Will a 'passenger bill of rights' really work?

After what should have been a two-hour flight from New York to North Carolina turned into a 15-hour ordeal, Uli Schemet has no doubt that Congress should approve an airline passenger's bill of rights.

"It's an outrage that airlines are allowed to book as many flights as they want, knowing full well it will create enormous delays," he says. "Consumers get stuck on the tarmac, have their flights rerouted - it's ridiculous."

As the summer travel season gets under way, the US Senate is expected to take up the Airline Customer Service Improvement Act. It would codify many of the airlines' pledges to do better in reducing delays, notifying passengers about problems, and handling baggage - promises made two years ago in an effort to head off similar federal legislation.

To supporters, the bill is a much-needed cudgel to prod the airlines into taking the needs of the flying public seriously, even if it doesn't address some of the underlying causes of the nation's near-gridlocked skies - such as lack of runway space and the overburdened air-traffic-control system. To critics, the bill is just a Band-Aid that will allow politicians to hold a press conference to announce they're doing something - although from the airlines' perspective, it's nothing more than bureaucratic meddling.

Either way, the bill's imminent arrival on the Senate floor points up the public's increasing frustration with both the airlines and the government's inability to make a trip to Grandma's as reliable and hassle-free as possible.

"Last year, there were a higher number of complaints, the worst baggage-handling record, more involuntary denied boardings, and a worse on-time percentage [of arrivals]," says Dean Headley, a professor at Wichita State University in Kansas and co-author of the annual Airline Quality Rating. "The airlines basically ignored the customers for the last two years."

The airlines insist they have been working to improve flying conditions. They point to a report in February by the Department of Transportation's inspector general that gave them an A for effort in implementing their voluntary customer-service plan. The report, however, sharply criticized the airlines' actual performance and outlined steps the airlines could take to improve service.

Some of those recommendations are being implemented by the airlines on their own. For example, they're including in the so-called contract of carriage (all that small print on the back of tickets) the 12-point customer-service assurances the airlines pledged to earlier - like offering the lowest fare and notifying customers of known delays and cancellations. The provisions, in essence, would give passengers the right to sue to enforce them.

Page: 1 | 2