Air travelers search for friendlier skies

With the Christmas travel season safely behind them, many wanderlusting Americans are beginning to think ahead to their summer vacations.

And fresh in at least some of those prospective travelers' minds are visions of last year's spate of heavily publicized travel glitches that left many airline passengers stewing on the tarmac, and in their own frustration, for hours.

This year, in hopes of preventing a rerun of last year's travel nightmares, consumer advocates are working on a bill of rights for air travelers.

Kate Hanni knows firsthand how ugly sitting in a grounded plane for hours can be. In December 2006, her flight was stuck on the tarmac in Dallas for more than nine hours, turning a routine San Francisco-to-Mobile, Ala., trip into -- by the time all of the flights were rescheduled and the luggage tracked down -- a 57-hour ordeal.

Since then, Hanni has become the spearhead of a consumer movement that aims to hold airlines accountable. She has created a blog (strandedpassengers.blogspot.com) that is a clearinghouse for passenger horror stories and a focal point for lobbying for a passenger bill of rights.

The movement is picking up steam. Hanni says that after a JetBlue incident a year ago that left some passengers stuck aboard planes for half of a day, "we went from a 3,500-member coalition to a 12,000-person coalition in one week."

Now, Hanni hears from passengers about all sorts of air travel issues, from lost luggage to luggage thefts, from canceled flights to chronic delays.

"People are starting to get the idea the wool's been pulled over their eyes, and they're not happy about it," she says by phone last week from her northern California home. "They feel they've been manipulated."

"I get the feeling people are really angry and somewhat resigned because they didn't know how to do anything about it," she adds.

It's a safe bet that many Americans who travel by air assume that a slew of government regulations offer them a variety of consumer protections.

Not so. In fact, other than rules that come into play when, say, a passenger is bumped from a flight, a flight is an agreement between a customer and an airline, as outlined in the contract of carriage often printed on ticket jackets and always found on a carrier's Web site.

Some rights passengers may assume to exist actually don't. For example, there is no requirement that an airline provide lodging for a passenger whose end-of-the-day flight is canceled. Rather, said Paul Ruden, senior vice president for legal and industry affairs for the American Society of Travel Agents, "they do that on a voluntary basis."

Nor does the contract of carriage guarantee you'll reach your destination when you're supposed to.

"Their commitment under the contract is not a guarantee they're going to get you there," Ruden says. "It's an assurance they're in good faith trying to get you there consistent with safety, operational conditions, weather conditions, mechanical conditions and so on. And there are a lot of things that can go wrong."

However, Ruden adds, that doesn't mean an airline can't prepare for them and take steps to handle them when they do occur.

"So, you have from time to time people standing on the tarmac eight, nine, 10 hours," Ruden says. "That's totally unacceptable from a consumer's perspective, and it's way past time that something was done about it."

Moves are afoot to do just that. Ruden notes that "a recommendation we made back in April of 2007 is coming to pass: There is a federal advisory committee formed, which we will participate in, to develop model contingency plans for dealing with these things."

And, on both the national and state levels, there have been efforts to enact either a federal or state-by-state passenger bills of rights.

"The most fundamental right we believe is the right to be informed in a timely manner about what's going on and why," Ruden says. "We have said time and time again that if that were done in every case, a lot of the problems the airlines have would be reduced."

"I'm not going to say they will go away, because nobody is ever going to be happy sitting on the tarmac for a long period of time," Ruden says. "But if you're informed before you go out there what the risks are, what the problems are potentially going to be and there's some kind of coherent policy to be applied ... they'll be able to cope with it a lot better."

Still, nailing down specifics is tricky. For example, Ruden says, "how many hours have to pass before you have the right to go back to the terminal? The reality is that not everybody wants to go back after three or four hours."

Or, Ruden says, "how do you guarantee how much food and water you want on your plane. For one hour? Six hours? Twelve hours?"

"So you have to be a little careful about simple remedies," Ruden says. "They sound great, but air transportation is very complex."

Hanni says a proposed national bill of rights is proceeding through the House but stalled in the Senate. Meanwhile, New York already has adopted a state bill of rights, she says, and a California proposal is to be unveiled this week.

From a legal standpoint, Ruden says, one problem is that state laws "may be pre-empted by the federal statute."

More practically, Ruden says, state-by-state standards would require airlines to follow possibly different requirements in the state in which a flight originates, the state in which it has a layover, and the state in which it lands.

In addition, a proposal to increase the compensation awarded to passengers who have been bumped from flights is working its way through the federal rule-making process.

Until, and if, any of this comes to pass, Ruden says a bit of forethought can help to minimize all but the most egregious hassles a flyer might face.

For example, members of the American Society of Travel Agents "tell their clients all the time to not book that last flight out," Ruden says. Booking earlier flights increases the chance of finding a subsequent flight if necessary and reduces the domino effect -- a thunderstorm in Denver backs up traffic in Chicago, which prevents New Yorkers from taking off -- inherent in the air travel system.

Beyond that, "prepare for the worst," Ruden says. Make sure your cell phone is fully charged. Bring along some bottled water and snacks. Pack a book or some music to pass the time.

Unavoidable things do happen, Ruden says. "I'm no apologist for the airlines. I'm one of their sharpest critics. But we also have to be intelligent about our criticism."

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0280.