Yes you can be held hostage.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Feb 15 2007, 08:01 PM) [snapback]391266[/snapback]</div>

It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen. Some kind of legislation is probably appropriate, but they will have to have an exception for what sometimes happens when there is no place to go. If there's an open gate, they should have to go back to it, but if there's no place to put the airplane and let the people off, what do you do?

 

I think the airline industry is screwed up enough already without us sueing them every time we get frustrated. More lawyers and lawyer costs built in to the fares is not the answer.

I really don't understand why they don't get the little pusher thing and roll some empty planes away from the gate so the full ones out on the runway can come in and empty off the people.

My worst one was a Delta flight. We sat on the runway at JFK for a little over 4 hours before takeoff. When we got to salt lake city, we circled a little over an hour before deciding we didn't have enough fuel to wait out the storm so we landed in Boise Idaho. Everyone else landed in boise before we did so all (both?) of their gates had planes already and we had to sit out in no-mans-land for about 2 hours. During that time, we could have left earlier because salt lake had cleared up... but no... we were 5th in line to get fueled up.

If I remember right, it was about a 12 hour flight that normally takes about 3.5hrs.

It can be frustrating, but anything you do legally is going to just make the fare prices go way up for everyone.

 

But let me ask you this: My time, according to my company, is worth about $40/hour. If i was stuck on a plane for 11 hours, that would potentially be costing me $440 in unearned wages. Should i not have legal recourse for reasonable compensation? Heck, the plane ticket itself probably didn't cost as much as each of those passengers lost in potential wages.

I was recently on a flight with a tight connection to an international flight. As we were waiting for our flight at the gate, the agent told us flat out that the flight we were waiting for was always late. Always. And since we had a tight connection, we might miss it. They even had the decency to start looking for alternative flights we could take to get us to our destination. Their response? Nothing is available until 2 days from now. My response? Well, on expedia.com here, there's a flight that could get us there tonight for $5000 a ticket.

They managed to get us to the gate on time and we made our connecting flight.


My point is, the airlines are selling a service to their customers. I think everyone will agree that in other service oriented industries, certain expectations have to be met, or you have legal recourse. If you order a pizza for delivery and the pizza man shows up 11 hours late, are you paying for your pizza? What about hiring a maid service to clean your house the day before your super bowl party, and they show up during the party? are they getting paid? What about taking a cab to the airport and he gets lost on the way there, causing you to miss your plane (i mean really lost)? Is he getting paid?

It's unjust for the airlines to be exempt from these customer service issues and complaints just because they're going through a rough time.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Feb 16 2007, 11:22 AM) [snapback]391381[/snapback]</div>

Guess I'm lucky, every company that I've worked for has paid my wages from the minute I left my house in the morning to catch early morning flights (including car mileage). I wonder if they'd pay up in that situation.

I think its rotten in a service oriented business that they can get away with the stuff like this and there should be some kind of legal footing for the passengers to stand on in this situation. Its ashame that the votes can be bought so easily, if that case happened today I wonder if the turn out would the same seeing as how many airlines are still broke.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(parrot_lady @ Feb 16 2007, 08:32 AM) [snapback]391392[/snapback]</div>

But thats only if you're flying for business. What about personal flights?

I'm a programmer, specifically web design. I can work from anywhere i can get an internet connection and power. Unfortunately, that means airplanes are pretty much out. In the 11 hours the passengers had to wait on the airplane, i probably could have found a nice freelance design job, completed it, and came out $1000+ ahead. but instead, they were stuck on an airplane with nothing to do.

 

The airline industry has managed to get laws that basically deny the passenger any rights whatsoever. They are under no obligation to get you to your destination in a timely manner. They are under no obligation to get your luggage on the same plane with you, and they can even delay your luggage to a later flight, without telling you, in order to carry more profitable freight cargo instead. If you are delayed and they re-book you, they do not have to tell you if your new booking will leave you on standby for part of your trip.

I once arrived just barely on time for a connection, but still on time, running all the way from my arrival gate to my new departure gate, only to find that they had filled the 20-odd seats reserved for passengers on my flight with standby passengers, and had closed the boarding. The plane was sitting at the gate, and we were not permitted to board. That plane would have been delayed 10 minutes if they had waited for all the transfer passengers to arrive. Yet on another occasion, I sat on a plane for two hours while they held it for passengers to arrive on a severely-delayed flight.

Most airlines will give first-class passengers a hotel room for an overnight delay, and some will do the same for coach passengers, but it will not be an especially nice room, and if you get a food voucher it likely will pay for only part of a decent meal.

If they lose your bags entirely they are limited to something like $200 liability per bag, regardless of the actual value of the contents.

Many airlines are downright unfriendly towards the passengers, and then complain that they are losing money.

And although this is off topic, I cannot resist throwing it in: I have been on flights recently where the first-class passengers got plastic knives but metal forks with the meal. Anyone who is not a complete idiot knows that a fork is a far more effective weapon than a butter knife. The airlines, apparently, are run by complete idiots.

 

If the pizza man shows up 11hrs late, you probably don't buy the pizza from him and you probably don't order from that company again. You order from a different company. Eventually, if you're out of pizza companies that you will still use, you stop eating pizza or you start cooking your own.

We could quadruple the cost of the fares which would bring the passenger load levels down substantially and then volume would no longer be part of the problem.

What is your suggested liability level for the airlines? Your $40/hr rate you think you should be charging them or you think you lost is peanuts to a lot of the airline passengers. How many lawyers, CEO's and people make $1000/hr that get delayed.

They need to try to keep it on schedule, but mostly if you don't like their airplane, don't use it. Get your own or drive a car.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Feb 15 2007, 09:19 PM) [snapback]391289[/snapback]</div>

SIMPLE you either move an empty plane away from the gate and bring te plane in question up to the gate or nose the full plane close to a terminal emergency exit and either use the old fashioned roll up stairs to the plane exit door or use the plane''s emergency chute to get passengers down off the plane. If the plane can't leave the runway but it is closed, how about using the emergency chutes and bus the passengers back to the terminal. Certainly, if not the above, SOME procedure could be in place. It's not that I, as an unqualified person may have the answer, it's that SOME accommodation could be worked out by those with more knowledge than I. Or if all else fails, remove the prohibition that passengers can't sue and you can bet something would be worked out that same day the prohibition is revoked.

 

Thus the needed ability to sue - The airline can do what it thinks is proper to correct the situation - whether it be a hotel room for an unexpected over night, free tickets, whatever. but every case is different, and individuals should expect that an airline will follow through on their promise - they tell you the boarding, take off, and landing time, and those should be pretty damn accurate. Some amount of error is certainly allowed, but 3 hours is pretty excessive in most cases. When an airline fails to follow through, and the compensation for this failure isn't reasonable, individuals should be able to get just compensation through the court system.

Companies need to be held liable for their actions - The airline industry currently isn't, but most people don't have much of a choice. Government contractors in Iraq aren't, and we've seen their bills skyrocket - 1 dollar out of every 6 is wasted through unnecessary overtime, work that wasn't completed, or substandard work because there isn't any oversight or accountability.

I don't care if airline prices have to get jacked up. I don't care if airlines go belly up and stop existing. They have a duty to their customers, and the customers should have certain rights to back up their expectations of the fulfillment of this duty.

 

They held these people hostages based on their decision that it would be far more expensive in rebooking flights for these folks. I can't see the logic in this as I'm sure more people will now opt for a different airline when traveling , resulting in lost revenue anyway. It probably would've been better for them to avoid all of this negative publicity.

If it were me on that plane, I would've been going nuts. I can't even sit still on my couch for more than a half hour at a time!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ Feb 16 2007, 11:41 AM) [snapback]391484[/snapback]</div>

Yeah! Let's all do the Ed Begley thing! We all have a Prius, don't we! :lol:

 

The problem is that the present law gives passengers no rights at all. The law needs to require the airlines to take reasonable measures. And it needs to hold airlines responsible for incompetent functioning.

Nobody can control the weather. But they can let the passengers off the plane. (That's not a technical issue. It's a matter of stairs and a bus.) Sometimes bags will be lost. But they can be required to install and use tracking technology so it happens less often. And they can be prohibited from giving paid cargo preference over the baggage of passengers on the plane. And while this cannot be legislated, airlines can train their personnel to be friendly. Some airlines do this already. Some do not.

The problem with the pizza analogy is that you can make your own pizza at home. You can't drive your Prius to Hawaii. And there may be only one airline serving a given route. They have a quasi-monopoly and should be required to meet certain standards of service and quality.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Feb 16 2007, 04:19 PM) [snapback]391784[/snapback]</div>

Yep that's what we need more laws, please Mr. Big Government, take care of poor old helpless me because I am a weakling unable to take care of myself and need your help all the time.

http://www.tv.com/south-park/the-entity-a....90/summary.html

 

Maybe airline passengers should form a--gasp--union to balance the power of the corporations. But on this site the prevailing opinion seems to be unions are bad and should be crushed. The corporation knows best.

The airline gives you a free ride because you buy stuff on a credit card. They bought brand loyalty and know you won't switch. If you don't like the conditions either use your economic clout or seize the plane. You might even want to buy stock in your favorite airline so you as an ownwer can complain to management and the board about their crappy service.

I don't fly commercially and have zero desire to do so because I don't want to put up with all the accompanying BS.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Devil's Advocate @ Feb 20 2007, 01:04 PM) [snapback]393481[/snapback]</div>

Of course you can argue (and conservatives do) that corporations should be allowed to do whatever they like. Fix prices. Advertise dishonestly. Murder union organizers. Or in the case of the airlines, that passengers should have no recourse against breach of contract. Because when they sell you a ticket, and then cancel your flight for no other reason than the flight was not full, so you miss the event you were travelling to, that's breach of contract. Nobody can control the weather, but when they lose your luggage due to negligence, and the government puts a liability limit of $200 per bag, well then, you, Mr Fewer-Laws, should be aware that what we have now are tons of laws, all exempting the airlines from the usual standards of commerce.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JimN @ Feb 20 2007, 05:24 PM) [snapback]393626[/snapback]</div>

I'd be all in favor of an airline passengers' union. But as a practical matter, you'd never get a significant percentage of all the people who fly into any one organization.

Owning stock gives you zero rights, unless you own a controlling share. Sure, you can complain. But they don't care. As a stockholder you can vote your shares. But they don't care about that either, unless you own enough shares to throw the election for board members away from themselves.

I don't like to fly. But I'm sure as hell not going to stay at home just because I don't like the airlines. And I'm not going to turn a 6-hour trip into a three-day trip by driving.

No, the airlines have a quasi-monopoly, and as such should be held to certain basic standards.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Feb 16 2007, 07:19 PM) [snapback]391784[/snapback]</div>

Actually, the problem with the pizza analogy (delivered 11 hours late to your house) isn't a good one. A better one would be that you went to pick up the pizza and they locked you in and made you wait 11 hours before letting you go, sans pizza.
Now how would you feel?

 

Personally, I believe that air travel in the united states should be a regulated business, as it once was. What's more, I actually am in favor of ending this shadow of a barely functional system and instituting a single national airline.

All the poor state of air travel has done for me is make me much happier to drive to destination that are within the reasonable 6 hour radius, while just a few years ago I would just have grabbed a $120 flight.

And now, let's talk about weather. I live in Cleveland. Here, in Cleveland, Nothing stops for the weather. And unless the weather is unbearably bad, that includes the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. So someone please explain to me why all of these other airports have such significant weather delay problems. I fly regularly from Cleveland in weather that shuts down Chicago O'Hare and every airport south of the Mason-Dixon line. What gives?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jmann @ Feb 20 2007, 11:05 PM) [snapback]393706[/snapback]</div>

Umm, Cleveland Hopkins WAS shut down in the same storm:

"But air travel was already affected by midday.

More than 40 flights scheduled to take off from Hopkins International Airport today have been cancelled, most of them flights headed to Chicago and toward the East Coast.

Meantime, the Akron/Canton Airport had cancelled some flights and experienced many delays due to the weather, sources said.
All travel is expected to get worse as winds pick up through the evening, forecasters said. "

http://www.cleveland.com/newslogs/plaindea...es/2007_02.html

Only reason I know this is because my wife's from Parma, OH, and her brother drives freight between the airports. He had the night off.