Airlines propose long list for deregulation
LOS ANGELES — Nearly an hour after her American Airlines flight was scheduled to leave Honolulu International Airport, passenger Lisa Hill heard the pilot announce that a maintenance problem would delay the takeoff.
The pilot gave fliers the option of getting off the plane but Hill, who was flying to Boston after visiting her son, decided to remain seated, hoping to be in the air shortly.
Three more hours passed before the flight last November was canceled.
“For four hours I sat on that plane,” said Hill, the co-owner of a house cleaning business. “When the pilot finally said we should deboard, it was like a Black Friday sale at Macy’s. Everyone rushed off.”
Now, the Trump administration may roll back a rule that requires airlines to give passengers such as Hill the option of getting off a flight that is delayed too long on an airport tarmac. And that’s not the only regulation that might be weakened or scrapped.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Transportation temporarily froze all pending airline-industry regulations as part of an administration push to cut the burden of red tape on American businesses. And it asked the public and airlines for comments on existing regulations that could be halted, revised or repealed.
The so-called “tarmac delay rule” — adopted in 2009 after a series of incidents in which passengers were trapped in planes for hours — was just one of dozens that either airlines or an industry trade group targeted in response to the request.
The deregulation initiative is a dramatic shift for the federal agency, which under President Obama adopted or proposed more than 80 airline-related consumer-protection and safety regulations — prompting an outcry from the airline industry.
The agency also meted out stiff penalties. From 2015 to 2016, the transportation department increased the total amount of civil penalties on airlines and travel agents to $6.4 million from $2.4 million.
Southwest Airlines, for example, was fined $1.6 million for stranding passengers on 16 planes during storms on Jan. 1 and 2 in 2014 at Midway International Airport in Chicago. Some passengers were stuck on the tarmac for more than four hours.
“The airlines are pretty clear that they want every consumer protection law repealed or not enforced,” said Paul Hudson, president of Flyersrights.org, a nonprofit group with more than 60,000 members. “I’m concerned that they would try to repeal the few consumer-protection regulations that are out there.”
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For its part, Airlines for America, a Washington, D.C.-based industry trade group, called the Transportation Department’s initiative “a much-welcomed shift from a decade’s-long Washington practice of regulatory interference in the market.”