Another worthless airline passengers’ bill of rights has been introduced in Congress. The bill, called the Air Service Improvement Act of 2008 (PDF) would require airlines to file contingency plans with the government on how to handle delays and cancellations. It also establishes an advisory committee for aviation consumer protection.
Although the proposed law is new — it was introduced by House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Jim Oberstar of Minnesota and aviation subcommittee Chairman Jerry Costello of Illinois — the content isn’t. It takes its language directly from the House-passed bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration.
The new bill will come before the Rules Committee today and will be brought to the floor later this week.
But will the bill help customers, if passed? Probably not.
The proposed law would only require air carriers to file plans to deal with delays and cancellations. But it doesn’t make them to follow the plans, nor does it apparently provide adequate enforcement provisions. In other words, the bill has loopholes that a widebody jet could fly through.
Why did the customer advocates approve of a watered-down bill like this? The answer is in the second part of the bill. The advisory committee would create another bureaucracy that would, in effect, give these so-called “advocates” an official title — even if the airlines continue to pay no attention to what they say.
The bill isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. The House should reject it in favor of a law with real teeth that would compel the airlines to treat customers better than cargo.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
You’re probably right about the motivation for “consumer advocates” to approve of this terrible legislation. In addition, I see that the advisory committee members will get travel and per diem expenses on the taxpayer’s dime. And if the bill passes, no matter how weak, these advocates will get lots of great publicity and the public will think they’re wonderful because they (the public) won’t look at the fine print. Ultimately, free travel, publicity, notoriety and titles must be what this is really all about. It obviously isn’t about passenger’s rights or genuine consumer advocates wouldn’t support it. Who are these advocates anyway?
Forgive me… harsh, dude. Very harsh.
Allow me, as an unpaid, deeply vested, passenger rights advocate, to allow you (and others) to become part of the grassroots, feet-on-the-ground solution in Washington.
And I am TOTALLY serious. I cordially invite anyone to come to DC with me and Kate Hanni who has worked tirelessly and without pay and flown dozens of times cross-country to lobby the halls of DC.
Here’s how you can get what you want (or at least try). Please re-write the bill (or whatever provisions you see fit) EXACTLY the way you see it best and email them to me.
I will be happy to advocate those provisions by working with other major passenger advocates. I will also drive it to Washington to deliver it to Oberstar and other key house members and senators. You can meet me there. Time is of the essence. alan@down2earthadventures.com
Has anyone reading this been to the Hill yet to share your views and talking points? How many Senators and Congressman have you spoken to? I haven’t seen any blog posts about tthose daytrips yet?
I have been to DC and spoken to many by phone. I went on May 5th and walked Senate hallways with Kate Hanni just before the cloture vote on S 1300. It’s not as easy as you think to convince 100 (plus 435 more on the house side) folks to think the same way.
Oh and get this…I spent my personal money doing it that day. Approx. $100 in gas, $50 in food, no paid lobbyists. I had to take an ENTIRE day of work and scrap it…opportunity costs there. Oh and I brought my 2 year in a stroller ALL DAY because I couldn’t find coverage for him. Imagine that…my 2 year older actually helped me lobby the U.S. Senate. He’s been lobbying, have you?
Harsh sidelines post. Just my honest opinion. Chris, you can do much better. In fact, you can become part of the solution so you can blog first hand much better about the advocate’s fight in DC.
So are you coming to DC with me? It’ll be fun. Let’s plan the trip. Bring comfy shoes and throat lozenges.
Cheers. -Alan
Regarding JimT’s comment post about free travel and publicity.
Forgive me…what planet do you live on? Have you ever been to DC to lobby, advocate or otherwise work with elected officials and government bureaucrats to accomplish real change? It ain’t no celebrity picnic.
Free travel and publicity for private Joe Schmoe citizens who spend THOUSANDS of personal dollars and uncounted hours away from family and productive work to roam halls in Washington DC trying to knock common sense into Reps and Senators?
(Heavy sarcasm to follow.) Yeah, that’s what the advocates are after…free travel and publicity. You caught them…dipping into the free travel and publicity wellspring. The DOT is a bastion of free travel and publicity debauchery.
Rethink your comments. They make NO SENSE are not founded in any reality or facts about Washington DC I have ever witnessed.
Alan Fiermonte
Big Time Free Traveler and Celebrity Citizen Lobbyist Thanks to the Largess of the DOT
Both for all of the people who belong to the Coalition and have come to Washington DC to lobby with me, I apologize for Chris Elliott who has never lobbied for anything that I’m aware of. At least not for no pay.
To the gentleman who thinks getting legislation is a cake walk, or that the Government shouldn’t pay for my travel, take notice that the other advisory committee members will have their travel paid for as well.
I am really concerned when people begin to think this is about the media. We have a hotline with many dedicated volunteers answering and helping stranded passengers for free.
We have a website and blogspot that must be maintained.
We have expenses that frankly, I’ve covered a part of to the point where my family has suffered.
I’ve had to file 2 sherrif’s reports for stalking, and one FBI report because my computer was hacked by a nutt who joined our Coalition.
Until you have walked in my shoes, don’t criticize. I’ve found that most people who criticize have never volunteered to do anything where there wasn’t a reward, guaranteed, at the end of it for them. That, my friends, is why our Great Country is in such an upheaval.
I hope that you all agree that air travel is unsafe, unhealthy and there are NO STANDARDS/LAWS/MANDATES to protect the consumer.
Frankly our members are shocked by this posting Chris. You know me, you should know better. I haven’t even done a press release yet.
Thanks
Kate Hanni
Dedicated Consumer Advocate with or without the Media thank you very much.
How interesting. As I read the bill this morning, I had two thoughts. First, there’s no way Kate would support this watered-down compromise bill. (I was wrong.) Second, if she did, she would have given me and others in the media a heads-up, explaining why the bill was a good idea. (Wrong again.)
So to Kate, Alan and, and the other passenger rights advocates I’ve inadvertently offended — sorry!
I won’t respond to the personal attacks here or in any way. It looks as if you interpreted my criticism of the bill as a personal attack on you. That was your mistake.
I will agree with Chris’ original comments on the uselessness of this proposed legislation. What I believe is necessary are not just plans, and not just “gentlemen’s agreements”, and not just principles, but contracts and admonitions and punitive measures, if things are to change in the airline travel industry. I can see how a hard working and self-depriving group might be just ecstatic to FINALLY get something, anything, which Congress is willing to debate, much less legislate, but if the result is a lot of their wasted time and personal sacrifice, then it’s truly not worth it.
Why did only two people respond to the above author’s criticism of the new law. Where are all the rest of these angry members?
Maybe I’ve been living under a rock or something, but I had never heard of this Kate Hanni person. I’m a frequent flyer so I thought I’d look into this “coalition” and the other things she mentioned in her comments – i.e. her blogspot, website. I Googled “Kate Hanni” and got thousands of hits. Wow! Looks like she’s quoted quite often, and lots of accomplishments, though some of their claims are questionable. I’ll get to that later. I was mostly interested in maybe joining, but I wanted to know what it was I would be joining. There are so many scams out there these days. There are hundreds of articles on the web that say this coalition has increasing numbers of members – 23,000 now I guess. I looked into this further and found some curious things – I’m naturally skeptical, so bear that in mind;
1. Hanni mentioned a blogspot, so I managed to find it and that – In the last six months, except for posts by Kate Hanni, there are maybe eight or nine other posts from other people – and some of those are in opposition to what she’s advocating. All in all, seems pretty dormant for a main blog on the subject. Hardly any activity for the last year in fact. You would think for a group of that size, there would be thousands of postings.
2. She also mentioned her website where I found another message board/forum that says it has over 5000 members, but if you look at the memberlist, 99% of them are spammers (prescription drugs, porn, etc). It says there are 176 posts, but the last post was three months ago. And just browsing through the posts, it looks like there are only about 15 real people that have ever posted. Not much activity at all really.
3. There’s a YouTube video of Hanni that is apparently a recap of one of her trips to DC from a couple of months ago, but it only has 120 views. You can get 120 views on Youtube by accident! Shouldn’t that video have 23,000 views? Don’t the members care? And in that video she says there were seven people on the most recent trip to DC. When I read her post above, I thought she meant scores of people. And then she has a music video up there where she describes herself as the “founder of the coalition … Hot hot hot.” What’s that all about? She’s not looking for attention or publicity though, she says.
So then I went back to the website and read the newsletters they have posted on there. Interesting stuff:
1. They made several impassioned pleas last year for their members to send comments to the US DOT about some airline regulations. After a fair amount of trouble, I found those comments on a DOT website and I started looking at a few of them. At first I thought wow, these guys are on the ball. Very thorough comments. But then I noticed was that the comments were all the same. Not a big deal I guess – they all have the same message – OK. But then I noticed (at the top of the pages) that a couple of them were faxed from the same fax number. So I randomly looked at about fifty of them – and they all come from the same fax number and name, even though in the list they look like they came from separate people. How is that possible? That’s kind of strange don’t you think? It’s like one person actually faxed in all those comments making it look like there were other people faxing comments. Why didn’t anyone at the DOT notice that? And why are there only approximately 170 comments submitted from non-airline or other people. Where are the other 23,000 people’s comments? Then in their newsletters, they claim these responses from their members are what got these regulations passed. Can that be true?!?!
2. The other funny thing about these newsletters, if you read them in chronological order, is that they’re constantly asking for volunteers for some hotline, airport coordinators, donations and all kinds of other things. And it’s evident that they aren’t getting any help because the same pleas are repeated time after time – for months. And then in some newsletters they complain that nobody showed up at hearings and other events that they promoted heavily in previous newsletters. And there are other curious things too. You just have to read them to see what I mean. It just seems like there’s really no membership, just people pretending that there’s a membership and not doing a very good job at it.
It’s like 1984 in reverse, where there’s a small group of people manipulating the government with bogus newsletters and media campaigns instead of the other way around!
3. Then I went to the “free membership” link from their website which takes you to a third-party petition website. They have 23,172 signatures on this thing. But If you look at it, it doesn’t say anything about joining anything. It’s a petition for a Congressman Mike Thompson to support a passengers bill of rights. So what if people got to that petition from a Google search just because they were upset with some airline? How does that petition translate into joining this group? Maybe there’s some other link that use to join, but I can’t find it.
So I created a phony signature and hit the Sign Petition button. It still didn’t say anything about joining anything. But now I guess they have 23,173 members.
And the petition doesn’t say anything about supporting this new questionable law that was just introduced either!!! Anybody confused? I am. Are these people using this petition, created for one thing, and the people that signed it, as the basis for their support? Is there any publicly available evidence at all that this coalition really exists beyond Hanni and the handful of people identified in their newsletters and on their website? The whole thing looks like an elaborate snow job to this observer.
4. Then I looked briefly at some of their accomplishments. There were a few recent articles where they take credit for getting a New York law passed, but curiously there’s no mention in any of their newsletters about a New York law until December when they write about a court challenge to the already enacted law. Seems odd. And while there are lots of articles about the group working at the federal level and in California about state laws, there don’t seem to be any articles available about them working on the New York law until they got involved in defending the existing law, but lost. OK, give them points for trying, but state laws regulating the airlines seems illogical so probably a waste of time anyway.
There’s quite a lot in the media and in their newsletters about getting airline statistics improvements enacted. That seems like a relatively benign thing, but I only saw one DOT submission from their group on that subject. Again, where’s the 23,000? I feel like saying, “Where’s the beef?”
Then there’s the bumping compensation increases enacted by the DOT recently – a subject I know something about having been bumped several times myself. They take credit for that too, when in fact those regulations were proposed by the airlines themselves years ago, and then enacted by the administration at the urging of Congress. What did this group have to do with any of that? There was nothing in their newsletters until after the changes were announced, but they give themselves credit in their most recent newsletter about all the calls and faxes their members made. There are 55 total DOT submissions for the overbooking rules, but I could only find one that was from the coalition.
I only spent a few hours looking at this. It was an interesting diversion from my normal activities, but imagine if someone spent a couple of days. Something funny going on here. Somebody might want to think about scrutinizing these people if they have as much influence as they say they have. Who are they and what motivates them? They say it isn’t fame and fortune, so what is it? If these guys are legit, great – good for them. But there’s a lot of questionable tactics and ethics going on – even at a glance.
And one final thought … if they have all these supportive members presumably donating money, etc, then why do they have to use their own money (their words) for expenses? I saw an article somewhere where Hanni took out a second mortgage to pay for expenses. Something just doesn’t ring true here. It just doesn’t add up.
I’d like to take issue with FreqFlier who thinks nobody volunteered for things like the hotline. I volunteered last year after I read in newsletters and news articles that they needed people to help with the hotline because they were getting 70 calls a day. They sent me a couple of spreadsheets, but then they never called or wrote me back. So I guess they had plenty of volunteers already. One of the spreadsheets was for entering new calls, and the other one said it was the combined list of calls from June through November, and it had at least 350 calls listed. Most of the call entries were from angry passengers with all kinds of horrific problems. A lot of calls were from reporters and even politicians leaving messages for Kate, pretty cool. And then there were some people just calling and hanging up or just making comments like “I signed the petition”. I didn’t see where the 70 calls a day were though. It looked more like 2 calls a day. I guess that’s why they didn’t need me. But people do volunteer!
Kate Hanni has never once been able to let anyone know how and where she spends the money her group gets. I have repeatedly heard from various people who have helped her (mind you no one stays with her for any length of time) of the expensive spa treatments, the drinks and bar tabs, the work Kate has gotten done to her face, the hair extensions and all that Hanni does to get the publicity for herself (see the website and you will know what I am talking about). Its one big PR for Hanni and Hanni alone.No one else is ever acknowledged…dosen’t the media get it??
Indeed my room mate volunteered for Hanny for a while and came home with horror stories of a total control freak
No one stays with her for any length of time as they are constantly used and abused.
This is all about Hanny, everyone hears of her “Master of wine” husband, of her musical talents, of the sacrifices she has made, the book she is writing, how she plans to run for Congress….its her, her and just her. This is ALL about Hanni. No one else matters..no one at all.
Wake up you media guys….do a thorough review