hillrider

For starters, how about paying for the food themselves as opposed to have to rely on the generosity of one of its passenger?

And is it really weird to ask that a $20b company with local employees who live in Midland actually be able to do what a guy/gal on the plane who doesn't even live there did with a cellphone, 411, and a credit card?

hillrider

And who ever talked about forcing airlines to cancel flights, and forego the revenue?

The whole effort is to protect you and me if stuck inside an aircraft from inhuman conditions: giving the option to to disembark after a set time and ensuring that who opts to wait out the delay has working toilets, food, and hydration.

Nothing here about cancellations--nor about delays.

FLgrr

What would be the expectation? these are weather delays - no control of the airline. On the 24th I was diverted to AUS for the night. We sat for over 5 hours before I opted to get off the plane (and not wait for the eventual cot in baggage claim).

The lav was flushed, the entertainment system was turned on (I know BORING) and food and water where constantly provided.

Last year when I was diverted to a maintenance facility, they could do none of that. Just got fuel there and sat for 2 hours. Ran out of everything.

Back to AUS - what were they to do? let me off and then decide they can get the plane in to Dallas and get me a seat to my connecting city, but I am not there? Sounds like an 80 page discussion here.

There were plenty of gates available to pull the planes up to, but they 'belong to other airlines'.

This needs to be a partnership of airlines, airports and the FAA to make sure each plane is diverted to a location that can service the plane - flush lavs and provide food/water and has a gate (even if it 'belongs' to another airline) .

People on my flight had checked luggage that contained all their meds (4 or 5) and required medical attention. What is the rule? Don't check your meds incase you dont make it home with your luggage!!! Check the forecast and plan a little. Bring a small bite of food. Buy some water at the airport if the forecast hints of weather issues. Of course on 4/24, there was no hint of it happening.

I grabbed one of the last hotel rooms I could find when all the connecting flights to TPA were getting cancelled and got off when they offerred. They gave me food and water (this time).

Had the weather cleared and I got home the same day, I would have been happy.

The passanger bill of rights needs to concentrate on the passanger and the preperation for how to handle them. That is the responsibility of the airline, the airport AND the government (FAA).

hillrider

Well said!

jragosta

Really? So what are they supposed to do when the 4 hour time frame approaches and they can't get the plane off the ground? Wave a magic wand?

That is exactly what irritates me the most about the airline bashing - people who somehow think that the airlines cancel flights intentionally. It's like they really could have gotten those people to their destination, but just didn't want to.

Get real, folks. When an airline can't get you out in 4 hours, the only other option is to cancel the flight. They don't have spare planes lying around, nor do they have spare takeoff and landing slots lying around.

Right now, if they can't get you out in 4 hours because of a weather delay, they'll keep trying - and most of the time they manage to get the flight out.

Under the proposed rules, if it hits 3.5 hours, they will have to cancel the flight - to avoid paying the penalties when it hits 4 hours. After all, there's no penalty for canceling a flight due to bad weather, but you're proposing a penalty for going past 4 hours. Boom. Flight cancellations all over the place when the weather turns bad. And given how full most flights are these days, it will take a long, long time to recover from each bad weather incident.

"Sorry, pax, we're at 3.5 hours delay, and it doesn't look like we're going out in the next 30 minutes, so the flight is canceled. Since it's weather, we can't pay you anything, but we'll see if we can get you on a flight 2 weeks from Tuesday. And good luck trying to recover your luggage."

Now, imagine variations of that speech a few thousand times a day.

The proposed bill of rights isn't going to help anyone, but will inconvenience many.

AustinDiver

[QUOTE=jragosta;7724951]Really? So what are they supposed to do when the 4 hour time frame approaches and they can't get the plane off the ground? Wave a magic wand?


How does it benefit the airline to hold people up in an MD 80 on a tarmac for 4 or 5 hours. In those circumstances, they can have lots of planes diverted to various airports (Midland, Abilene, Austin, ...). The weather at DFW may clear up, but that does not mean all of those plane are going to immediately take off and head to DFW.

People are not looking at the big picture of managing this issue. The various diverted planes are still going to have to be staged and flown in as landing slots becoe available. This alone could take several hours depending upon how long the Airport had been closed.

In short, there is no perfect solution, but from a passenger standpoint, I do not pay for a three hour flight to be stranded in Midland, in an MD80 or 757 without some basic needs of water, sanitary bathrooms, etc.

I am willing to be flexible up to a point. I know people spend 14 hours in coach on long distance flights, but they know what they are getting into.

The handling of these cases reflect lack of contigency planning by the airline. I would try to not make it personal, but I would take as a sign of disrespect for their customers.

The airline sees weather problems at DFW, lets send planes to these other airports. They have not taken the contigency to the next level, and consider how deal with the passengers on those planes. It seems to me the personnel is Austin, Midland, Abilene have no clue in terms of training, etc on how to deal with the unexpected traffic. They see it as a short term deal. 5 hours on a tarmac is not short term. Keeping the people held up in the planes to me seems like a way for management to duck their heads into the sand.

jragosta

It benefits the airline because it's better than cancelling the flight and trying to accomodate 200 pax on flights that are already packed. And, as you've pointed out, diverting isn't always an option.

Do you think that the airlines PLANNED to divert those planes before they left the ground? Once a plane is in the air and approaching DFW, then the weather turns bad, what are they supposed to do? Once again, you seem to believe they can wave a magic wand or have the arrivals fairy bring them in.

Let's say there are 50 planes in the air and a tornado approaches DFW. What should they do? Obviously, the ONLY option is to land them whereever they can or circle until the tornado passes.

Cases where there are no basic needs are quite rare. I really wish people would stop acting like it's common.

As for the rest, no I didn't pay for a delay or diversion, but I'd rather have 4 hours on the tarmac and then get me to my location rather than cancelling the flight and telling me I'll get there in 3 weeks.

If there were unlimited capacity, it wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, those days are long gone.

How is an airline supposed to prepare for the fact that 50 planes are approaching DFW when a tornado hits - WITHOUT inconveniencing customers? It just isn't possible. As it is, the airlines got everyone safely on the ground and everyone got to their destination. Seems to me that this is about all they can do.

Sure. Let's staff Midland, Austin, Abilene, and every little podunk airport in the country so that they can all handle 100 airplane arrivals per hour with no delays or inconvenience. Do you have ANY idea what your tickets would cost if the airlines had to staff like that?

jragosta

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).

SocietyFlyGirl

With all due respect to everyone, IMHO, airlines are unlikely to fix the system unless forced. Say you are stuck on the runway for 3.5 hours. Now, post-legislation, the airline goes back to the gate and cancels the flight rather than incur the 4 hour penalty. You are told next available flight next day, a couple of days, next week: In all instances, these dates are inconvenient for you. You get your ticket refunded and either don't go on your trip or go to another airline that can get you there more quickly. Now AA is out of hundreds of passengers' airfares. Also, AA is out of some future revenue as well: You were so inconvenienced, you will think twice before booking again on AA. Instead you'll choose a direct flight that doesn't connect through storm cities USA - ORD and DFW.

Faced with all these losses of revenue, AA bean-counters finally realize the need for real contingency planning that can get passengers to their destinations without cancellations or 4 hours or more on the runway.


Yes, part of the answer may be higher airfare. The beauty of the legislation is that all airlines must meet it and would face whatever cost increases it would force on their operations. With voluntary agreements, only the airlines voluntarily agreeing are faced with the increased costs.

USA_flyer

Very generous of you. Have you consulted the 200 people if they're willing to go along with this?

If th 4 hour rule were to become a legal limit what's the big deal?
1. It's not going to be invoked very often.
2. It protects the most vulnerable passengers. You might be an elite and you might well want to get home but the health and safety of all passengers must come first. Airlines are public transport and in terms of H&S all passengers must be treated equally. Your needs do not come before the greater good.
3. Your tolerance level is not the same as eveyone elses. 4 hours seems like an acceptable limit to impose, what would you prefer 5? 6? 7? 10? Til hell freezes over?
4. Yes, airlines are in business, but the cost of doing business is ensuring you have sufficient contingency for severely irregular ops. If you can not plan contingency for irregular ops you should not be in business.
5. If the airlines can not behave themselves as seems to be happening, government has a duty to legislate to ensure fairness in the contract between consumer and the business.
6. On the flipside, perhaps it ought to be mandatory for all passengers to carry insurance to allow for hotel and subsistence should irregular ops force the plane back to the gate.

Frankly, I don't see why people are defending the airlines over this. Something needs to give, and as a fare paying passengers, I don't see why it should be us.

hillrider

Uh? Why would they do that? Nobody has proposed for the airlines/airports/FAA do nothing more than make it such that those passengers who wish to deplane are not held imprisoned against their will (after x hours of waiting). The airline can deplane the elderly, sick, pregnant, diabetics, families with small children etc. who don't wish to endure the delay (at the gate or through steps), board some food & water, and keep the flight going.

hillrider

From an operations management point of view, the Passenger Bill of Rights formalizes a baseline human health & safety constraint for the system that is identical for all airlines -- alongside "meeting maintenance schedules", "meeting crew time limits", etc.

There's nothing on the Bill that says how airlines are to meet it--and as such is no "Band-Aid". But they're no longer free to ignore human health & safety, just like they can't ignore a pilot's workday (like it happens routinely in Africa) on the basis that the system is "overloaded" (to quote the post).

troyintn

I agree the airlines will not fix it. AA broke their own limits a few months after coming up with rules. My issue with UA is they had an issue and then broke the leagal rules, and the govt did nothing. I think they should have lost their cert or at least had 100k per person fines. I trust neither honestly, but am forced to fly every week.

SocietyFlyGirl

Hey, I agree. My hypothetical was intended to say that airlines won't work to create contingency plans that mitigate the need for passengers stuck on the tarmac UNTIL forced to by legislation. I do not think the Passenger Bill of Rights will ultimately lead to more cancellations, although it may initially before the airlines wake up and smell the coffee. More cancellations do not benefit any airline in the long run.

Reading earlier posts, some PBR opponents have threatened more cancellations under PBR.

jragosta

The answer has already been given - repeatedly.

If 4 hours were the legal limit, there would be a lot more canceled flights - further straining an already overloaded system.

And the passengers would be no better off. It's a pretty safe bet that any time a weather delay approaches 3.5 hours, the airline would cancel the flight and tell the passenger they can have a seat on the next available flight - two weeks from Tuesday. And since it's weather related, no compensation at all.

As it is, the number of passengers who are severely inconvenienced is infinitesimal. Yes, it's a pain, but not as bad a pain as the inconvenience that many millions more would suffer if your plan became law.