Wednesday, December 29, 2010

No Slack in Air Travel

One thing that became painfully clear in the latest weather disruption in the eastern seaboard is the complete lack of wiggle room and flexibility to counter such events as storms, volcanoes, strikes or other disruptions.

Airlines have continuously cut capacity to the bare bones and that almost all flights are operating at full capacity. So when flights get cancelled or delayed, displaced passengers are for all intents and purposes out of luck. Later flights are already fully booked and those passengers missing their connections or did not make their original flights have nowhere to go.

As this blog is being published, thousands of unlucky passengers are stranded, sometimes for days at airports unable to make flights going from gate to gate, standing by for the next flight and the next, and they are all full.

The tarmac horror continues as thousands of passengers arriving at JFK yesterday were stranded on the tarmac between Monday and Wednesday due to lack of gate facilities. Delays on a British Airways arriving from London was 7 hours. There were more than twenty flights with severe delays.

These situations need to be addressed through a stronger and updated "passenger rights bill" that requires airlines to do more to accommodate stranded passengers, offer them food, lodging and other necessary amenities and get them to their desired destination as soon as possible.

It is time that airlines treat passengers as valued customers, and not like pieces of luggage.

www.premieretravel.com

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