brandondawson.org

A National Passenger Bill of Rights for the transportation industries is an idea that has been long discussed, and whose time has come.

Unfortunately, the idea is now being championed by a group of upset travellers whose trips were interrupted by a freak thunderstorm affecting the entire state of Texas. [link]

The article discusses the undesirable things the travellers were forced to contend with as their flight’s delay stretched into long hours. These people do have some rights to be upset, but what isn’t discussed is the fact that piloting an airplane involves answering, on a minute-by-minute basis, a lot of questions that have direct implications on passenger safety.

And when you’re dealing with a freak weather event that may clear up at any moment, it’s easy to see where the perceived comedy of errors began.

What the passengers seem be ignoring is that the actions taken by the pilots, who were probably just as affected by the overflowing toilets as they were, were taken for their safety, which is ultimately the ONLY criterion by which a competent pilot reaches his command decisions.

It’s easy to say that these people should not have been left on a stranded plane for ten hours. But if that plane had been cleared to take off twenty minutes after a mandatory disembarkment, would these people have been equally angry?