From Sacramento and Your Neighborhood
Assemblyman, 13th District
As anyone who has taken a vacation or business trip knows, some stress when traveling is simply unavoidable. Airline passengers who’ve been stranded on the tarmac for hours, without food, water, fresh air, or working bathrooms would probably say that “stressful” doesn’t begin to adequately describe the situation.
I am working on a measure, Assembly Bill 1943, the California Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, to require that airlines must treat customers humanely during extended onboard delays.
You may recall the controversy back in 1999 following an eight-hour stranding of passenger airplanes in a Detroit snowstorm. Fliers were outraged by the callous lack of basic necessities – food, water, fresh air, working toilets - offered to help manage the delay. The airlines responded by instituting a voluntary code of conduct intended to ensure that such incidents weren’t repeated.
However, occurrences like these have unfortunately only become more common. We don’t know exactly how common because the U.S. Department of Transportation doesn’t accurately count all such delays. In fact, under the current method for data collection, if a flight is cancelled, it’s not counted as a delay, even if the plane and passengers sat on a runway for nine hours. Diverted flights are also not counted, so much of the information that we receive about these events comes from passengers themselves, such as Kate Hanni.
In December 2006, Kate Hanni and her son boarded a plane bound for Dallas, which was diverted to Austin - where they and other passengers sat for nine hours unable to leave. Kate describes the conditions as unbearable. There was no food, drinking water or access to working bathrooms and passengers endured hours of stench from backed up toilets and soiled baby diapers.
After this experience, Kate decided to leave her career as a real estate agent and become an advocate for airline passengers’ rights. She launched the “Coalition for an Airline Passenger Bill of Rights,” and today, I am working with Kate on our Airline Passenger Bill of Rights here in California.
Assembly Bill 1943 will protect passengers who have been stranded on a runway for three or more hours by requiring the airlines to provide basic amenities such as drinking water, fresh air, food, sanitary restrooms and lights. These are basic human needs and we should not have to relinquish access to them just because we board an airplane.
Currently, there are no statutory requirements for minimum airline passenger rights. The New York legislature successfully passed passenger rights legislation last year that is currently being fought by the airlines and their lawyers in the courts. It is my hope that our state’s voice is heard and that it also becomes clear at the federal level that we need a national “Airline Passenger Bill of Rights” for all airlines to follow when passengers’ health is at risk.
As consumers, we put our faith in the airlines. We trust them to value our health and safety above all else. Thanks to Kate Hanni and others working for an Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, passengers’ voices are being heard. I am proud to be working with her on AB 1943 to safeguard California travelers from having to endure a tarmac horror story of their own. For more information on AB 1943, please click here.
To contact Assemblyman Mark Leno’s San Francisco District Office call 415-557-3013 or e-mail him directly at Assemblymember.Leno@asm.ca.gov
For those joining in gay marriages today, the road from outlaw status to respectability was paved in the Legislature over three decades.
From decriminalizing sex between same-sex couples, to outlawing job discrimination against homosexuals, to adding gay members to the legislative roster, the government has been taking steps, measure-by-measure, that have led to gay couples joining hands in marriage ceremonies across the state.
