Passenger Bill of Rights possible in Pennsylvania

Tim Sampson entered Pittsburgh International Airport’s baggage claim after arriving from New… Tim Sampson entered Pittsburgh International Airport’s baggage claim after arriving from New York 33 minutes late because of poor weather conditions.

“It didn’t really bother me,” Sampson, a senior microbiology major at Pitt, said of the delay on Jan. 15. “I knew we would get to where we were going.”

Chris Lovett, another passenger on the flight, agreed.

“This one wasn’t so bad,” Lovett said. “I’ve just come to expect delays.”

Other passengers, however, haven’t been as forgiving.

On Dec. 29, 2006, Kate Hanni, president of the Coalition for a Passengers’ Bill of Rights, sat on a plane in Dallas for more than nine hours.

The flight had been diverted from Austin to Dallas because of a 1,000 mile-long storm, she said.

“It was just generally a horrifying situation,” Hanni said, “and it just kept getting worse.”

New York passed its Passengers’ Bill of Rights, the first of its kind in the nation, on Jan. 1.

Now, other states are following suit – including Arizona, California, New Jersey and Florida – and Pennsylvania Rep. Douglas Reichley, R-Lehigh/Berks, wants one, too.

In November 2007, Rep. Reichley introduced the Airline Passenger Consumer Protection Act to give Pennsylvanians certain rights when an airline subjects its passengers who are confined to airplanes on tarmacs and runways to extensive delays.

“Yes, weather can cause a delay,” Reichley said. “But if that’s the case, airlines should not hold the passengers hostage out on the tarmac. They must have respect for their passengers.”

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Transportation, only 74.5 percent of flights were on time at the Philadelphia airport.

“I felt that especially with Philadelphia being among the worst in the nation,” he said of the city’s airport, it was a “timely take-off” for Pennsylvania’s bill.

The act, which will have language similar to the legislation in New York, currently has 15 co-sponsors, Reichley said.

The bill states if a plane is stranded on the tarmac for more than three hours, the airline must provide its passengers with clean water, food and sanitary bathrooms or pay a fine of $1,000 per person.

But some members of the Air Transport Association worry it will do more damage than good if states mimic New York’s actions.

ATA vice president of communications David Castelveter said these stranding incidents are so rare they hardly call for legislation.

“It has certainly given Ms. Hanni her 15 minutes of fame,” Castelveter said of Hanni’s efforts to expand the bill.

“But if every state has a bill variation, how impossible that would be to not only comply with but to enforce.”

But Hanni, who was in Washington, D.C. last week to meet with senators to discuss a national bill, said she would not give up.

“I would say I’m over it,” Hanni said, “but being aware that these things happen almost every day has caused me to just continue on with even more fervor.”