Compensation for Bumped Passengers to Increase

Penalties for overbooking a boon to passengers but could hurt ailing airlines

The US Department of Transportation has announced an upward revision of passenger compensation for being bumped from overbooked flights. After something like 25 or 30 years, the government has now doubled the amount that airlines will have to pay passengers who are bumped from flights. Our air travel system is broken. This won't fix it. The timing sucks.

The new amounts are $400 for passengers who arrive within two hours of their original planned arrival schedule on domestic flights or within four hours on international flights (up from $200). Passengers who don't arrive at their destination within those windows would receive up to $800 (up from $400). The compensation will be remain in the form of credit toward future flights. The precise compensation per passenger seems to depend on "fair ticket value," which does not reflect the among a passenger paid -- discount vacation ticket or full fare paid by a business traveler.

It seems like a half-baked "solution" to airline problems and passenger complaints. Some things that come to mind that perhaps have been addressed with the new rules and perhaps not:

• With skyrocketing jet fuel prices, many airlines are already cash strapped, cutting corners and in several recent high-profile incidents, going out of business. Requiring ailing airlines to hand out freebies does not address those problems.
• Airliners burn that expensive fuel while waiting for permission to take off at congested airports with chronic delays, which affected 26 percent of all flights last year. Antiquated airports, inadequate runway and taxiway systems, an over-burdened air control system are a major issue. Chicago's O'Hare, New York's Newark and LaGuardia, Boston's Logan and San Francisco, especially in fog season, are among those that immediately come to mind when the topic is delays. LaGuardia has operated under the same capacity since 1968 (that's 40 years, friends), which the government is proposing to modify by tinkering with takeoff and landing slots allocated to individual carriers.
• When airlines hold loaded aircraft at the gate in order to save fuel, passengers are trapped in planes sometimes for hours. Ventilation systems designed to operate in the air often perform poorly on the ground. Passengers stuck, often without water or, of course, anything to nibble on become cranky. Predictably and appropriately complaints mount. Perhaps instead of a new bump rule, the government should be trying to solve the current major air-travel problem. (As a side note, New York State passed a passenger bill of rights requiring airlines to provide water, food, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers trapped in delayed planes, but a federal appeals court struck it down down in March, saying it was a federal not a state issue. In 2007, the US House of Representatives passed a similar bill, but the Senate has not yet taken it up. Even if Congress does pass a passenger bill of rights, it is unclear whether that new rule would have an penalties for airlines that did not comply.)
• With the prevalent hub-and-spoke system in the US, delays in one part of the country can impact passengers with connections hundreds of miles away. Airlines will have to balance reassigning passengers from incoming flights with those originating at hub airports, and what was not initially an overbooked flight can suddenly become one.
• How do weather delays (rain, fog, tornado activity, snowstorms, etc.) somewhere on a route system or mechanical delays on a particular aircraft play into this picture? Permission for aircraft impacted in flight by thunderstorms has now been obtained for American planes to detour into Canadian airspace, which does begin to address the weather issue -- at least in places like the Northeast.
• What about airline crew members? Do they get still get some kind of priority to reach their own next flights, or will airlines not board them in favor of passengers to avoid the higher bump penalties? Airplanes have only so many jump seats for dead-heading crew.
• According to reports, the new rules seem to be one-size-fits all, whether on a capacious Airbus, MD-80 or even 747 or small commuter aircraft carrying 30 or more passengers flown by regional or feeder airline, which seems unreasonable. The old rules applied to planes carrying 60 or more passengers.
• The only bright spot I see in all this is the possibility -- not probability, but possibility -- that standby passengers might have a better show at getting a seat than previously.

IMHO, instead of addressing real problems that would cost the government money (i.e., fixing the antiquated air-traffic control system) and or ones that would hurt the deep pocketed and influential oil industry (putting some tough controls on soaring fuel prices, implementing policies that mandate an increase in overall fuel efficiency and seriously investing in alternative energy for uses where oil is an option, not a requirement), the feds have shifted responsibility -- this time to the airlines.