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LATEST LETTERS

Airline passengers

Wednesday, February 28 at 1:37 PM

Gary Justus of Evergreen writes:

An airline passenger’s bill of rights most certainly should be imposed on airlines! ("Fixing a flight-wait fiasco” on Feb. 23). Congress already heavily regulates this industry and has made it safer in the process. Now it’s time that passengers aren’t held prisoner to inept airline operations managers who won’t push back an empty jet to open up a gate for a full one.
I once sat all night on a jet that had to land in Colorado Springs due to fog in Denver. After three very low passes over Stapleton’s runway 27 left, diverting to the low fuel alternate was fine. But we were then held hostage by the start up airline because they didn’t have credit to pay for use of a gate. Pride Air stopped flying a week later. Had they let us into the terminal we could have arranged our own ground transportation home or waited for the bus that finally arrived at 6 a.m.
A three hour time limit on the tarmac is quite reasonable. If the airline can’t observe that they can send a bus to the stranded plane and compensate every passenger with a refund of the full ticket price and a free pass, taken from the managers’ annual bonuses. That rule will keep those managers on their toes! Why should “all airlines have to have the same policies” the News asks? They don’t. Three hours is just an outside limit that airlines could then improve upon.

This letter has not been edited.

READER COMMENTS

Well gary I guess you got what you paid for with a low fair start up and now you wnat compensated for your choice. If the airline shut down I would have to guess that the manager didnt get his bonus for the month. Lets add to the bill of rights that there can be no flights anywhere if there is a chance for a storm to come to town and close an airport. Better yet lets have the government take control of all airlines and run them the way they do the country, by taxes and then all flights could be free.

Posted by Bobby-Jo on March 1, 2007 06:45 AM

A passenger bill of rights could be a decent solution if it was crafted without specific hours noted. Instead it should state that the airline should have to have a policy as far as conditions like this go, and that it should be required to be stated before the ticket is purchased.

That way, it is up to the consumer to choose to fly airlines that have reasonable policies without regulating the airlines into nonexistence.

Although, if I were to regulate something down the airlines throats it would be to force them back to making it so I could sell my ticket to someone else if I'm not going to use it. Just my personal quibble though.

Posted by Doug H. on March 1, 2007 08:08 AM