Attention All Passengers by William J. McGee Read Free Book Online

email model? (A spokeswoman was quoted thus: “We did a
lot of research, we looked into it, and people who email or write us are more
satisfied with our responses.”) Why else would AlaskaAir.com channel distant
memories of artificial intelligence icon Max Headroom by introducing “Jenn, Your
Virtual Assistant”?
    A world in which all airlines wish to respond
quickly to their customers’ concerns would have no place for GetHuman.com, an
ingenious and at times invaluable site that provides shortcuts for those wishing
to speak to an actual person after dialing a toll-free number. For example,
here’s the simple but secret way to bypass Delta’s customer service Maginot
Line: “Press 0 at each prompt, ignoring messages.” What’s more, GetHuman.com
provides typical wait times and user ratings as well (13.8 minutes for Delta,
which rates an “average”).
    Stuck on the Tarmac with
You
    In the fall of 2009 I took part in an
airline industry forum in Washington, D.C., hosted by the DOT. I spoke about a
troubling array of issues affecting airline passengers. At that forum Spirit
Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza and Republic Airways CEO Bryan Bedford spoke of their
confusion over the need for a Passenger Bill of Rights and asserted that
passengers could always “vote with their feet.” I responded that I had done just
that, by taking Amtrak to Washington that morning. Not everyone in the room was
amused.
    The following summer, at the second full meeting of
the FAAC, I read a statement into the record to address the “vote with their
feet” issue, as if such a thing were possible at thirty-five thousand feet. I
noted that the nation’s aviation infrastructure belongs to its citizens and
taxpayers, and that in many markets there is no meaningful choice, through
either lack of competition or airlines refusing to compete. What’s more, the
federal preemption rule and the industry’s no-nonsense safety and security
regulations don’t allow for much consumer debate.
    I had long been a journalist fighting for
passengers, but by late 2009 my work for Consumers Union was pulling me further
in the direction of passenger advocacy. I soon found it was becoming a rather
crowded field.
    Kate Hanni had no legal, political, or aviation
experience when she became a national symbol of the passenger rights movement.
She was an American Airlines passenger who endured a horrific fifty-seven-hour
ordeal, with nine of those hours spent on a tarmac in Austin, Texas, alongside
her husband and two children in 2006. There was no water or food, the lavatories
overflowed, passengers became sick, and Hanni felt trapped—again. Six months
earlier she had suffered an attempted rape and murder and, Hanni explained, “In
a way I was the worst person to do this to. I was not going to be a victim
again.”
    She went on to establish what evolved into
FlyersRights.org and soon became a ubiquitous presence in the media. And she
deserves credit for lobbying DOT secretary LaHood to eventually impose the
“three-hour rule” in 2009, which requires that planes operated by major airlines
return to the gate within that time frame if departure is not imminent (the DOT
later expanded the rule to include smaller carriers and foreign airlines).
    But there are those who feel the government—and
particularly LaHood’s DOT—is overreaching through such actions. Brett Snyder is
an airline veteran who spent time at America West and United before launching an
online discussion forum while working for PriceGrabber.com. Eventually he spun
it off into The Cranky Flier blog, where “the guiding principle is what I find
interesting.” Much of Snyder’s focus recently has been on customer service, but
he doesn’t echo the legion of passenger rights advocates—in fact, he often
criticizes them—I mean, us. He explains: “The government feels the need to step
in on