There was yet another in a long line of news articles this week over the ongoing efforts to get Congress to pass an airline passengers' bill of rights. These bits of legislation, in case you haven't heard, are designed to address such things as passengers being forced to sit on airliners for hours on end due to airport delays, etc. On this issue, the version presently being debated in a Senate committee limits those wait time to THREE HOURS, and the airlines are, as usual, complaining that this limit would cause even more delays.
If you've flown much at all, you know the feeling of being treated more like a commodity than a person. The treatment within the terminals is only heightened when passengers are crammed inaside an aluminum tube with other coughing passengers, bad body odor, crying babies, and generally obnoxious other human beings. yet passengers who might complain too vociferously, much less try to get off the plane, are subject to Federal security laws and arrest for misconduct aboard an airplane.
Three horrific stories have provided much of the impetus behind these bills. First, in 1999, a Northwest flight was heldon the tarmac for over eight hours, with no water, no working toilets, no food, and no honest answers about what was going on.
In December 2008, American Airlines stranded passengers on the tarmac for eight hours in Austin, Texas. The treatment of the passengers was heartless this time as well: five hours into the ordeal, an elderly woman asked for some food. A flight attendant told her there were a few snack boxes available and charged her $4.00. American relented at the eight-hour mark only when it became obvious that a diabetic patient onboard was in danger. When the passengers were released, no assistance was available at the terminal or on airline phone banks. In other words, they were abandoned.
And in February 2009, one JetBlue airliner was held in New York for ELEVEN hours. In all of these cases, the terminal was but a few hundred yards away, if that far, yet passengers were imprisoned in their metal tube. Some of the JetBlue passengers have sued for false imprisonment and breach of contract.
After the 1999 debacle, and other lesser but similar events, the airlines got together and drafted a "Customer Service Initiative", which was full of charming platitudes, but in reality was little more than a revision to nicer language of their "Contract of Carriage", which is more like a list of the dozens of things for which the airlines cannot be held at fault. In other words, a PR fluff piece that was useless.
One of the American passengers from December 2008 has formed the Coalition for Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights. Their proposed Bill of Rights reads as follows:
All American air carriers shall abide by the following standards to ensure the safety, security and comfort of their passengers:
Establish procedures to respond to all passenger complaints within 24 hours and with appropriate resolution within two weeks.
Notify passengers within 10 minutes of a delay of known diversions, delays and cancellations via airport overhead announcement, on-aircraft announcement and posting on airport television monitors.
Establish procedures for returning passengers to terminal gate when delays occur so that no plane sits on the tarmac for longer than three hours without connecting to a gate.
Provide for the essential needs of passengers during air- or ground-based delays of longer than three hours, including food, water, sanitary facilities and access to medical attention.
Provide for the needs of disabled, elderly and special-needs passengers by establishing procedures for assisting with the moving and retrieving of baggage, and the moving of passengers from one area of airport to another at all times by airline personnel.
Publish and update monthly on the company's public Web site a list of chronically delayed flights, meaning those flight delayed 30 minutes or more, at least 40 percent of the time, during a single month.
Compensate bumped passengers or passengers delayed due to flight cancellations or postponements of over 12 hours by refund of 150 percent of ticket price.
The formal implementation of a Passenger Review Committee, made up of non-airline executives and employees but rather passengers and consumers -- that would have the formal ability to review and investigate complaints.
Make lowest fare information, schedules and itineraries, cancellation policies and frequent flier program requirements available in an easily accessed location and updated in real time.
Ensure that baggage is handled without delay or injury; if baggage is lost or misplaced, the airline shall notify customer of baggage status within 12 hours and provide compensation equal to current market value of baggage and its contents.
Require that these rights apply equally to all airline codeshare partners including international partners.
This all sounds very reasonable to me. In exchange for paying hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for an airline ticket, paying nickel and dime fees on luggage, etc., allowing ourselves to be treated like so many cattle in the terminal and boarding process, and then crammed into impossibly tiny seats with narrow aisles, I don't think this is asking too much of the airlines. In fact, I think extending the wait period to as much as three hours is a quite generous compromise to airlines' operational needs.
But the big point that needs to be made is to require that the airlines be honest with passengers on a timely basis. The level of dishonesty with terminal personnel, to flight attendants and so on is beyond the pale. And for the most part this is not a problem with the individuals, but an enforced policy of the airlines to treat the passengers like mushrooms, i.e., keep them in the dark and occasionally dump some crap on them. Passengers cannot get the truth on why there are delays, the expected duration, re-booking possibilities, or anything else in a delay situation.
Although airline disasters are statistically rare, there is still no question that passengers are putting their lives into the airlines' hands every time we fly. Given that abiding truth, passengers are entitle to humane treatment, and timely, honest treatment from the airlines. Anything less is unacceptable.
So, call or write your Congressman and Senators to push this bill forward. This is a no-brainer and should be passed with much more haste than the Obama Administration is putting on its other pet projects.
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