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 ...
Three to four hours is still a very long time.
I met Ms. Hanni at a luncheon a few months back. She seemed very nice and is certainly passionate about her issue. However, I have the nagging feeling that something about her doesn't ring true. I certainly wish her well, but I am leery of her.
As an aside, note that all the video captures we read about are on YouTube. You never hear mention of AlGore’s Emmy-award winning Current (which is soooo not current). I guess they had to award him something before everyone realized that Crnt is betamax to YouTube’s VHS.
I don’t understand why we need laws to prevent airline passengers from being stranded on the tarmac for hours at a time. Good grief! Must the government do everything for us? You would think that the airlines and the airports, after so many of these incidents, would get a clue and work toward preventing or at least minimizing these things. They shouldn’t need laws to fix this.
Seems to me that most of the problems we now have with air travel were minimal or didn’t exist at all prior to deregulation. Ever since deregulation, air travel has become a real nightmare. I used to love to fly — now it’s a royal pain in the keister.
If this happens to me I will immediately develop “chest pain”.
Passengers shouldn’t be left stranded on an airplane for hours. This is an airline policy that should be condemned. It doesn’t take all that much to return to the terminal and get the passengers deplaned. Sheesh! I’ve been stuck on an airplane for several hours in Denver. Made me angry!
One thing that would have to happen is to shut down the engines so people could safely move from one place to another on the tarmac. I don’t know how long the APU would hold out for once the engines are off.
We wouldn't if passengers would vote with their dollars. Once this story came out, American Airlines should have instantly lost 80% of their customers. Thousands of canceled reservations might have gotten their attention.
I think it would still be quite loud. The jet blast from an engine at idle RPM has enough force to blow a truck a good distance.
It’s loud, it’s not dangerous for the few minutes the passengers would be exposed.
They have to make sure they’re far away enough from the back end of the engine.
This happened to me as a nursing mother with three little kids for four hours on the tarmac, no water passed out, at the Phoenix Airport. Unbelievable more people weren’t irate. I was trying to encourage the guy next to me to storm the cockpit so that at least we’d be let out while he was arrested.
Some guy actually smoked in the bathroom.
It’s really a matter of gate availability. If no gates are available then the airlines can’t offload pax unless they get them off with airstairs and shuttle buses. The airlines can’t put passengers off on the ramp. Too dangerous. Gates aren’t available because departing planes are taking up the gate space. There has to be solutions though like cancelling departures and moving those planes off the gates to make room for inbound planes.
“If this happens to me I will immediately develop “chest pain”.”
Almost like the football coach with the minutes winding down telling the team that someone has to fake an injury to get a timeout. Following next play entire team is laid out on field.
200 airline passengers complaining about chest pain.....lol
It sure is. I've never experienced this yet but have a feeling it would end in my arrest.
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