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

the airline industry more so than in other industries. Part of it is a
legacy thing. . . . What I object to are the things that will create
more problems than they will solve, like tarmac delays. With the three-hour
tarmac rule, you’ll have a greater number of people inconvenienced than not.
That’s my concern.”
    A few years ago I might have agreed with him. In
fact, I took quite a few lumps for being the only passenger advocate who lobbied against tarmac delay legislation back in 2007.
In my USAToday.com column that year I wrote: “It’s tough to decide how best to
fix airline customer service. That’s why I have such mixed feelings about
Congress micro-managing flight operations. The journalist who fights for
passenger rights has been waging an internal battle with the ex-dispatcher who
knows that even large doses of outside assistance will not necessarily correct
systemic airline operations problems.”
    But my fence straddling ended in September 2009,
when I attended a passenger forum cosponsored by Senator Barbara Boxer of
California. That morning the public heard from dozens of passengers who had
encountered lengthy and inexcusable tarmac delays, as well as from passenger
rights advocates and legislators. But not a single sitting airline executive
attended, and even the industry’s primary lobbying group—the Air Transport
Association—declined the invite.
    That day it became apparent to me that if the
airlines refused even to listen to passengers, then
they deserved whatever regulation and/or legislation Washington deemed
appropriate. Even those who oppose the three-hour mandate acknowledge that the
airlines—both individually and collectively—repeatedly muffed the chance to
promote an alternative policy, any alternative
policy. Analyst Bob Mann, who maintains the DOT rule could inconvenience tens of
thousands of passengers, also declares, “The airlines were derelict, no
question.”
    Michael Levine, a law professor and former airline
executive, is a strong proponent of free-market solutions, but even he
acknowledges this dichotomy: “I think the airlines have an odd mixture of
political sophistication and naïveté. They certainly have an extensive lobbying
effort and they know how to deploy their executives on Capitol Hill on issues.
But often their choice of issues and their response to issues just doesn’t
reflect what anyone who would step back from the politics would suggest they
do.”
    As someone who once was responsible for creating,
delaying, consolidating, and canceling dozens of flights a day as a flight
operations manager, I can tell you that not all passenger needs are the same;
when a long delay is announced, some will want to leave the aircraft or perhaps
even leave the airport, while others will want to wait it out on board and hope
for the best. In addition, the destination and flight length are critical
components. At the Pan Am Shuttle on days when LaGuardia was particularly backed
up, we would board passengers at the gate and then drop the aft staircase
embedded into the Boeing 727 and allow customers to leave at will. (That same
727 aft staircase, by the way, is what allowed famed hijacker D. B. Cooper to
parachute out over Washington state with his loot.) The new tarmac regulations
are not perfect, but they do provide enough flexibility to accommodate both
types of passengers.
    â€œNobody should be required to sit on an airplane
for more than three hours,” says former American Airlines CEO Bob Crandall.
“From a public relations point of view, [the airlines] were completely
tone-deaf. Moreover, the airlines and the airports have resisted and those
problems can be easily resolved. This whole nonsense about canceling flights.
Bullshit. I’m not going to cancel a flight. I’ve been in this conga line now for
two and a half hours. . . . Anybody wants to get off, get off. End