JetBlue situation may lead to airline reform in the US
As reported yesterday in TravelMole, the founder of JetBlue was reportedly “mortified” and “humiliated” by the airline’s record of cancelled flights but the incident last week could lead to some airline reforms.
For its part, JetBlue is hoping its string of cancelled flights with grounded passengers is finally over.
The airline had scheduled 600 flights for President’s Day, more than the 550 to 575 flights it has on a normal Monday, but 139 of them were canceled, JetBlue announced.
The latest cancellations were needed to make sure all flight crews had gotten the legally mandated amount of rest before returning to service, JetBlue Airways Corp. spokesman Sebastian White.
“Canceling one more day’s operations will really help reset our airline,” Mr White said.
All JetBlue flights were canceled in and out of 11 airports.
Last week, hundreds of JetBlue passengers were stuck for as long as 11 hours in parked jets at John F. Kennedy International Airport during the winter storm.
One passenger said the crew passed out bags of chips — the only food available — and periodically cracked the hatch to let in fresh air.
David G. Neeleman, the company’s founder and CEO told The New York Times that he was “humiliated and mortified” by the breakdown in the airline’s operations. He promised that in the future the company would pay penalties to customers should they be stranded on a plane for too long.
That incident and others, however, should revive momentum in the US Congress for some sort of passenger “rights” legislation, which have taken a back seat to security since 9-11.
There are no government regulations limiting the time an airline can keep passengers on grounded aircraft. The airlines’ voluntary code of conduct simply says that during such extraordinary delays, they will make “reasonable efforts” to meet passenger needs for food, water, restroom facilities and medical assistance.
Sen. Barbara Boxer of California called the JetBlue situation “absurd” and she plans to introduce legislation mandating that carriers provide passengers with food, water and access to “adequate restroom facilities.
Her proposal would also give passengers the right to “safely deplane” if the aircraft has been on the ground more than three hours past its scheduled departure time, adding, “No one should be held hostage on an aircraft.”
The Coalition for Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights, which has been lobbying Congress on the issue, said the JetBlue “ordeal” shows that airlines are unable to “police themselves” and must be given clear legal guidelines.
The last time the issue was dealt with seriously was in early 1999, when more than 4,000 passengers were stranded on a Northwest Airlines plane for up to eight hours.
The industry was able to head off that passenger rights effort by creating a voluntary set of guidelines for passenger service called Customers First.
Report by David Wilkening
John Alwyn-Jones
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