Posted on 09/20/2007 10:06:08 AM PDT by vietvet67
Like thousands of American Airlines passengers last Dec. 29, Kate Hanni and her family were stuck aboard a jet for hours out on the tarmac. They were hungry, bored, angry and, in the case of Flight 1348, sick from the smell wafting through the cabin from the lavatories.
When the ordeal finally ended, some passengers from the 67 separate American flights - which each spent at least three hours stranded - e-mailed or called in their complaints to the airline. Some vented on blogs. Most grumbled and went about their business. And the airline industry thought it would, too.
Hanni, who said she had never before written a letter of complaint, decided she would get a law passed making lengthy confinement on an airplane illegal. "I was fuming," she said. "It was imprisonment."
She thus became an unlikely and, thus far, powerful adversary to an industry accustomed to riding out its major service lapses with only the lightest of government scrutiny.
A successful real estate agent, occasional rock 'n' roll singer and mother of two, Hanni essentially put her life on hold to take on the airlines, leaning on her husband to earn more and spend more time looking after their children so she could battle the lobbying might of the airlines.
With the help of Internet chat boards, videos shot by stranded passengers that were posted on YouTube and a growing network of volunteers, she has gathered 18,000 signatures on an online petition supporting what she calls a passengers' bill of rights.
Her congressman, Representative Mike Thompson, Democrat of California, quickly introduced legislation at her behest to force airlines to let passengers off stranded planes after three hours, with two 30-minute extensions at the pilot's discretion.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
The time period should be one hour or whenevr an airline knows the delay will be one hour or more.
Actually, it should reduce expenses for the airlines since they wouldn’t have to keep the engines or power generators going.
Well you need a law, or recission of laws. Right now, if a passenger trys to get off of a plane without permission, the passenger will get arrested. You do not have the right of free movement so you are, in effect, a prisoner, on the plane.
3 hours... I would say she is a frontwomen for the industry..
If a plane cannot take off within 20 min of the time scheduled after boarding passengers. The Passengers should be disembarked, the flight canceled or rescheduled and the Passengers Compensated..
3 hours is a Load of Crap.
W
wastedyears wrote: “I don’t know how long the APU would hold out for once the engines are off.”
The APU runs off the aircraft’s fuel tanks. Since it consumes far less than the main engines, it could probably run for days. They do consume some oil. I don’t know what would run out first, oil or jet fuel, but I imagine it would take quite some time.
As for being stranded, there is no reason whatsoever for stranding passengers for hours. There are several ways this could be dealt with...a return to the terminal (if there’s an open gate), using a staircase truck or stand and deplaning/shuttling passengers back to the terminal, and/or servicing the plane and providing food/water to the passengers. All airlines should have contingency plans for dealing with problems like this. Various responses should be automatically triggered depending on the length of the delay. Of course, that requires a degree of organization that seems to be missing these days. I travel fairly frequently, and the airlines seem to be in constant crisis management mode. They spend all their time stomping out fires rather than eliminating the causes of those fires. It seems very chaotic to me, but I’d love to hear an airline employee’s perspective.
Mr. Jeeves wrote: “Once this story came out, American Airlines should have instantly lost 80% of their customers.”
That would be best, but it won’t happen. I don’t know the percent (it’s probably pretty high), but many employees don’t get to choose which airline to use. I bet business travel is a large percent of total travel, and of that, many make arrangements through travel offices. Individual passengers can’t typically walk away from an airline that mistreats them (some businesses have contracts with specific airlines), and I bet the airlines know this.
Oh, I thought the APU ran off the engines. I didn’t know it was its own power source.
Before deregulation...airlines had to charge the same fr a particular route. The competition was in the amenities....food, service, pretty flight attendants and good looking and comfortable airline interiors.
Before deregulation...airlines had to charge the same for a particular route. The competition was in the amenities....food, service, pretty flight attendants and good looking and comfortable airline interiors.
This thread seems to be studiously ignoring the elephant in the airport. Namely WHY are there so many long delays, and many more that are much shorter but still a significant inconvenience and totally unnecessary?
As with most problems, this one is caused by government. The Department of Transportation publishes official reports of “on time departure” rates for the various airlines, and “departure” is defined as pulling away from the gate within 15 minutes of scheduled departure time. The airlines then use these official figures in their advertising. Those passengers imprisoned on the tarmac for several hours are nearly always on flights which had “on time departures”. If the plane goes back to the gate, it no longer counts as an “on time departure”. If it sits on the tarmac for 12 hours, it’s still an “on time departure”.
Only one simple change is needed, but government is notoriously poor at making simple changes that are needed. Report “on time ARRIVALS”, not departures.
wastedyears: “Oh, I thought the APU ran off the engines. I didn’t know it was its own power source.”
The APU is a separate jet engine and generator (that’s the jet engine noise you typically hear when boarding an aircraft). It generates the power and bleed air necessary to start the main engines. If the APU is inop, they have to bring in a portable power unit, creating a delay.
The aircraft should be able to run off the APU generator for extended periods of time, but the APU will eventually deplete the aircraft tanks and/or run out of oil. I don’t know the typical APU fuel consumption rate, but it seems quite small compared to the thousands of gallons of fuel on board.
Gotcha
There needs to be a law that keeps one from being a criminal if they try to exercise their freedom while being held in custody on a plane.
If there's a problem, more government involvement is sure to make it better!
</sarcasm>
Here's an idea: Get the word out every time this happens, then don't use that airline any more. The loss of revenue from the bad publicity will quickly persuade the airlines to change their policies.
Too many people believe that lawsuits, petitions, laws and government enforcers are the best or only way to fix something. The long-term effects of that thinking are usually worse than the problems they sought to solve.
GovernmentShrinker wrote: “This thread seems to be studiously ignoring the elephant in the airport. Namely WHY are there so many long delays, and many more that are much shorter but still a significant inconvenience and totally unnecessary?”
The hubs are overwhelmed. Take O’Hare. That place is nearly always chaotic, and I think it’s simply because they try to cram too many aircraft into a single airport (opening another hub would probably be VERY expensive). They don’t appear to have any flexibility left in the system. All it takes is a few aircraft mechanical problems or a bit of bad weather. Since there is little or no wiggle room, the chain effects spread through the entire system.
I rarely get through O’Hare on time. It’s either a delay for an open gate or a sit on the ramp waiting for a slot to take off (or both!). For smaller flights, it’s like they are playing musical gates. Two or three gate changes isn’t abnormal at all, and that’s a symptom of a system out of control. I actually pity the airline employees aka master jugglers.
See post #26. A lot of us can’t just switch airlines unless management approves. We need a way to force a legal exit from extended imprisonment on a plane that isn’t going anywhere.
You’re right. Get government involved and things will get worse.
Was trapped on a plane once. Between the bad air and having a jag on I was ready to put in a new doorway. Only a cold wet towel saved the plane from structural damage. lol
We were in the sky within a half hour... but my confidence in that pretty little 757 was surely shaken, LOL.
You may be right that there is an incentive to report departures on time, however, I’m not concerned with reporting procedures but only with actual circumstances that cause delays.
If the airlines were required to disemplane passengers whenever they had knowledge of an impending one hour delay, they either wouldn’t put them on the plane or would taxi back to the loading ramp and let the passengers disembark.
“I used to love to fly — now it’s a royal pain in the keister.”
And did you “love” the prices?
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