That is actually an extension of the current system. As it is, airlines have an overloaded system which is being bent to the breaking point. Adding a 'focus on the passenger' (as Passenger Bill of Rights seems to define it) simply throws additional requirements and constraints into the system. As such, it simply can't work (see my other post for why).

The issue here has been quite well studied in terms of manufacturing companies and other industrial and service organizations. The fundamental problem is inflexible systems and unnecessary constraints. This creates artificial bottlenecks in the system.

The answers won't be simple, but some of them will actually be very, very inexpensive. Look up a book by Eliahu Goldratt called 'The Goal" or a simpler version called "All I Need to Know about Manufacturing I Learned in Joe's Garage". These describe in layman's terms the process of eliminating bottlenecks (constraints). This principle is probably the #1 reason that Toyota is currently the #1 automaker in the world.

Essentially, you want to do several things:
- Find bottlenecks in the system
- Find places where centralized control is scheduling things
- Find standard work which is being run on an ad hoc basis rather than structured
Then eliminate them.

Examples:
- Air traffic control is a major bottleneck. Yet we're still allowing small private planes to fly into large airports and charging them only a tiny fraction of what the commercial planes pay. If every plane takes the same amount of ATC and airport time, then every plane should pay the same amount (or even ban the private planes from major airports). This is a typical LEAN solution in that it's not expensive but would have a major impact.
- Allow more decisions to be made locally. Having to route decisions (even routine ones) through a central decision making authority is a major source of slowdowns.
- Consider avoiding bottlenecks entirely. For example, AA's decision to drop the STL hub and fall back to two major central US hubs (DFW and ORD) greatly reduced the flexibility of the system and its ability to recover from problems
- There are a lot of things that could be done to modernize the ATC system to allow shorter spacing between planes

There are a zillion other things that could be done. The point is that you don't fix this type of complicated system by adding new rules, constraints, and restrictions. That WILL fail (not even 'probably'). You have to eliminate constraints rather than add them.

There's a massive amount of research into Lean Enterprise and plenty of examples of companies who have used it in systems as complicated as AA's. While it has a reputation as a manufacturing system, there's a lot of successful examples of using it in a service environment (hospital emergency rooms and air ambulance services are actually leading the way). Even within the airline industry, Southwest has always used many of the Lean principles - and the results show.

Fix the REAL problem rather than just throwing a band-aid at it (Passenger Bill of Rights).