My name is Kate Hanni and on behalf of the Coalition for Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights, I’d like to thank Commerce Committee Chairman Inouye, Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Rockefeller, Senator Boxer and members of the Committee for the opportunity to address you today.

 

I am here in part because of the cruel and inhumane manner in which my family and thousands of other stranded passengers were treated on several American Airlines flights during the holiday season of 2006 and more importantly, our mission to ensure that no other airline passenger has to endure our horrific ordeal ever again.  First, I want to offer a brief synopsis of what happened to us on December 29^th, 2006 and then I will inform the distinguished members of this Committee why we have formed this Coalition, our mission and what we hope Congress would do in order to safeguard the flying public.  

 

We were headed to Point Clear, Alabama from San Francisco for a needed family holiday vacation, which started off much like our other trips since my husband and I are frequent business flyers, but what should have been a short trip turned into an odyssey that lasted more than 57 hours and almost 3 days. The most desperate hours of our ordeal - 9 to be precise – were spent stranded on the tarmac of Austin International Airport with no food, no running water, overflowing toilets and anger towards American Airlines for turning what was supposed to be a holiday vacation into a chaotic and traumatic experience -- one which I am certain the hundreds of passengers aboard our plane will never forget.  

 

During those 9 exasperating hours, we were besieged by an overwhelming sense of fear and desperation, not knowing when and if we would ever be able to get out of the aircraft. Our pilot did the best he could under the circumstances, he reminded us to be patient, but after 9 hours of being held against your will in an airplane – knowing full well that we could have spent that time at least at the airport – we could no longer remain calm.  We had just had to endure the fowl stench of overflowed toilets for 9 hours as our ventilation was turned off. Some people with medical conditions such as diabetes ran out of medication, and others had no water with which to take theirs.

 

We were and remain extremely angry and disappointed at American Airlines for having failed miserably at providing its passengers the very basic level of customer service during and after our horrific experience. According to thousands of e-mails and phone calls I’ve received since then, the same thing was happening in several other airports around the region. 

 

Two days later when we finally arrived at our destination, I contacted my Congressman’s office asking for help. I explained that we were trying to reach American Airlines to finally receive some explanation as to how they can hold people on an aircraft for so long, but had received no response. Congressman Mike Thompson wrote a letter to Gerald Arpey, President of American Airlines, on our behalf. There was no response to that letter, other than a perforated post card several weeks later stating they had received our correspondence. That was the tipping point for me - I had had enough.

 

As I began to contact the other passengers on our flight and other stranded flights in Austin, I realized the problem was much bigger than just the 3 or 4 American Airlines planes that we thought had been stranded.  My husband started a blog and a petition, forming the Coalition for Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights. Since forming the Coalition, there has been an epidemic number of similar strandings just this year alone – similar situations, different airlines, different airports but with the same level of frustration and anger against an Airline Industry that puts the well-being and welfare of its passengers last and is much more concerned with their own bottom line.

 

 

We all know about the Jet Blue Valentine’s Day strandings. One of the passengers, Michael Skolnik, a film producer trying to get to an important meeting in Los Angeles, was not only stranded on one jet for 11 hours, but when they finally deplaned them - shell-shocked and dumbfounded - he then sat for another 6.5 hours on another Jet Blue aircraft stuck to the tarmac, still trying to get to Los Angeles.  17.5 hours in two Jet Blue planes in one day?

 

Then United Airlines stranded people at Chicago O’Hare for 8 hours in the middle of the night.

 

Then, you have Philly and JFK strandings. One particular passenger, Rahul Chandron, was a second time victim having been on the Northwest Airlines incident in Detroit in 1999.

 

 

There is another crisis to address and it happened in Cheyenne and Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. 

It’s abandonment by the airlines. Entire plane loads of diverted passengers were dropped off at an airport, not their destination, and left there with no resources. Roger Barbour was trying to get to his wedding when he was dropped in Cheyenne by United Airlines. It ended up costing him $3000.00 to get home.

 

But that's not even close to being the full story. Airline and government agencies intentionally fail to maintain statistics for flights that never reach their destinations. So, if an airplane leaves the gate but never takes off, neither the airlines nor the government keep statistics about those flights – they’re just a single flight cancellation in the government’s book. That means there are no “time on the tarmac” statistics kept for the American Airlines December 29th diversions, Jet Blue and other flights that sat on the Newark, NJ tarmac for eleven hours in February, nor for the more recent flights that were held for over nine hours at JFK in March. To the Secretary of Transportation, it is as if they never happened!

 

We found out that on December 29^th, 2006, due to thunderstorms over the Dallas/Fort-Worth area, in addition to our flight, 70 other flights were diverted from DFW to land at other regional airports.  Except for the people trapped on those runways like us and other members of our Coalition on other flights -- no one knows exactly how long all of those flights were held because there are no statistics kept. The reality is that airlines conveniently aren’t required to report the amount of time those planes sat on those runways.

 

Why is the failure to maintain these statistics so important?  The problem may be orders of magnitude greater than delay statistics currently maintained by the government, but without valid statistics nobody knows the full extent of the problem, including our lawmakers. To get some idea, we can look to one statistic that is kept. Last year, 16,186 flights[1] were diverted to other airports.  Assuming at least 100 passengers per flight, that means over 1.6 million Americans may have experienced circumstances similar to the December 28, 2006 Austin debacle.  And those numbers aren’t reported anywhere!

 

That is why, Members of the Committee – we have turned anger into advocacy – that is one of the few bright spots of our ordeal and the reason why I am here speaking in front of you today.

 

It is with a great deal of determination that we have formed the Coalition for Airlines Passengers’ Bill of Rights.   In just three short months, we have become the fastest growing airline passenger’s organization in the country and our membership of 15,000 continues to expand.

 

We know the airlines wish we would just go away. But there’s one key factor the airlines have discounted and that is the will and anger of airline passengers that are saying: Enough is Enough!

 

This is why we are here today, urging members of this distinguished committee and Congress to adopt the Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights and not let the airlines off the hook once again with their empty promises. After years of broken promises and declining customer service – as we saw once again in the latest Annual Airline Quality Rating Report - Congress must now step up and use FAA reauthorization legislation to ensure that airlines make passengers’ rights a top priority once and for all.  The last thing that we should do is provide more giveaways to the airlines and less accountability to consumers and Congress while airlines continue to strand passengers in communities all across the country.   In addition, I understand that the airlines’ plan for reauthorization would wrongly slash funds by $600 million, jeopardizing efforts to modernize our air traffic control system.  Safety and well-being should be our focuses, not tax breaks.

 

The flying public needs a voice and legal recourse so that we can stop these horrific stories, experienced by thousands of stranded passengers, from happening once and for all.  For the last eight years and longer, the airlines have had the opportunity to make good on their promises to improve customer service and ensure basic rights for passengers. It’s time for Congress to ensure that airlines make passengers their top priority.

 

Thank you once again for the opportunity to address Members of the Committee and for allowing me to share our story on behalf of the Coalition for Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights.

I am happy to answer any questions that you may have.

 

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