Stranded passengers must look to Congress for relief

Stranded passengers must look to Congress for relief

U.S. airlines won a battle the other day in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned New York’s Airline Passenger Bill of Rights.

The law was passed after a 2007 Valentine’s Day storm trapped thousands of passengers on board airliners parked on runways at JFK International for up to 10 hours without food, water and functioning toilets.

It’s worth wondering whether any of the judges ever sat on an airplane while a three-hour wait stretched to six or nine and the pilot couldn’t or wouldn’t take the plane back to the terminal so that basic needs of passengers, especially the young and the old, could be provided for.

The judges rule

But regardless of their personal experiences or lack thereof, the judges ruled that New York’s law violated the 1978 federal airline deregulation act, under which states were prohibited from regulating air carrier prices, routes or service. How dare the state of New York — or any other state — presume to tell an airline that it couldn’t hold passengers captive on a plane for 10 or more hours under conditions that wouldn’t be tolerated in a state prison.

The law required that after a plane had sat on the tarmac for three hours, an airline was required to provide:

UElectric generation service and temporary power for fresh air and lights;

UWaste removal service on the holding tanks for on-board restrooms; and,

UAdequate food, drinking water and other refreshments.

Violations could have brought fines of up to $1,000 per passenger.

The airlines argued that allowing the New York law to stand would encourage other states to pass their own laws, with a resulting patchwork of requirements that would place a hardship on the airlines (a hardship presumably worse than that placed on passengers when toilets begin to overflow and no fresh air is being pumped into the cabin).

The next fight

Nevertheless, as we said, the airlines won the battle against New York. But they may well lose the war.

Because in agreeing with the airlines, the court provided a suggested alternative: a federal law.

And, indeed, the Airline Passenger Bill of Rights Act of 2007 has already been introduced. It is pending in the Senate (as S. 678) and the House of Representatives (as H.R. 1303).

While it clearly is not the most pressing item on the congressional agenda (unless you are passenger stranded on a plane that is starting to get ripe on a runway), the court of appeals may have given the legislation just the boost it needs.

In ruling that only the federal government has the authority to protect passengers in distress, the court has clearly made it incumbent on Congress to do so.