US Passenger Bill of Rights

When the US Passenger Bill of Rights (PBOR) were published last month I posted a brief mention but did not explain how they benefit flyers and how they have some limitations.

Overall approach

The US rights (link to full text here) are less comprehensive than the corresponding EU rights (EU regulation 261/2004) in that certain standards are left up to airlines to define and publish as policies. Ie the rule is there must be a policy and it must be published, but airlines are free to set their own standards in some respects.

That is not good for consumers. We already have variability in airline contract of carriage which also must be published, but such a miniscule proportion of flyers read them that there really is no competition between airlines to provide terms that are great for their customers.

Onboard on the ground time limited to 3 hours

There are some parts of the PBOR which are relatively set. Airlines cannot keep passengers onboard on the ground for more than 3 hours for domestic flights, or more than a time of their choosing (which must be published) for international flights. There are exemptions where the airport agrees that immediate disembarkation will be highly disruptive to airport operations. This clause is open to interpretation - it could be that airlines routinely are exempt due to inconvenience, or perhaps not.

At congested airports, in poor weather, and in unusual circumstances a rigourous enforcement of the time limit may result in more crowded terminals (boarding delayed if a risk of exceeding the 3 hours), more flight cancellations and reduced flights more generally. I'm not sure this is necessarily good for travellers.

Publish contingency plans

The PBOR has a requirement for airlines to publish contingency plans for every airport they fly to including any diversion airports, and to be accountable to passengers for following those contingency plans.

This seems to me to be a complete waste of time. Either the contingency plans published will be specific and then result in messy litigation afterwards when they are not followed properly, or they will be written as vague as possible to ensure the airline has sufficient flexibility to deal with varying circumstances and thus the airline can never be held accountable for errors in dealing with irregular operations. I much prefer the European approach which sets out what airlines must do at a minimum, for passengers affected by cancellations and delays. The question of how that is achieved is left to each airline to resolve.

Publish on-time performance

Every flight bookable on the airline website must include reference or a link to information on on-time performance of that flight. The PBOR sets out the required stats which includes cancellations as well as significant delays. The Department of Trade (DOT) will monitor flights which have excessively bad on-time performance and take punitive action against the airline (after 4 months with 50+% of flights 30+ minutes late arriving).

It is pleasing to see that DOT recognise that arrival time is more important than departure time. However, these requirements are likely to see even more schedule padding than already exists. While this makes valid connections easier to be made, it does have the disadvantages of making some connections which are currently legal (ie more than minimum connection times) illegal and thus reduces options for travellers.

How much benefit for flyers?

As with the EU regulation 261/2004, how well the US Passenger Bill of Rights works in practice will depend on interpretation by airlines and by the regulator, as well as the regulator's enforcement (or lack of) of the rules. In the EU the general impression is initially the regulations were not well enforced (airlines routinely using safety and circumstances out of their control exemptions) but it seems to have improved slightly over the past year or so. However, still many airlines do not meet the requirements - for example in the recent weather disruptions there are reports several airlines did not provide their customers with information on their minimum rights nor did they provide those automatically.

So, it probably is up to all the travelling public to be aware of our rights and demand airlines provide them when they are supposed to. Hopefully DOT will publish a handy leaflet which we can carry, much as EU has.

Another terminal evacuated due to entry through the wrong door

For the second time in two weeks an airport terminal at a major airport has been evacuated due to someone walking through the wrong door. This time it was New York's JFK terminal 8 that has been evacuated after a passenger went through a staff door (which shouldn't be possible if it is a secure area airside). Earlier this year it was Newark terminal C that was evacuated when a TSA agent failed to stop someone entering through an exit door.

In both cases many flights were disrupted across USA and around the world.

These incidents are good news for would-be suicide bombers. No need to die for their cause when chaos can be caused by something as simple as going the wrong way inside a terminal.

The year has hardly begun but already it is shaping up to be a bad one for TSA and also for the many travellers inconvenienced by ineptitude and poor security systems and processes.

9 hours onboard to go nowhere

I'm not referring to a flight returning to origin but one that didn't even leave.

The information from flightstats on British Airways flight BA227 to Atlanta makes for sorry reading. Scheduled departure time from London Heathrow was 2:05pm. My comments are enclosed in [ and ].

At 1:10pm, arrival time updated from 6:31pm to 6:29pm.
[An hour before departure the flight is on time.]

At 1:40pm, departure time updated from 2:05pm to 2:30pm (with corresponding adjustment to arrival time).
[A minor delay, perhaps due to use of a remote stand.]

At 2:35pm, departure time updated from 2:30pm to 2:45 pm.
[Another minor delay.]

At 3:05pm, departure time updated from 2:45pm to 3:00pm.
[The update has occurred a bit late but BA confident delay is not serious.]

At 10:54pm, flight status changed by London Heathrow airport to cancelled.
[Oops. 9 hours after boarding the airport records the cancellation of the flight instead of the airline.]

At 11:10pm, departure time recorded by BA as 6:52pm.
[End of flightstats record.]

The last record clearly is inconsistent with the previous one. Departure time being recorded many hours after the supposed time of departure is suspicious. It indicates the aircraft pushed back but didn't actually depart.

A passenger account on Flyer Talk is consistent with this, and reports that they were onboard for about 9 hours before the flight was cancelled.

Under EU regulation 261/2004 passengers are entitled to care under Article 8, Article 9(1)(a), 9(1)(b), 9(1)(c) and 9(2), and Article 7. Out of hours crew is not a valid exemption to Article 7 under the extraordinary circumstances waiver, but maintenance might be. The other Articles have no such exemptions and so must apply. Article 7 provides 600 euros compensation. Article 8 provides right for passengers to choose between refund of fare or relevant portion of fare (plus flight to return to origin for those who are in the middle of their tickets), or a re-routing under comparable conditions (ie same class of travel) at earliest opportunity. Article 9 requires free meals for the waiting time, hotel accommodation, transfer to and from accommodation, and 2 phone calls/faxes/emails.

Under the new USA passenger bill of rights, passengers would almost certainly have been returned to the terminal around 4:30pm or 6 hours earlier than they actually were.

TSA disowns problem of children prevented from flying

Today's TSA blog post is on the topic of recent media attention (eg NY Times) - children getting extra security attention because they match a name on the watchlist.

The TSA post says correctly the children are not on the watchlist but are caught due to having similar names, but then goes on to say SecureFlight will solve all once it is fully in place. (SecureFlight it has been partially rolled out.)

This completely misses the point. As I posted back in mid 2008, the watchlist catches many innocent people - with several million false matches. Since then the lists have gotten bigger - eg this Congressional Report in the wake of the Dec 25 underpants bomb attempt cites 540,000 names, apparently as at August 2008 (with a subset on the no fly list). A list with half a million names equates to tens of millions of false matches. Needless to say, this crude method of having a huge trawl-net of names to watch out for is completely ineffective as a means of security.

By devoting more resources to SecureFlight in an attempt to reduce the impact of false positive matches, TSA is in my view worsening security. The money could be much better spent on other true security initiatives. Indeed culling the watchlist would save a fortune too.

Around the world in 80 words

RTW fare plus side tickets. Very nice sales due to travel downturn.

New (to me) places, new faces, new airlines.

Old friends, returning places, familiar airlines.

All cabins from everyday economy to the luxury of first class.

Lots of flights. Local buses. Lots of walking.

A quasi-divided city (not Berlin).

Broad plains, high altitude mega-city, sea-side community, Mediterranean hillsides, urban overdose.

Inconvenience – new travel rules, computer breakdown.

Crazy fun. Bring on the next trip.

The downside of tight flight connections and complex itineraries

I do have a crazy schedule - flitting here and there across the globe, sometimes spending several nights in a row in the air as I try to get the most of my limited time available.

Small things have the potential to create significant disruption to my travel itineraries. I try to allow for contingencies as best I can, but there are limitations. There is no point in an overabundance of caution because that certainly means missing out on lots of fun & interesting stuff - the cost of the "insurance" is too high. Nor can every contingency be allowed for - no one anticipates being caught up in New Zealand's first and only hijacking attempt, or on another trip being stranded in Invercargill. So I attempt to achieve a balance - having somewhat risky itineraries (risky in the sense of having tight connections and complicated sequences of flights across multiple tickets) but also have worked out there are somewhat acceptable options available to me if things go wrong.

The easiest way to deal with this I have found is to be prepared and to be prepared to change.

In my recent trip I was very lucky. Things went relatively smoothly but it could have easily ended up missing out on half of it.

First, the British Airways strike was called off. If it had gone ahead I would potentially have been stranded in Spain, United Kingdom or Cyprus. While that isn't bad in itself (more time to enjoy those places) it would mean ditching a significant portion of the next part of the trip (ie not going to Cyprus or missing my southeast Asia legs) and also time wasted on rebooking flights and accommodation across multiple airlines, hotels and countries spread halfway around the world.

Second, through sheer luck I avoided the travel chaos in Europe (and particularly to London Heathrow) caused by the snow and cold this winter. Indeed I travelled through Europe without even carrying a heavy coat.

Thirdly, I managed to limit disruption caused by immigration computer failure to an inconvenienced transit instead of being stranded for days.

I have an upcoming trip I'm currently in discussions with the airline about. A cancelled British Airways flight means my booked itinerary is now impossible - the alternative later flight arrives too late to take the connecting flight, the alternative earlier flight means a risky 60 minute connection at London Heathrow (BA to BA but still high risk) which I'm not prepared to accept and there are no other airlines that fly the route within my time window. Due to the complexity of my itinerary and incredibly tight timeframes this one flight change will affect anywhere from 3 to 7 or more flights, across 3 continents. Some of the places I'm visiting only have 1 flight a day so coming up with a new routing is proving challenging. However, there are options open to me and I can choose the best one for my needs.

Despite these travel inconveniences I won't change my hectic approach to travel because compromise means missing out on great experiences, sights and learnings. I still have many to meet, and much to see and do. That means I'll keep on going full paced with no regrets.