Hundreds of taxi cab drivers flooded New Orleans City Hall chambers on May 21 to protest a contract to manage taxi services at the airport. (Kenneth Hawkins/NYT Institute)

It was a small victory in a long battle to keep their independence, New Orleans taxi drivers said Thursday as they stood outside City Hall, celebrating.

Taxi drivers circled around and filled City Hall chambers, waiting to hear the results of a federal court hearing in a lawsuit filed by two taxi companies, Tectrans and Yellow Cab, against the Airport Aviation Board. The companies lost a bid to manage curbside taxi services at Louis Armstrong International Airport and claimed that the aviation board had violated the bid process by wrongfully awarding the bid to Dulles Airport Taxi Inc.

The aviation board on Thursday decided to withdraw the contract with Dulles Airport Taxi.

John Massoud, vice president of Dulles Airport Taxi, said that he respected the decision of the aviation board. But Massoud disputed the allegations that Dulles Airport Taxi won the bid based on favoritism. “We won the bid because we were the best for the job,” he said.  

Dulles Airport Taxi currently has a contract with Washington-Dulles International Airport and has operated at other airports. The company was the sole bidder on a contract at Louis Armstrong in 2007, but the airport board decided not to award any contract, citing the lack of competitive bids.

In New Orleans, the taxi drivers formed its own group, Airport Taxi Drivers, and on May 20 filed suit in New Orleans Parish Civil District Court against the Aviation Board and Dulles Airport Taxi., alleging unfair trade practice, illegal monopoly, improper procedure, as well as violations of local, state and federal laws. 

In a press release, Aviation Board Chairman Dan Packer said the board had not violated any laws or ethical procedures in awarding the contract to Dulles Airport Taxi. The board said it will re-examine the procedures and policies for awarding bids and will ask the court to drop the federal suit.

According to Washington Post reports, Dulles Airport Taxi has been a subject of allegations in the past involving the use of political influences to strike a deal with Washington-Dulles International Airport. The company has denied any wrongdoing.

Wasef Kudsy, president of the Airport Taxi Drivers, said the lawsuit was withdrawn after the group learned that the contract with Dulles Airport Taxi had been canceled.

“They basically excluded our businesses,” said Theresa Braggs, secretary of the taxi alliance. “By not allowing due process on the local level, the recovery and rebuilding that has been preached for the last four years gets lost in translation. If hundreds of taxicab drivers suddenly become unemployed, how does that help our economy?”

Kudsy said that many taxi drivers feared that if one company was brought in to manage airport cab service, they would be put at risk in an already unstable economy. Taxi drivers in New Orleans get most of their business from airport travelers.

Kudsy said that during the summer, business is slower and the number of taxi drivers operating in New Orleans ranges from 200 to 250. In the winter, however, the number of cabdrivers goes up to 700.

Cabdrivers believed that a deal with Dulles Airport Taxi would leave many of them without work because Dulles would have held a monopoly on airport taxi service.

They also believe that a company could force them to pay extra fees to operate at the airport, on top of costs that they are already paying, such as insurance and license fees. Kudsy said that some of the new fees would likely include a requirement that taxicabs have a dispatch radio, which would be an additional $200 monthly fee.

Massoud said the fees that he would have charged the taxi drivers to work at the airport weren’t concrete, so he could not say if they would have actually seen an increase in fees.

He said the contract would have allowed any taxi driver with a good driving record to work with his company.

Adding to drivers’ troubles, a gas surplus charge of $2, which was implemented by the city and charged to taxi passengers, was eliminated in April. The charge for a taxi is $2.50 in the city; before April it was $4.50.

Kudsy said that while taxi drivers are in the clear, eventually he hopes to not have to worry about their independence.

“Many of us still haven’t come back since Katrina,” he said. “Those of us who did came back because we were asked to and because we love this city, and now we’re in trouble.”