Joe Sharkey At Large

Kate Hanni’s Coalition for an Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights issued a “report card” on the industry today and it isn’t pretty. Here’s a copy: final2007reportcard.pdf

Kate’s group is focused primarily on one issue: How airlines treat passengers who are stranded on parked planes, amid deteriorating conditions, for three hours or more. (In some cases last year, passengers sat in growing distress on parked planes for 12 hours and more). And what needs to be done to require airlines to provide for basic in cabin health, sanitation, food and water; and to give stranded passengers timely, reliable information and to provide a way for people to get off stuck planes after a certain number of hours.

The airline industry is adamantly opposed to the group’s push for federal legislation (bills are pending in both houses of Congress), insisting that it can handle the problem itself.

But it hasn’t handled it. Instead, the industry’s mouthpiece trade group, the Air Transport Association (ATA), has attacked Kate Hanni personally and, as shown in the following statement it issued today, has tried to muddy the issues.

Here’s the statement the ATA issued:

“The Air Transport Association responded to a report issued by a consumer group critical of the airlines on customer service and delays, calling the group’s claims baseless and not constructive. ATA went on to say that carriers are aware of the serious problems created by flight delays and noted that improving the country’s outdated air traffic control system will address the core issue of delays. Steps have been taken at the individual carrier level as well as in concert with other stakeholders in the airport and government communities to address these challenges,” the ATA said.”

The disingenuousness in that statement lies chiefly its claim that “flight delays” are the issue — and not airlines holding people for three to 13 hours in parked planes without adequate food, water or ventilation, and as passengers suffer through added indignities like unusable toilets.

How many stranded-passenger instances have there been? Thousands, by Kate’s group’s count. By industry count, there were 462 flights last June alone that sat on tarmacs with passengers unable to move for at least three hours, and in many cases far longer. I’d say “thousands” for the year was a good estimate.

Per usual, knuckleheads in the local press and cable network television media, who don’t seem capable of doing reporting beyond what they’ve been told by the last flack they spoke to, keep confusing the issue.

No, NBC4 Washington, there were not merely “thousands of delays” in the air-travel system in 2007.

There were millions. Do the math. Industry data show that well over 25 percent of flights last year were delayed. There were 11 million flights. Allowing for the percentage of those flights that left the U.S. for another country (whose operational performance isn’t reflected in the delay statistics), that still indicates that about well over 2 million domestic flights were delayed in 2007.
(Dow Jones, by the way, gets it about right.)

The ATA sniffs that criticism is not “constructive,” while obfuscating the issue — as if the Air Traffic Control system is responsible for not emptying overflowing toilets on stuck planes.
The airline industry doesn’t seem to be getting the message that it had better sit up and pay attention to what it needs to do — or will be legally required to do — about stranded passengers and the crummy way they’ve been treated. “Who would think it would take a law to ensure passengers on a stranded plane get a drink of water and a working toilet?” New York State Assemblyman Mike Genaris, who drafted the landmark passeners’ rights law that took effect Jan. 1 in New York State, asked me not long ago.

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In Other Matters,  The Morning News:

—Your brain off drugs: I remember when George Carlin was actually funny. When did he turn into Red Skelton?

—Excited Drudge headline of the day (Another two-way tie!): “Prince Harry Fights Taliban” and “Channel 4 News in Britain: ‘I Never Thought I’d Find Myself Saying ‘Thank God For Drudge’ … (Me, I’m starting to worry about that boy. Drudge, I mean, not Harry the Prince.)

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