hillrider

No it isn't: the media hardly paid attention to it until the passengers of the flight revolted. It is an abused-passenger revolt, not a media thing.

So? The fact that 99.9% of cars are not lemons doesn't make lemon laws unnecessary, doesn't it? Or the fact that 99.9% of people eating veggies don't get sick doesn't make the FDA rules unnecessary.

People got ABUSED in AUS. It was not the first time, by far. A volunteer system was put in place in 1999 by the airlines and it FAILED. It will FAIL again. We need a passenger bill of rights, so that airlines will put the cost of breaking the LAW into the equation when they make decisions--on staffing, on what planes to assign to gates, on what compensation to give out; otherwise there will be another instance like AUS, and you could be the one subject to it.

hillrider

Read the FACTS before responding; I suggest Google. That flight was left out in the tarmac with malfunctioning toilets etc. when the available AA gate was repeatedly used for other flights (so they wouldn't miss revenue), and other (non-AA) gates at the airport were available (it would have costed AA money to rent one to get the people of the flight out).

There was nothing exceptional about the situation of the flight--what was exceptional is how callously AA acted versus its customers and fellow humans. It took the Captain's willingness to violate company orders (he pulled into an open gate against AA's directive not to do so) to finish the ordeal which AA management would have had going on even longer.

queenladyk

I would agree that this does not happen frequently but when it does boy does it suck!!

My Most memorable was a ORD-MSP where we sat on the tarmac for 4+ hours and there were 60+ planes ahaed of us for take off after the storm cleared. I remember thinking I could have walked faster.

So I guess my question is under this 4 hour rule - in situations like this - would we have gone back to the gate (which probably was full) and then gotten back in line as say 100 to take off?

I think I would rather stay in line and get to where I was going. I think that this 4 hr rule should apply if there is no end in sight (ie dont know how long it will take for whatever (weather, mechanical etc) to be fixed).

bernardd

If you create any kind of rule, particularly one set by the feds, it will have to be strictly adhered to, and there will always be a few extreme cases where it's harmful rather than beneficial.

It seems to me it comes down to how much you trust the airline to look after your best interest. Some people appear to have more trust than others.

oklAAhoma

Agreed. I would hate to be sent back to the gate because of a 4 hour mandatory cutoff if conditions indicated that the plane was close to actually be allowed to depart.

dfwexpx5

Maybe not strictly an AA issue but AA sure compounds the problems in numerous situations.
AA1505 DFW-LAS on 17 Jan is an example - gate showed on-time up until 30 minutes after scheduled departure, however, AA couldn't find the scheduled FAs, after almost 2 hours they found replacements, with minmal updates - just kept extending the estimated departure by 15 minutes.
Once onboard, needed de-icing due to freezing rain. CPT said we were #8 for de-icing. It then took almost 3 hours to get thorugh de-icing station (for only 8 planes ). 9am scheduled arrival turned into 2pm. Not all of delay on-board but way too long with way too little information shared by AA employees. Poor AA coordination and communicaiton during irregular ops is an AA problem that should be addressed by pax bill of rights. This is only most recent example I've experienced where the harder AA tries the more they get it screwed up.

HKG_Flyer1

HKG_Flyer1

oklAAhoma

I agree completely. My point is only that I haven't found 3-4 hour delays to be unbearable or "too long" as others have stated (although they were certainly unpleasant). I would absolutely not be in favor of a lower mandatory maximum.

My other point was that even at 4-hours, a mandatory cutoff might not actually be in the best interest of the pax.

Do I have a better suggestion? Not really. Ideally common sense would prevail and decisions would be made according to the particulars of each situation. However, we see how well that worked recently.

PresRDC

And it wouldn't have been news if it wasn't rare. Passenger revolt or not, it was still a media story because it was rare.

When was the last time you saw a media story titled "Flight Arrives On Time And Safely."

Those are very different situations. Regulation in those does not have the potential to create a knock-on effect like can happen with commercial aviation.

Effected passengers have remedies after the fact if an airline breaches its duty of care to them. They don't need a "Bill of Rights" (what a silly term, btw) for that purpose. If the "Bill of Rights" focuses on the flow of information to passengers, the provision of adequate facilities and, maye, a requirement that after a certain time the flight's status must be re-assessed, that's one thing, but if it includes arbitrary cut-off times, then it is creating the potential to cause more problems than it solves.

If I was in an AUS situation, it would be miserable, no doubt, but that doesn't change anything. In all likelihood the vast majority of flights would be operating normally and if I thought AA breached its duty of care to me, I have legal recourses after the fact. I don't need any additional rights.

Empathy almost always leads to bad policy.

dayone

And extreme cases make bad law.

bernardd

Surely the whole point about these exceptional operations is that they're exceptional? You can almost guarantee that American will have problems in the future, but they probably won't look like what happened in AUS, SAT, OKC & the rest in December 2006. And the corrollary is there's only a limited amount of planning they can do for them because they don't know when and where they're going to happen. Plus you have to be careful that any proposed laws tackle the real problem rather than slap a band-aid on specific circumstances.

One of the hallmarks of a truly great service organization is it hires good people and pushes considerable responsibility for tackling the unexpected, exceptional circumstances down to low levels so that correections can be made quickly.

From my perspective, I used to think AA had that quality in the 90's - I could describe several problems they fixed quickly efficiently at that time. I wonder if part of what we're seeing today is a by product of the drive to cut costs has resulted in them moving decision levels up the organization, with the consequence the people close to the problem aren't allowed to react to them? If that's part of the problem I wish I knew a solution.

dfwmusicman

Simply just for the record, it was indeed AA1420, but at LIT on June 1,1999.

As a passenger on 1420, I can say for certain that there's no doubt we shouldn't have landed...I would have much rather diverted to MEM or circled for a period of time rather than experience what happened. No amount of time saved by trying to get the plane there regardless of the impending weather dangers is worth the consequences that our pilots' actions caused that night. I know the passengers stranded in AUS & elsewhere had some incredible hardships, and I'm thankfully AA is trying to do something about it. Similar to what others have said, however, it will be interesting to see how AA handles this type of situation the next time it occurs!

drtdk

Say again?

bernardd

Put simply, if all the decisions are made dispassionately in Dallas(?) based on information filtered and distorted as it's passed up the line from AUS, are they making the same decisions the local managers would when faced with the experience up close and personal? It's a heck of a lot easier, for example, to worry about money rather than passengers if you personally don't have to face the passengers.