air transportation are expected to behave; and to 
inform passengers traveling with service animals of the consequences of 
service animal misbehavior. The second form published in the rule, the 
U.S. Department of Transportation Service Animal Relief Attestation 
Form (``Relief Attestation Form''), may only be required by the 
airlines when a passenger is traveling with service animals on a flight 
segment scheduled to take 8 hours or more. The purpose of this form is 
to provide assurances to airlines that the service animal will not need 
to relieve itself on the flight or that the animal can relieve itself 
in a way that does not create a health or sanitation issue, and to 
educate passengers of the consequences should an animal relieve itself 
on the aircraft in an unsanitary way.
    The Behavior and Health Attestation Form and the Relief Attestation 
Form are the only forms that airlines are permitted to require from 
passengers traveling with service animals as a condition of transport, 
except in rare circumstances when additional documentation may be 
necessary to comply with requirements on transport of animals by a 
Federal agency, a U.S. territory, or a foreign jurisdiction. DOT is 
publishing this notice to announce its intent to seek reinstatement of 
the previously approved information collections for these forms, OMB 
Control Number 2015-0576, and receive comments on the formatting and 
clarifying amendments made to its Behavior and Health Attestation Form. 
Currently, OMB authorization of the information collections expire on 
December 31, 2023.

[[Page 77668]]

    The Department has not made amendments to its Relief Attestation 
Form as part of this renewal; however, the Department invites comments 
on the Relief Attestation Form renewal and on the formatting and 
clarifying amendments to its Behavior and Health Attestation Form. 
Although the amended Behavior and Health Attestation Form accompanying 
this Notice only addresses the formatting and clarity issues that have 
been raised about the form, the Department is aware that there are 
additional substantive issues raised about the current Behavior and 
Health attestation form, such as whether to include a question asking 
passengers to state the task or work their service animal performs, 
whether to ask passengers to affirm that they have a disability, and 
whether to clarify on the form that the carrier must assist the 
passenger with completing the form. The Department plans to explore 
these, and other related substantive issues that fall within the bounds 
of the service animal rule, with its next Air Carrier Access Act 
Advisory Committee.
    The amended Behavior and Health Attestation Form accompanying this 
Notice has been reformatted as follows: (1) the DOT seal and the 
disclaimer language at the top of the form has been adjusted, (2) DOT 
has added subject headers throughout the form to better define the 
individual sections of the form, (3) DOT revised the form to include 
two separate training sections so that the service animal user can 
indicate both the task training and behavior training that the service 
animal received, (4) DOT added footnotes at the bottom of the form to 
clarify that the service animal user may be listed as the service 
animal's behavior and/or task trainer if the animal was self-trained, 
and (5) DOT reduced the number of times that the animal's name must be 
provided on the form.
    The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA) and its implementing 
regulations, 5 CFR part 1320, require Federal agencies to issue two 
notices seeking public comment on information collection activities 
before OMB may approve paperwork packages. A Federal agency generally 
cannot conduct or sponsor a collection of information, and the public 
is generally not required to respond to an information collection, 
unless it is approved by the OMB under the PRA and displays a currently 
valid OMB Control Number. In addition, notwithstanding any other 
provisions of law, no person shall generally be subject to monetary 
penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if the 
collection of information does not display a valid OMB Control Number. 
See 5 CFR 1320.5(a) and 1320.6.
    For each of these information collections, the title, a description 
of the respondents, and an estimate of the annual recordkeeping and 
periodic reporting burden are set forth below.
    1. Requirement to prepare and submit to airlines the DOT Air 
Transportation Service Animal Behavior and Health Attestation Form.
    Respondents: Passengers with disabilities traveling on aircraft 
with service animals.
    Number of Respondents: The Department estimates that 310,145 
respondents will complete the Service Animal Health and Attestation 
form. This estimate was calculated by using the same analysis used by 
the Department in its 2021 Service Animal Regulatory Impact Analysis 
(RIA), where the Department estimated that 319,000 respondents would 
use the Service Animal Health and Attestation Form.
    In the RIA, the Department relied on 2017 passenger data and 
estimates provided from Airlines for America on the number of service 
animals transported by U.S. air carriers in 2017 \1\ to estimate the 
number of respondents that would use the Service Animal Health and 
Attestation form. DOT estimated that in 2017, 281,000 service animals 
were transported by U.S. carriers on flights to, within, and from the 
United States, and 38,000 were transported by foreign air carriers on 
flights to and from the United States.\2\ Assuming that only one 
passenger with a disability travels with a service animal, the 
Department determined in 2021 that 319,000 respondents (281,000 + 
38,000) would use the service animal form.
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    \1\ Comment from A4A, https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=DOT-OST-2018-0068-4288. A4A estimates that 281,000 
service animals were transported on U.S. airlines in 2017. DOT 
estimates that 38,000 service animals were transported by foreign 
airlines on flights to and from the U.S. in 2017 based on air 
carrier passenger data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 
available at https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-traffic-data-us-airlines-andforeign-airlines-us-flights.
    \2\ See, Traveling by Air with Service Animals (FR)--Regulatory 
Impact Analysis (November 2020); Regulations.gov.
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    For the purposes of this renewal, the Department relied on 2022 
enplanement data to estimate the number of respondents that would 
complete the service animal forms. In 2022, U.S. passenger enplanements 
increased by .5 percent and foreign carrier enplanements decreased by 
27 percent.\3\ Thus, DOT estimates that 282,405 service animals were 
transported by U.S. carriers to, from, or within the U.S. in 2022 and, 
if foreign carriers had a similar proportion of passengers traveling 
with service animals, foreign carriers transported 27,740 service 
animals to or from the U.S. in 2022. Assuming that only one passenger 
with a disability travels with a service animal, 310,145 respondents 
(282,405 + 27,740) would complete the service animal behavior and 
health attestation form.
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    \3\ Bureau of Transportation Statistics (2022). ``2022 Traffic 
Data for U.S. Airlines and Foreign Airlines U.S. Flights.'' https://www.transtats.bts.gov/Data_Elements.aspx?Data=4. The number of 
passengers on foreign carriers (84.5 million) was 9.9 percent of the 
number on domestic carriers (852.8 million).
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    Estimated Total Annual Burden on Respondents: We estimate that 
completing the form would require 15 minutes (.25 hours) per response, 
including the time it takes to retrieve an electronic or paper version 
of the form from the carrier's website, reviewing the instructions, and 
completing the questions. Passengers would spend a total of 77,536 
hours annually (0.25 hours x 310,145 passengers) to retrieve and 
complete an accessible version of the form. Passengers would fill out 
the forms on their own time without pay. To estimate the value of this 
uncompensated activity, we use median wage data from the Bureau of 
Labor Statistics.\4\ We use a post-tax wage estimate of $18.48 ($22.26 
median for all occupations minus a 17% percent estimated tax rate). The 
estimated annual value of this time is $1,432,865 ($18.48 x 77,536 
hours).\5\
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    \4\ For a discussion of estimating the value of uncompensated 
activities, see ``Valuing Time in U.S. Department of Health and 
Human Services Regulatory Impact Analyses: Conceptual Framework and 
Best Practices'' from the Department of Health and Human Services, 
available at https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/257746/VOT.pdf.
    \5\ Bureau of Labor Statistics (2022). ``May 2022 National 
Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates: United States.'' May 
2022 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates (bls.gov).
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    2. Requirement to prepare and submit to airlines the DOT Service 
Animal Relief Attestation Form.
    Respondents: Passengers with disabilities traveling on aircraft 
with service animals on flight segments scheduled to take 8 hours or 
more.
    Number of Respondents: The Department estimates that 5 percent of 
service animal users would be on flight segments scheduled to take 8 
hours or more and would also have to complete the Relief Attestation 
Form, for a total of 15,507 respondents (310,145 x 0.05).
    Estimated Total Annual Burden on Respondents: We estimate that 
completing the form would require 15

[[Page 77669]]

minutes (.25 hours) per response, including the time it takes to 
retrieve an electronic or paper version of the form from the carrier's 
website, reviewing the instructions, and completing the questions. 
Passengers would spend a total of 3,877 hours annually (0.25 hours x 
15,507 passengers) to retrieve an accessible version of the form and 
complete the form. Passengers would fill out the forms on their own 
time without pay, as they would with the Animal Behavior and Health 
Attestation Form. The estimated annual value of this time is $71,647 
($18.48 x 3,877 hours).

Comments Invited

    We invite comments on the Relief Attestation Form renewal and on 
the formatting and clarity amendments made to the Behavior and Health 
Attestation Form. We also invite comments on: (a) Whether the 
collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of 
the functions of the Department, including whether the information will 
have practical utility; (b) the accuracy of the Department's estimate 
of the burden of the proposed information collection; (c) ways to 
enhance the quality, utility and clarity of the information to be 
collected; and (d) ways to minimize the burden of the collection of 
information on respondents.
    All responses to this notice will be summarized and included in the 
request for OMB approval. All comments will also become a matter of 
public record on the docket.
    Authority: The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995; 44 U.S.C. chapter 
35, as amended; and 59 CFR 1.48.
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[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TN13NO23.098



[[Page 77671]]


    Issued in Washington, DC.
Livaughn Chapman Jr.,
Deputy Assistant General Counsel, Office of Aviation Consumer 
Protection.
[FR Doc. 2023-24885 Filed 11-9-23; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4910-9X-C