By Anastacia Mott Austin
Kate Hanni used to be a Realtor.
Then she got stuck on a grounded airline flight in December of 2006 in Austin, Texas. Hanni and her husband and two sons were trapped on an American Airlines plane on the runway for more than nine hours.
The event changed her life, and she has spent her time since then lobbying hard for an airline passengers' bill of rights. The bill would guarantee basic necessities such as water, access to fresh air and toilet facilities if passengers are stuck for longer than three hours.
Incidents of passengers being stranded in airplanes on runways for excessive periods of time are on the upswing, say aviation experts.
Last year was a particularly rough year for passengers. During the month of June alone, more than 426 flights were stranded on runways for over three hours.
That's not okay, say passengers. "Airline passengers have less rights (sic) than a prisoner of war per the Geneva Convention, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that," said Hanni to reporters. "When you get on an aircraft, an airline does not have to provide you with water, they don't have to provide you with food. Once that door shuts, they don't have to guarantee you the right that you can get off the plane."
Hanni helped to get a passengers' rights bill to Congress, where it passed, but the measure stalled in the Senate.
Now Hanni is trying to convince individual states to pass laws protecting airline passengers' rights, and several are currently considering legislation to do just that. New York already has such a bill, in which airlines are fined $1,000 per passenger if they are not provided with basic necessities on a delayed flight of more than three hours.
The Air Transport Association took New York to court over the bill, but lost. A U.S. District Court judge ruled that the case involved basic human rights and was not a simple customer service issue, and it therefore nullified federal jurisdiction over it.
Kate Hanni has formed the Coalition for an Airline Passenger Bill of Rights (CAPBOR), which released a report card last month wherein four major airlines - ExpressJet, Delta, Continental, and US Airways Group - received an "F" in customer service, in large part due to runway delays.
The four airlines were responsible for stranding passengers for over four hours on more than 122 occasions last year. This did not include flights that were later canceled or redirected, because no records are kept on these flights. This means that some of the more egregious offenses - like the stranding of 10 JetBlue flights on February 14th of 2007 for more than 11 hours each - was not included.
Two airlines - Northwest and Southwest - received good grades from the group for their small number of excessively delayed flights.
The Air Transport Association has responded to Hanni and the recent focus of public attention, releasing a statement which read, "The airline industry is well aware of the serious, but complex problem of extended flight delays. More, of course, needs to be done to resolve the core issue of delays that result from our increasingly antiquated air traffic management system."
For Hanni and others, the statement is not enough. Hanni says that the only way to force airlines to respond is to legislate limits on how long people can be expected to sit inside a hot, overcrowded airplane before being allowed to get off.
California state assemblyman Mark Leno is sponsoring a bill similar to New York's which would set rules for airlines to follow in cases of long flight delays, such as providing water, fresh air, and adequate toilet facilities, and snacks if necessary.
"The status quo is a disaster waiting to happen," said Leno to reporters. "We should not have to relinquish access to these basic human needs just because we board an airplane."
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