Goodness knows I give Christopher Elliott a hard time about his columns when I think they’re wrong. I gave him a piece of my mind just this past weekend. But he’s got a pretty sensible column in today’s Washington Post, where he explains why it’s a bad idea to write tarmac delay rules into law.
A bunch of ostensibly pro-consumer lobbying groups want legislation to address tarmac delays, when regulation has already done so — long tarmac delays were exceedingly rare to begin with, almost nonexistent now, and the costs of rules extracting massive fines for such delays have simply led to more flight cancellations instead (which don’t obviously make consumers better off, to say the least).
Oddly, these groups want legislation in absence of a problem and when consumers themselves are hardly up in arms over the issue. Perhaps they need legislation for fear that lack of a problem, and a counterproductive ‘solution’, will lead to the eventual undoing of their wins?
These groups want more consumers to complain to government, so they also want legislation to include a single source phone number for consumers to do so and they want to require airlines to advertise it. Elliott rightly chastises the creation of a new telephone bureaucracy in a digital age.
And post-legislation, an entirely new round of rulemaking would be required to that rules would match legislative language. Perhaps that additional bite at the apple is what the groups are looking for?
If anyone has insight into the game that Consumers Union and Public Citizen are playing here, I’d love to hear it. But kudos to Elliott for calling them out on it.
The other day a friend of mine was on a flight that was canceled due to weather after waiting on the tarmac for ~2 hours. The same airline flew out a plane 1 hour earlier and later. Had they just waited, I’m certain this flight wouldn’t have been canceled.
Why can’t these pro-consumer groups lobby against the TSA, invasive pat-downs and radiation scanners?
Seems the pro-consumer(?) groups have been taking lessons from the anti-gun groups in demanding redundant legislation.
If there are going to be large fines/penalties, it would be great if some were actually given to the impacted customers…not just the US Treasury.
I don’t understand it either. Are they really afraid that the airlines will petition for a new rulemaking and get these rules relaxed? I’m also puzzled by their choice to focus on the tarmac delay rules and ignore the other new DOT rules.
I could even understand wanting to make further changes to some of the new rules, which actually argues against writing them into legislation.
The new rules don’t penalize airlines for canceling flights, and they should — I’ve seen cases where UA canceled an ORD-SFO flight but then added new flights, with new flight numbers, on that same day. Among other things, that lets the airline off the hook for denied boarding compensation on the canceled flight.
Likewise, the new denied boarding rules don’t quite do the right thing with award tickets.
The letter provides a contact at flyersrights.org; perhaps you could try asking them?