Passenger Rights

There is a huge controversy occurring right now about passenger's rights while traveling and using commercial airlines. Congress, as well as the Department of Transportation are working on negotiating an agreement with airlines to give passengers more rights while flying. Some of the biggest issues deal with getting bumped off your flight due to over booking, lost luggage, and being stranded overnight. Although there area already some laws in place to protect passengers its evident that more needs to be done, hence the government is making more of an effort to step in. The Department of Transportation has made some progress in the past four years to protect flier's rights, but more needs to be done. Recently the European Commission has taken a practical approach and developed some realistic regulations to implement revisions to their previous plan that America could benefit from taking after. These include the following, "The proposal, which goes to the European Parliament, says that if an airline can't reroute a passenger within 12 hours, it must find another airline or train" (Mcartney).

There are four main issues that the government is trying to focus on regulating. Right now one of the most frustrating things that airline passengers are dealing with is overbooking of flights. Flights have been booking up to 110% with the anticipation that if people miss their flights they can still meet a full flight capacity. This then boots off passengers who aren't stand by and have already paid for a seat on the plane. This is becoming a bigger issue and the Department of Transportation feels that stepping in and putting penalties on airlines would reduce this issue dramatically. If airlines want to keep up a positive reputation and keep their customers happy its vital for them to prevent this from continuing to occur. Reputations are shaped by past events and in order to maintain a successful business its essential to have a positive reputation. Another one of the prevalent issues is the problem of lost luggage. Right now the current regulations require that airlines compensate you up to $3,300 depending on what your items are worth. This is where a dispute can often come into play. If someone purchased a suit a year ago for $2000, and they are appraising it at its current value that person is going to lose a lot of money. This is something that is also being proposed to be changed. Another one of the problems is that the airlines aren't making enough of an effort to help people get new flights out on other airlines if they had to cancel or delay the flight for some reason. Lastly, the issue that people are frustrated with is the fact that congress has voided all airline court cases from going to state court. They can only be presented in Federal Court, which raises the costs and the ability to sue an airline is much more challenging.

The difficult part about making these negotiations and coming up with a plan is that it involves multiple parties. There's Congress and the government, the consumers (passengers), the Department Of Transportation, as well as all of the airlines. When adding more parties it can be challenging to "manage several different perspectives and ensure that each party has adequate time to speak and be heard"