Catastrophe - Dick Morris [129]
Requiring compensation for customers who are delayed for many hours; banning long tarmac delays; and obliging airlines to offer food, water, and clean restrooms to delayed passengers: such regulations would trigger a shocking entire new priority for airlines—the passenger would have to come first. Airlines might have to maintain standby crews waiting to fly if delays force a crew to go beyond their allotted work time. Air traffic control systems might have to give airplanes credit for time spent returning to the gate and keep them from losing their place in line for takeoff.
The FAA will have to adjust its rules to protect passengers.
It’s about time it did!
The closest we’ve come to an airline passenger’s bill of rights was the bill that was sponsored by Congressman James Oberstar (D-MN) and passed by the House before it was killed in the Senate. The chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Oberstar ingeniously inserted the provision into legislation extending the life of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which also gave airlines $500 million in taxpayer-funded “war insurance” protecting them against disruptions in service.520
The U.S. Department of Transportation tried to address the issue of tarmac delays by appointing a task force to recommend improvements in how passengers are treated during such delays. While the task force urged airlines to provide for “better communication and improved preparedness to provide stranded passengers with food and water,” the nonbinding “model contingency plan” did not suggest set time limits for forcing a return to the gate, nor did it call for mandatory steps to improve service to passengers who were stranded.521
In short, it did next to nothing. Its mealy-mouthed provisions were adopted by a vote of 34–1, the lone opponent being Kate Hanni, the head of the passenger advocacy group, who had been appointed to the commission as a sop to the public.
But Hanni was not entirely shut out. The one proconsumer recommendation the task force made was to allow airlines to be sued in state court. The doctrine of federal preemption bars state courts from hearing any cases that relate to “routes, rates, or services” provided by airlines.522 But the DOT task force recommended that airlines be required to specify what they would do for passengers who are stuck on the tarmac in their contract of carriage with the passenger (the microprint on the back of your paper ticket). If they did so, passengers could sue for violation of contract—an action that could well be heard in state court.
In light of the possible results, the airlines have declined to endorse the task force’s recommendations out of fear of what might happen if state courts should get jurisdiction.
The reason Congress won’t act to protect air passengers, of course, is that its members are beholden to the airlines for campaign donations and all sorts of other favors. The airlines have ratcheted up their donations to members of Congress from $2.7 million in 2004 to $3.5 million in 2008.523
Here is the list of the members of Congress who have gotten the most in campaign contributions from the airlines and their PACs. Notice the first name on the list: Senator Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia. Guess what? He’s the chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee!
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AIRLINES: TOP PAC RECIPIENTS, 2008
Source: “Airlines Top PAC Recipients,” Center for Responsive Politics, www.opensecrets.org/industries/pacrecips.php?ind=T1100&cycle=2008.
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But sometimes the airlines don’t stop at campaign contributions; sometimes they grant special favors. For example, in the fall of 2008, right after the House and Senate voted on the TARP bailout for the nation’s major financial institutions, a number of them got together to send New York Democratic congressman Charles Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and five other congressmen on a junket to the Caribbean.524