TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Passenger's Bill Of Rights

ADVERTISEMENT

By TED JACKOVICS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 20, 2008

TAMPA Grab a seat on Kate Hanni's airliner, and you'll wish you hadn't. Ask congressmen who tried it out in Washington, D.C., last year.

You're sandwiched in a seat that's too small. The cabin smells bad, like the restrooms need to be serviced. It's noisy. There's no food, no water. Despite its whimsical name, "Mock 1," this airliner never leaves the ground, let alone approaches the speed of sound.

The fake aircraft parked on the National Mall was designed to draw attention to the plight of passengers stuck onboard grounded airliners.

That's the point Hanni has made since she got stranded for nine hours inside an airliner at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in 2006 and gave up her career in California real estate to become a full-time airline passenger rights activist. Now her Coalition for an Airline Passenger Bill of Rights has become the center of a movement that's gathering momentum, although airlines vehemently oppose outside regulation.

New York enacted the nation's first passenger bill of rights in January, and legislators in other states, including Florida, are thinking likewise. The U.S. Department of Transportation is taking suggestions until Tuesday (airconsumer.ost.dot.gov) before considering new rules for passenger rights. Next month, Congress is expected to take up the passenger rights issue.

But despite political pressure and passenger unrest, examples abound of a problem that appears far from resolution.

Department of Transportation data for the first 11 months of 2007 showed 6,781 flights languished outside airport terminals between two and three hours before taking off. Another 1,264 flights kept passengers aboard three to four hours, and 228 flights made passengers wait four to five hours. For people on 43 unfortunate flights, idle jets kept passengers on the tarmac more than five hours.

That's 8,316 flights out of 6.84 million with onboard passenger delays of more than two hours. The percentage may be small, but the unpleasantness was indelible, experienced flyers say.

"Since 1994, I have flown over 50 weeks a year, with the exception of this year, on various airlines, and they are all the same," Punta Gorda resident Dona Colburn said in an e-mail to the Department of Transportation's rule-making Web site. "We sit on the tarmacs for hours and hours, over 10 hours on one flight, with no food, no water and no bathrooms."

Colburn included a letter she sent to US Airways in August that revealed how badly things can go, even when airline employees try their best to accommodate passengers.

A February flight from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Chicago was delayed for 21/2 hours before passengers were loaded onto the airliner, she said, Then the plane left the gate and parked on the tarmac, where it sat for hours, Colburn said.

"We had one of the best flight crews I have seen in years," she wrote. "They gave us water, sodas and coffee until we finally took off. They had taken such good care of us while we were on the tarmac that once we were in the air there were no refreshments left."

The caterer in New York did not replenish the plane's supplies. All that was left were alcoholic beverages.

"Even though it was a delay due to weather, sitting on the tarmac that long was inexcusable and avoidable, and the passengers should have been compensated in some form or fashion," Colburn said.

Those examples worry passenger rights advocates who say the problem of stranded passengers persist even though there's plentiful publicity about problems.

"It's amazing to me, the arrogance of the airlines. Of course, it is about money, and they don't want to let go," Hanni said in a telephone interview last week from Washington, where she visited a dozen elected officials on Capitol Hill in pursuit of her coalition's goals.

The Department of Transportation is considering rules to enhance airline passenger protections, including limiting the maximum tarmac delay an airline will permit and assuring there's adequate food, water, lavatory facilities and medical attention for passengers. To see the proposed list of rules, go to regulations.gov and paste "DOT-OST-2007-0022" into the search window, then click on "Rules" under "Document Types, " and read "Enhancing Airline Passenger Protections." Hanni is concerned the proposal does not include sufficient, enforceable governmental oversight.

The New York law requires that once airplanes leave the gates and have been on the tarmac for three hours, there must be drinking water, snacks and functional restrooms or the airline will be fined $1,000 per passenger, per violation. An airline industry trade group fought the law, but a federal judge dismissed the challenge.

State Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton, filed a bill for draft on Wednesday that would add elements of the New York law to one he introduced last year that did not pass. It would give passengers recourse for delays, Bennett aide Cheryl Ennis said. Legislators in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey also are considering passenger-protection measures in the absence of federal law.

Stranded Outside Terminal

Most tarmac delays tend to take place in snowy or icy weather, although a February 2006 flight with a mechanical problem at Tampa International Airport stranded passengers onboard for more than six hours during a lightning storm.

Pilots whose flights are running late don't want to lose their place in line to take off from busy airports. When an airliner is delayed or worse, when a flight is canceled, the ripple effect wreaks havoc on schedules elsewhere. Planes customarily are scheduled to cover several legs of flights each day, and crews must reach their destinations to make flights they're scheduled to work the following day.

One of the more prominent series of incidents occurred in 1999, when Northwest Airlines passenger jets at Detroit's airport waited in line for gates to be cleared during a snowstorm. Some passengers were kept onboard just outside the terminal more than eight hours.

Although a federal investigation found Northwest violated no laws during the ordeal, the airline agreed to pay $7.1 million in 2001 to more than 7,000 passengers stranded during the storm.

Northwest also drew widespread news coverage in 2000, when it stranded 139 passengers on an aircraft.

A similar pattern occurred more recently involving JetBlue, which stranded passengers for more than eight hours in a February 2006 flight bound from New York City to Tampa. A youth group from a Tampa synagogue was on that flight, but organizers of the local trip declined to talk about the incident.

Last Valentine's Day, JetBlue, which had become a media and passenger favorite in New York City with its low fares, hip cabin service and charismatic founder David Neeleman, delayed passengers in two events that Neeleman later called "unacceptable."

One flight stranded passengers more than 10 hours on the ground, while hundreds of other passengers sat for more than six hours on the John F. Kennedy International Airport tarmac.

A Company's Promise

JetBlue responded by developing its own passenger bill of rights and posting it on its Web site (jetblue.com) with offers on vouchers for future travel, depending on the length of delay.

"It was important for us to retain trust," JetBlue spokeswoman Alison Eshelman said, adding she believed JetBlue's Bill of Rights favorably compares with New York's legislation.

JetBlue's move may reassure its passengers, industry groups are split over any regulation.

The Business Travel Coalition, a consumer advocate group based in Pennsylvania, supports passengers rights, while the Air Transport Association, an airline trade group based in Washington, opposes regulations for the industry beyond those imposed by federal law.

That doesn't fly with Hanni.

"I worry that the Department of Transportation is trying to pre-empt what Congress might be inclined to do."

"Of course, they worry that I will bring 'Mock 1' back to the National Mall," said Hanni, whose first display of the pretend aircraft garnered national press in August. Some congressmen, but no one from the Senate, showed up.

"In real estate, I was used to more instant gratification. Now I have learned I have to be patient, but I won't give up."

DELAYS, DELAYS

The U.S. Department of Transportation reports these U.S. airlines had the most delays of more than two hours when an aircraft had taxied away from the terminal. The report covers incidents January through November 2007.

American Airlines: 1,236

Express Jet: 993

Continental Airlines: 848

Delta Air Lines: 747

United Airlines: 712

American Eagle: 681

US Airways: 667

JetBlue: 615

Source: U.S. Department of Transportation

Reporter Ted Jackovics can be reached at (813) 259-7817 or tjackovics@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT