FAA bill touches on tarmac delays; advocates fight for passenger rights
Frequent fliers, you’ve all been there. You get yourself to the airport in the nick of time, scribble out some baggage tags at check-in, make your way through the security bottleneck, board your flight and — phew — get ready for takeoff. But you go to big fat nowhere. All buckled in, you sit, you wait, you twiddle your thumbs on the tarmac.
How long have you waited for your flight to take off? An hour, two hours, more? How long is too long to be trapped on a stuffy and grounded airplane, and should the government do something about it?
Airline passenger-advocacy group Coalition for an Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights thinks so and has joined with Canadian counterparts to urge “enforceable limits on how long commercial airlines can keep passengers onboard aircraft sitting on the tarmac,” according to the organization.
Today the House of Representatives is considering a bill that, among its provisions, would require airlines and airports “to develop contingency plans for how they will handle the passengers whose flights have been delayed for hours on tarmacs,” according to an Associated Press report.
But, Kate Hanni, the coalition’s executive director, said in a news release that the bill “allows the airlines themselves to decide how long we should sit on the tarmac. There aren’t any limits, and airlines get to decide how long passengers can be held — 6, 7, 8 hours or even longer.”
On Wednesday, Hanni testified on these consumer issues before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in Washington.
Supporting Hanni reportedly was Jim Maloway, a Canadian lawmaker who is very well acquainted with such issues. Up north, Maloway is trying to get his proposed Air Passengers’ Bill of Rights passed, which would require airlines to make some serious changes.
Sample provisions therein: If a passenger is on board a grounded airplane for more than one hour, the airline must provide power for lights and fresh air, waste-removal service for restrooms on board, food and drinking water, and the option to leave the plane “if it is possible to do so without causing any undue risk to the health or safety of the passengers or any other person or to the safe operation of the aircraft or any other aircraft.”
And if the airline doesn’t do its part? The passenger receives $500 (Canadian) for every hour “in which one or more of the obligations” (e.g. availability of food and water) is unmet. Under the Canadian bill, airlines would also be required to compensate passengers for bumping them off flights, losing baggage and canceling flights.
Does that sound like a good deal to you? Not for the airlines, which, as columnist Harriet Baskas explains in an MSNBC article, are balking. But, if bills strictly tackling passenger rights are enacted, I can bet most of us frequent fliers — and there are more than a few frustrated ones among us — will be flying high.
– Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times
[Photo: FlyersRights.org]
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July 3rd, 2009 at 8:18 pm
My husband and I were returning to Los Angeles after enjoying our honeymoon in Kauai yesterday, July 2. We boarded United Airlines at 12:10 pm anticipated to depart at 12:40 pm. We had been sitting on the tarmac for a while only to find out, that 2 of the passengers didn’t make the flight because they wanted to grab sandwiches. Their friends who had already boarded the plane found out and decided they too no longer wanted to be on the flight. So, we had to wait for them to deplane. We then were waiting for their luggage to be removed. Why it had to be removed is beyond me, as they should have been punished for delaying our flight, not the passengers who were ready to arrive home. We were then told we had to wait for a mechanic as there was a problem with the water. Only to find out that wasn’t true at all. The truth was, because of the delay of the the passengers getting off and having to remove their luggage one of the flight attendants would go over legal flight hours once we had the 5 hour flight home. So we then had to wait for a new flight attendant, who never came. We then had to wait for them to remove some of the fuel so we could fly into Oahu. (Keep in mind the passengers were given nothing at this time besides beverages and a awful granola bar). Finally at 3:00 pm we flew into Oahu. We then had to wait to refuel and wait for the new flight attendant who was apparently stuck in traffic. Once we finally took off (5:15 pm), they started serving food (which mind you, everyone still had to pay for). Once they got to about the 20th row, they advised they ran out of food. ALL FOOD…the meals and the snack boxes were gone. All they could offer us was another awful granola bar. They gave everyone an apology voucher that you can redeem for a $250 flight credit (why would we want to fly with them again). We finally landed in Los Angeles at 10:15 pm (now 1:15 am LA time, we were supposed to land at 9:15 pm) which made it 10 hours of being on the plane without any food. When we got off of the plane we stopped at customer service to see if they could give us a taxi voucher to get to our car, as we had missed our ride, being we were 4 hours late. They said “sorry we can’t help you, go on United.com and fill out a complaint.” The taxi ride is $17.50 minimum from LAX airport, we only had to go 5 miles, it was absolutely ridiculous and a horrible end to our honeymoon!