RSSUS Senator Barbara Boxer to Introduce Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights
Following the disastrous news reports of stranded passengers aboard JetBlue flights, 
California Senator Barbara Boxer plans to introduce an “Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights”. By adding the wording “bill of rights” to less significant issues, do we diminish what the “The Bill of Rights” actually stand for?
In a statement issued Thursday, Boxer said she has been delayed many times while traveling to and from California.
“But to keep passengers — which usually include infants and the elderly — on a plane for 11 hours in the worst of conditions is absurd,” she said. “If a plane is stuck on the tarmac or at the gate for hours, a passenger should have the right to deplane. No one should be held hostage on an aircraft when clearly they can find a way to get people off safely.” (Mercury News)
As wrong as what occurred on board these flights was, it has been a rather isolated incident when one factors in the number of flights that take place in a year. Using the word, “Crusade,” may be a bit over the top to call the movement for a “bill of rights”. Last night on Fox News Bill O’Reilly’s The Factor many have tried to skew what Michelle Malkin said and meant by being against a “Bill of Rights”. However, as well said at Balloon Juice ,“In Defence of Michelle,”we get that Bill of Rights for silly things may just be political posturing.
If you liked this post, you may also like these:
Comments
7 Responses to “US Senator Barbara Boxer to Introduce Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights”
Leave a Reply
Good.It is overdue.
At one level, I agree. At another level, I detest our government intruding into something that should be a common sense issue.
Actually, the frequency of extended tarmac holds (>2 hours) is low –especially when compared with the number of orginating flights. However, one tarmac hold lasting over 2 hours is ridiculous, regardless of how infrequent.
Airlines should generally be more intelligent in how they handle these situations.
The on-time performance of reporting U.S. airlines for all of 2006, January – December. Seems JetBlue ranks fourth-worst.
Hawaiian Airlines 93.75%
Aloha Airlines 89.97%
Frontier Airlines 80.72%
Southwest Airlines 80.23%
US Airways 76.85%
Skywest Airlines 76.78%
Delta Airlines 76.30%
Northwest Airlines 75.82%
American Airlines 75.55%
AirTran Airways 74.62%
United Airlines 73.86%
Comair Inc. 73.77%
Continental Airlines 73.42%
Mesa Airlines 73.33
Expressjet Airlines 73.28%
Alaska Airlines 73.28%
JetBlue Airways 72.90%
American Eagle Airlines 71.48%
ATA Airlines 69.44%
Atlantic Southeast Airlines 66.00%
bodo,
How are the on-time stats calculated? Do they include weather delays? If so, airlines with significant operations in the northern tier of states and the northeast (Jet Blue, NWA, United, heck, any of the legacy airlines) will likely take a hit in Dec/Jan.
The best airport I’ve seen handling winter weather delays is MSP (though the terminal layout is poor) while the best handling spring/summer weather delays is Hartsfield (ATL).
#4 Ronnie2shues
Yeah, weather is one of 5 categories airlines report as causes for the delays. I was a bit shocked to discover that, among the causes of delay, extreme weather is not the most reported cause.
Here are the categories the airlines report as causes:
http://www.bts.gov/help/aviation.html#q3
And here you can get the on-time statistics and reported causes for the delays:
http://www.transtats.bts.gov/OT_Delay/OT_DelayCause1.asp?pn=1
The government cannot provide an airline passenger’s “Bill of Rights” Rights come solely from God. Only privileges and immunities come from government and then ONLY if the People who wrote the founding documents of the government gave the government the autority to grant privileges and immunities. If there is no explicit grant, then the government has no authority to involve itself.
So first we have a bunch of ignorant or corrupt people trying to run a government while exercising unauthorized powers and making stupid statements like, “an airline passenger’s ‘Bill of Rights’”. Of course they use this term and it cheapens our true God-given rights. That is their underlying purpose, to make the People think the government is in charge. The truth is that the government, those elected and those employed by, is our run-amok servant. We the People have been to lax in our duties to know our place and to keep them in their place.
Here’s one for JetBlue’s Bill of Rights:
“Don’t go to Aruba because if something happens to you,
nothing will be done about it.
ALE will pretend really hard to solve your case
but have no real intention of prosecuting those
who harmed or killed you.”