A Passenger Bill of Rights?
Posted on 02/22/2007
A Passenger Bill of Rights?
The JetBlue incident at Kennedy Airport, combined with some other recent events, has gotten a lot of consumers hoppin’ mad and pushing Congress for a Passenger Bill of Rights to protect us from being kept on an airplane for 10 hours or stranded in Cheyenne while the plane leaves the next day without you because they want it someplace else.
Personally I have never been in favor of this idea, but it gets revisited every time there’s another event like the one at JFK. I’m beginning to change my mind. Not that a passenger bill of rights won’t create new problems. What would it be exactly? How would you enforce it? Would there be fines? I’m sure it would be crazy trying to write the bill and interpret the bill. But, come on guys, 10 hours;that’s just incredible. You can make all the excuses you want, but it shows that systemically the airlines are process and not customer-driven, at least in this instance.
A couple of sidebars. First, according to USA Today, AirTran Airways has a policy that after a plane has been sitting for an hour, the CEO is called for input as to the plane’s situation. This sounds very customer-driven to me. Second, I have read several comments from the press clippings that both the Kennedy Airport staff and the Austin, Texas airport staff (where American left people stranded for hours) were quoted as saying that, if the airline needed help they should have called them (the airport) and they would have given it to them. Up until they had a call from the airline, the situation was an “airline matter.” I’ve got news for these two airports. When passengers are stranded on airplanes, it is, in fact, an “airport matter” as well as an airline matter. Airports have to take part of the responsibility for this matter themselves. When a passenger arrives at our airport and until the time they leave, we are both responsible!
As for the bill of rights, I don’t think Congress should pass one, but the airlines that did this would sure deserve it! But, let’s not create a huge mess and let’s not punish the carriers who have done it right!
