Full Upright and Locked Position by Mark Gerchick

Author:Mark Gerchick [Gerchick, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-05-02T23:00:00+00:00

The No-Brainer

If enforcing consumer rules already on the books seems like an uphill battle, a lightning rod for industry anger, and a long slog for aggrieved passengers, it pales in comparison to the years-long task of making new rules to protect consumers. Even proposals that barely affect the way airlines operate day-to-day trigger sometimes-fierce industry opposition, even eliciting accusations, as a popular industry journal framed an op-ed, that regulators had launched a “war against the airline industry.”

Even no-brainers can take forever—like a DOT consumer rule to require airlines to release passengers cooped up waiting on the tarmac for more than three hours. The saga of that seemingly simple commonsense regulation shows starkly how tough it can be in the unreal world of Washington to regulate a more humane air-travel experience, and how long it can take for the “cops” to arrive. When it all started with planeloads trapped in the Detroit blizzard of January 1999, no one could have imagined that regulatory help would take more than a decade to come—until two days before New Year’s Day 2010—consume vast resources, and trigger an arduous battle that some industry advocates are still fighting.

The massive blizzard that hit the Midwest on January 3, 1999, blanketed Northwest Airlines’ global air hub in Detroit in more than a foot of drifting snow and 20-degree temperatures. Even as the storm hit, though, Northwest kept landing its planes, even though there was no place to park them. All of the airport’s gates were occupied by planes that had been unable to fly out in the storm. In the end, nearly three dozen fully loaded flights sat motionless on the tarmac—one for eight and a half hours. The planes’ passengers, without food or water, gagged on the stench wafting from overflowing lavatories. As distraught families emerged with harrowing tales, the consensus to “do something”—pass a law, issue a regulation—seemed crystal clear.

News media pounced on the Detroit story and stayed with it for days. Sobbing moms and starving babies snowbound for hours made for compelling coverage. Meanwhile, Congress was just returning to Washington from the Christmas holiday, ready for action. And almost before the snow stopped falling, class-action lawyers were gearing up to file a massive false-imprisonment and negligence lawsuit. (Two years later, shortly before trial, Northwest settled it for $7.1 million—reportedly some $2,000 for each of the unlucky 600 passengers stuck for more than eight hours.) On the tenth floor of DOT headquarters in Washington—from the richly paneled office of the secretary of transportation down the hall to the General Counsel, his top lawyer and political consigliere—tarmac delays suddenly rose to the top of everybody’s crowded inbox.

DOT was, and is, a sprawling bureaucracy of 60,000 workers, cobbled together in 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson. Its Highway Administration funnels federal billions to build and maintain highways. Its Federal Transit Administration does the same for subways and buses. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tests automobile safety and issues safety ratings. The Federal Aviation Administration oversees the safety of airlines, pilots, and airports.

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