News/Commentary

Patients and their families often fly to get treatment or second opinions by necessity.

People who function daily at high levels may have any number of chronic medical conditions—the well-enough. Still, they have to watch the medication schedule and stick to it.

Other people fly to the bedside of seriously family members or close friends, often hoping to make it in time to wish them the best before surgery or to be able to say one last good-bye.

When planes have serious delays, you may be confident many medical situations are affected in many different ways. True, the airlines cannot know who those passengers are or how they are affected but the truth is, they cannot afford to care.

The airlines are sick, too.

According to this brief in The Wall Street Journal, in “recent years, an average of 1,500 domestic flights are delayed three or more hours each year.”

The newspaper says that these delays are estimated to affect about 114,000 passengers.

The result of new legislation just passed says that if all of the above airlines were fined according to plan, the cost to the badly-strapped aviation industry would be more than $3.1 billion, says the Journal.

The point of protest from the business side is legitimate. Airlines are barely staying in business.

However, from another business perspective, treating one’s customers as hostages, for cost reasons, would not seem to be a smart  growth strategy, either.

What is it about this industry which makes its leaders say fines for three and three-plus hour delays could cause them to have to make major changes in operations?

That is the question which has not been clearly answered.

Given how tight the turn-around times are for many flights— planes are barely whisked  free of crumbs before taking off again—this three-hour issue becomes more puzzling to this ordinary, admittedly pre-irritable passenger.

The airlines need to propose changes to the federal government which provides rational relief for passengers while maintaining themselves as viable businesses.

If current operations cannot correct a problem which affects—profoundly—only 1,500 flights and an estimated 114,000 human beings and puts their profit margins at risk, why?

The Wall Street Journal

“The Obama administration said Monday it will begin levying hefty fines against U.S. airlines for subjecting domestic passengers to lengthy tarmac delays, the government’s latest step in addressing airline consumers’ complaints after a series of high-profile incidents.

“The new rule adopted by the Department of Transportation sets fines of up to $27,500 per passenger when airlines leave fliers stuck on a plane on the ground for more than three hours. Based on a delayed plane carrying 120 passengers, the fine could be $3.3 million. The rule would apply to planes with more than 30 seats. (Emphasis added)

“The Transportation Department has rarely issued fines for tarmac delays. The first case in recent memory came last month when the DOT fined Continental Airlines Inc. and ExpressJet Holdings Inc. $50,000 each, and levied a $75,000 fine against Mesaba Airlines.

“That stemmed from the airlines’ poor handling of an August incident in which 47 passengers on a plane operated for Continental by ExpressJet were stranded for nearly six hours overnight at the airport in Rochester, Minn. Mesaba, a unit of Delta Air Lines Inc., provided the ground handling at the airport and didn’t allow the passengers to get off the plane.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Online, December 21, 2009