Bee Travel
Bad Air Form
CHRISTINE HICKS- USTA Travel
Time was when people dressed for travel as if for a special occasion. On-board services nascent of medical services matured into hospitality. Smartly dressed people ate steak served on china and linen and drank beverages from crystal.

To say that things have changed is - well, unnecessary.

But it doesn't matter. No matter that one no longer expects the olive, pillow and pillow cover, hot meal, or refreshing hot towel...No, no matter who we are, how we dress, or what the on-board experience is - we don't expect to be treated like a commodity.

It distresses me whenever I read about a planeload of passengers at weather-paralyzed airports who are boarded and held in the flow for hours. Planes were never intended to be hotels. With state-of-the-art weather prediction, I cannot imagine what possesses anyone to think waiting out a storm on the tarmac to be preferable to waiting in the terminal. Eleven hours (as reported yesterday) passengers waited on planes bound for warmer weather. Eleven hours - that's half a day! That's longer than a normal work day, longer than any school day, longer than anyone should have to sit on a plane that is only hoping to depart. How long does it take for a jet plane to be fused in place by ice? Ask Jet Blue. Now we know.

What causes this behavior in an airline? Taking the harshest line possible, call it sloth and greed. There may be a bit of poor judgment in there, too, but by and large, airline personnel prefer not to have to reprocess boarded passengers. It's costly to give up the departing slot, find alternative flight arrangements, reroute and pay for lodging and/or food for that mid-transit, in-terminal interim.

In my opinion, and in the long run, it's far more costly to keep them on the plane, however. Disembarked passengers are an angry, tired, frustrated lot, much more demanding than those meek souls who initially boarded. They need TLC if an airline hopes to keep them as a repeat customer. Clearly, there is a head of steam developing over this issue, and it's about time.

It's just inhumane to treat planeloads of what had been happy passengers this way. There is no excuse for it. "Sorry" no longer cuts it. It's just ridiculously poor common sense. "There oughta be a law!," you might say, or some regulation or guideline that addresses the onset of what is a predictable situation - bad weather. And it ought to involve a change in airport operations.

One such effort is already under way. The Coalition for Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights (www.stranded passengers.blog.com) is an effort by one woman to gain groundswell support for an initiative that would petition to make law standards by which American carriers would ensure the safety, security and comfort of their passengers. Among the standards recommended is that which would call upon airlines to return to the gate after any delay of three hours. Reasonable enough, I think, and a standard with which we could all live - comfortably.

(Christine Hicks-Usta has enjoyed more than 30 years of globe-trotting as a member of the travel industry in various capacities. Direct questions to her at Bee Group Newspapers, P.O. Box 150, Buffalo, NY 14231-0150.)