industry statement

BTC Rejects Calls for Passenger Bill of Rights Legislation

Coalition Says Unintended Consequences Would Reduce the Margin of Safety, Increase the Number of Canceled Flights and Lead to Higher Airfares

RADNOR PA., February 2, 2007–The Business Travel Coalition (BTC) today called for extreme caution in looking to Congress to oversee airline customer service standards. BTC testified in Congress in 1999 against proposed passenger rights legislation. The Coalition believes it was a bad idea then, and still is today. Congressional mandating of customer service standards in any industry represents a dangerous precedent. In the case of the airline industry, such legislation would increase business travel costs, stifle innovation and raise safety issues. 

The proximate cause of the legislative initiative in 1999 was a Northwest Airlines’ plane and its passengers that had been stuck on the tarmac in Detroit during a horrendous snow storm in January of that year. Investigative reporters later uncovered that it was managerial incompetence manifest in a series of poor decisions that led to the customer service meltdown. That discovery certainly would not have appeased any passenger that was on that plane that day.

However, like the present day’s kerfuffle during recent thunderstorms in Texas, the unfortunate incident does not rise to the level of national seriousness to warrant federal laws governing airline industry customer service. Since that incident in 1999 there have been some 88 million commercial airline flights within the U.S., and just a few situations, that BTC is aware of, where passengers were stranded for a substantial period of time.

That is not to say that passengers should not let their views be known; advocacy is a good thing. The first option customers have is to give their business to airlines that are responsive to them. Another opportunity is to lobby airlines as a group of customers for desired changes. And finally, many of the specific proposals being discussed are current responsibilities of the U.S. Department of Transportation who can enforce existing regulations or use the bully pulpit to effect airline policy changes.

Importantly, some proposals currently being discussed call for penalties for cancelled flights. Commingling financial penalties with airline operations and decisions relating to go, no-go decisions would lead to a reduction of current safety margins.

If airline passenger rights legislation were to become law, it would be added to by Members of Congress in tight reelection races in each election cycle. Every hare-brained idea would end up in legislation of this sort. For example, at a 1999 hearing on this issue one Committee Member informed everyone in the hearing room that her husband had made a really important suggestion. He had left a book on a plane after a recent flight. His idea was to write into law that in such a situation it would be an airline’s responsibility to find and return the book to him, or face financial penalties.

This is a classical case of where the cure can be far worse than the disease!