Released: April 13, 2007

Congress looks at setting rights for air passengers

Source: Adam Schreck, Los Angeles Times [Orlando Sentinel]

The way Kate Hanni tells it, a holiday trip that left her family stuck inside a grounded airliner for nine hours without food, running water or working toilets amounted to “cruel and inhumane” treatment that no passenger should have to endure.

So infuriated was she about the ordeal in December that she and her husband started a coalition of fed-up fliers to press for an industry-wide passenger bill of rights.

Earlier this year, after JetBlue’s cancellations of hundreds of flights that stranded thousands of passengers, their cause caught the attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

On Wednesday, the Napa, Calif., resident appeared before a Senate panel to lend support to a bill by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, that would create a federally mandated set of rights to supplement the voluntary guidelines airlines follow now.

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