The plan that Denver International Airport has sketched out to help airlines get stranded passengers off planes delayed on the tarmac is a small step forward on the issue of passengers’ rights.
It lays out the procedures that airport operations will follow to off-load planes once an airline makes the call to let people off a delayed flight.
But it barely scratches the surface of the complicated and interlocking problems that have made the first half of 2007 the worst year on record for airline delays.
That is going to require a federal solution that we hope won’t become stalled in Washington, D.C., gridlock.
Last month, President Bush ordered transportation officials to collaborate with airline officials to find ways of reducing delays.
“There’s a lot of anger amongst our citizens about the fact that, you know, they’re just not being treated right,” Bush said. “We’ve got a problem, we understand there’s a problem, and we’re going to address the problem.”
The trouble is, the airlines were supposed to have been working on some of these issues since 1999, when Congress held off on a passenger bill of rights to give airlines the chance to implement policies to improve customer service and minimize long on-board delays.
Among the underlying problems are overscheduled runways and long delays at key airports that have ripple effects around the country.
Three-quarters of the delays in the U.S. trace back to problems in New York. At John F. Kennedy Airport alone, scheduled flights have increased by 44 percent since 2004.
This year, more than 54,000 flights nationwide — affecting 3.7 million passengers — saw taxi-in and taxi-out times of one to five hours or more. The number of flights stalled by these sorts of long delays has risen dramatically in the last year.
Airports around the country, including DIA, have been working on plans to mitigate long on-board delays.
Calvin L. Scovel III, U.S. Department of Transportation inspector general, told Congress that airport officials should have guidelines requiring them to contact an airline to ask for a plan of action after a plane has sat on the tarmac for two hours or more.
DIA’s plan doesn’t take on that issue, instead relying on the airline to decide when to get passengers off a plane. The only caveat is when a life-threatening emergency is involved. Meanwhile, a number of airlines have set their own policies for how and when they’ll get people off delayed planes.
President Bush has said he would prefer airlines act on their own to reduce congestion at busy airports. But the White House has made it clear that mandatory rules might be imposed if airlines don’t resolve the situation themselves.
There should be a uniform standard for how long passengers can expect to sit on a plane waiting to take off or make it to the gate.
People who buy an airplane ticket should have a reasonable expectation of getting to their destination without being trapped — literally — in a dysfunctional system.
