Is passenger rights bill ready to fly?
Flew back from The Land Beyond Hope this week, was just starting the descent into Victoria when I was approached by a flight attendant.
“DON’T SHOOT! NOT RESISTING!” I shrieked. She was taken aback. “Pardon?” “I’ll leave peacefully!” I quavered. “Don’t go all United on me!”
“I was just going to ask you to lift your seat tray …”
Two rows ahead, a muscular man in a UFC T-shirt leapt into the aisle, striking a combative pose. “I got your back, bro!”
The attendant turned to him: “Please return to your se…”
A young woman began tugging at the attendant’s sleeve. “Was there a trigger warning before this flight? I feel I’m in an unsafe flying environment. I deserve an apology and a free trip to Bangkok.”
By this time, 40 passengers had shot out of their seats in the Statue of Liberty pose, brandishing mobile devices to record the drama.
“Now I know how it feels to be a cop,” muttered the flight attendant, reaching into the drinks cart for a handful of those tiny little bottles before stomping off behind the curtain.
Well, no, but that’s what it felt like everyone was waiting to happen, given the recent history of air travel. The fuselage was tense as the Shawshank mess hall, just one jostled seat away from a prison riot. (It’s why they took away my toothbrush/shiv at security.)
The federal government unveiled its passenger bill of rights Tuesday. This is good timing for such legislation, the flying public being even more annoyed with the airlines than usual thanks to a series of outrages starting with the violent removal of Dr. David Dao from that United flight in Chicago last month.
Since the United incident, we have been fed a nightly diet of Airlines Gone Wild stories, newscasts showing images of More Shocking Mile High Mayhem. We have seen passengers attacking flight attendants. Passengers slugging passengers. Flight attendants abusing passengers.
Alas, we have yet to see flight attendants slugging flight attendants. Personally, I would pay good money to see a couple of the latter drop the gloves and start chucking knuckles at 15,000 feet.
The passenger-rights regime, designed to defuse such tension, was part of a package of Transportation Act changes announced by Transport Minister Marc Garneau.
The consumer-protection part of the announcement was a tad hazy on specifics — like a hastily scrawled Mother’s Day gift certificate redeemable for wonderful services sometime down the road, just not right now — but the airlines will be banned from bumping passengers from overbooked flights without their consent. Instead, there will be minimum levels of compensation for uprooted passengers, and it will be up to the airlines to sweeten the pot to the point that people are willing to give up their seats.
Airlines will have to abide by clear rules for dealing with and compensating passengers under certain circumstances, such as when they are delayed by factors within the airline’s control, or when their luggage is sent in search of Amelia Earhart. Airlines will have to spell out what they plan to do for you if weather disrupts your journey. There will be requirements for safe transport of musical instruments, even bagpipes. The rules, which are to take effect in 2018, will apply to any plane flying within, out of or into Canada.
Sounds fine, though the devil will be in the details of the regulations that follow the legislation. How, for example, will an airline charge a premium for early seat selection and still guarantee that parents won’t be charged extra to sit by their children, as promised by Garneau? (No word on whether parents will have to pay more to sit away from their kids.)
And what about the common complaints not included in the passenger bill of rights: Rogue seatmates with carry-on luggage the size of an East German automobile, mystery meals made in another country/century, seats more cramped than the one filled by Garneau when he was an astronaut.
Still, it will be nice to return to the days when passenger rights weren’t followed by lefts.