A decade ago, in 1999, Northwest Airlines imprisoned a planeload of passengers on the tarmac for what The Indepdent Traveler described as "eight horrific hours without food, water, working toilets, honest or timely information, or the simple ability to walk off the plane despite being a couple hundred yards from the terminal gate at a major airport." And that was before 9/11, the TSA or other security excuses given these days when passengers are stuck in a parked airplane that isn't going anywhere for many hours.
"Airline passengers are more reliant on the good will of the airlines than most customers are on the good will of their service suppliers. So why shouldn't we have the same rights when flying that we do in other ordinary purchases of goods and services? Of course we should enjoy the same consumer rights when buying airline tickets as we do when buying anything else."
That is premise behind The Travel Insider's four-part series in early 2005 called "We Need an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights." The first post on The Coalition for Stranded Passengers' advocacy and informational blog dates back to December 2007. On January 4, 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story called "Airline Passengers Rights Movement Taking Off." Reporter George Raines wrote about milestones in the fight for passenger rights:
1) "It's possible that Congress, when it takes up a bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration, perhaps in February, will include in it protections for passengers who are inconvenienced by being stranded on airplanes for three hours or more.
2) New York decided it couldn't wait for Congress to act. On New Year's Day, the first-in-the-nation airline passengers' bill of rights became law, requiring airlines to provide stranded passengers at New York airports with critical supplies to make delays more tolerable," with lawmakers in New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut then in various stages of preparing similar legislation.
3) Kate Hanni, founder of the aforementioned Coalition for an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights to lobby for the federal legislation, took the matter of "tarmac confinement" in late 2007.
4) "Aviation Consumer Action Project, a nonprofit group monitoring safety and security issues, negotiated a settlement on behalf of 4,000 Northwest Airlines passengers who were confined in airplanes from four to 11 hours during a snowstorm at Detroit Metro Airport in January 1999. They shared in a settlement of $7.1 million."
All along, travel consumer advocate Christopher Elliott has been reporting on stranded passengers incidents (most recently about a Delta flight on July 26 that left passengers trapped in their plane for 392 minutes) and the snail's pace in which these issues are being addressed.
Ironic, isn't it, that legislation relating to the fasted form of travel is moving along so slowly? Actually, given the staunch opposition of the Air Transport Association, the trade organization of what's left of US commercial air carriers. Its major goal: "The association’s fundamental purpose is to foster a business and regulatory environment that ensures safe and secure air transportation and permits U.S. airlines to flourish, stimulating economic growth locally, nationally and internationally. By working with members in the technical, legal and political arenas, ATA leads industry efforts to fashion crucial policy and supports measures that enhance aviation safety, security and well-being" Nothing there about passenger service, is there?
Meanwhile, how has the bill fared in Congress? H.R. 1303: Airline Passenger Bill of Rights Act 2007 was introduced to committee in March 2007 but stalled there. And that seems to be the current status of H.R. 624: Airline Passenger Bill of Rights Act 2009, introduced in January of this year. However, there is a timeclock right now. As I understand it, Congress has until September 30 to extend the Federal Aviation Administration Act, and the Airline Passengers Bill of rights could be attached to it. Stay tuned.
P.S. The day after I wrote this, Chris Elliott posted "Why I Don't Support a Passengers' Bill of Rights." I'm not entirely sure that I agree with him, but he has followed the subject more closely than I, and I hold him in high regard. The truth is that neither of us has a crystal ball to know what the bill's final form might be, what last-minute compromises might be made and how whatever regulations are eventually passed will be enforced. Continue to stay tuned.
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