Cautionary Tale For Unruly Passengers

Here’s a tip: when your plane makes an unscheduled landing and you’re thrown off, accused of starting a fight, and you are somehow miraculously not arrested even though it’s been less than a week since another serious terror attempt on a jet, don’t make a scene in the airport. The Toronto Star explains why.

TSA Needs To Lay Off Bloggers

While reporters and bloggers are busy tallying up the many, sundry ways the Department of Homeland Security has screwed up, the Department of Homeland Security seems to going after bloggers.

At least two travel bloggers — Chris Elliott and Steve Frischling — have received subpoenas from investigators asking who gave them a  directive about increased security measures after the Christmas Day attempted bombing, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Never mind that the document was widely disseminated to airline staff, that its major points were reported by traditional media outlets and that some of its provisions were spectacularly stupid. What’s important is to find someone to blame for making it public.

If the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security need something to  investigate, here’s a suggestion, if I may quote Maureen Dowd of the New York Times:

If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?

Oh, wait. I know. Bloggers!

Branching Out With Priceline For Rental Cars

My husband and I have been using Priceline for years to bid for hotels. Today we took the plunge and used Priceline’s opaque bidding engine to book a rental car, and we got a terrific deal.

First we booked a very nice beach resort on the Big Island of Hawaii for a heavily discounted $104 a night, including taxes, well under half the lowest rate on the resort’s Web site. This was the culmination of a carefully researched and implemented bidding strategy aimed at getting into that particular resort, although we knew we might end up at another. (We figured we could adjust to any resort-level beach hotel.)

When we got the hotel confirmation, it included a link to bid on a rental car. We low-balled with a bid of $12 a day for a compact car, and got that, too. With taxes and fees we’ll pay$136 for the whole week, a savings of 70 percent on the rental company’s best Web price.

I’ve long resisted using Priceline’s blind bidding for rental cars, in part because of strong brand loyalties. I want to pick the company. But Priceline uses only major companies, and the deal in this case was extraordinary. I think I’ll be trying this again.

Fix The System, Don’t Punish The Passengers

The federal government’s response to the (forgive me) underwear bomber is a bit like the response of an incompetent teacher who can’t control a class: just punish everyone.

The main question here is how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got a valid U.S. visa and how his name was cleared on the flight manifest by U.S. authorities. The other really important question would be how he managed to get on board with his shorts full of explosives.

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Waiting For Answers On Terrorism Attempt

We’ll probably learn a whole lot more in the next couple of days about the Nigerian man who told authorities he was trying to blow up a Delta flight above Detroit.

It will of course be particularly important to know how he got the explosives past security at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, and whether he had enough to bring down the jet.

To those posting on message boards about lax European airport security, I have to say that I have never been as closely questioned and screened for a flight as at Schiphol. Lax really isn’t a word that comes to mind in that context.

Senators Still Flying Like Aristocrats

Are you worried that your senators might not be able to get home in time for Christmas after the health care reform vote? Don’t worry, they’ll be fine.

As USA Today reminds us, senators (and congressmen) have the right to make multiple reservations on commercial airlines to accommodate their uncertain schedules. It’s a right denied to the rest of us, of course.

So, no matter how many of their constituents will be inconvenienced or bumped, our democratically elected senators will exercise their un-democratic privilege to get home just fine. 

As I’ve mentioned before, this cozy arrangement with the airline industry might explain the reluctance of the our elected leaders to pass an airline passenger bill of rights. What would they need it for?

Otters Delay Flight

A Continental flight from Houston to Columbus was delayed when a couple of otters got loose from the cargo hold, the Associated Press reports. I refuse to write any puns about this because my mother taught me that puns are the lowest form of humor. I’m thinking them, though.

Lessons From AA Runway Overrun

The Associated Press has a  photo gallery with pictures of the severely damaged American Airlines A330 that ran off the end of a runway at Kingston, Jamaica, last night. It’s a wonder that everyone survived. 

When I first heard about this, it sounded like a rough landing. When I saw the pictures, it looked like a crash. According to one passenger, “it was like being in a car accident.”

This illustrates again why passengers need to wear seat belts and be aware of evacuation procedures. Stop worrying about what to do if your plane falls out of the sky because there wouldn’t be much you could do. Instead, start figuring out what you do in case of severe turbulence and hard landings, survivable events where you need to keep your seat belt on and your wits about you.

DOT Orders Airlines To Free Passengers

What kind of democracy is it where citizens can’t rely on the representatives they elected to look out for them, to the point where an appointed bureaucracy has to step in to protect them?

I guess it’s the kind we’re living in because the U.S. Department of Transportation has just enacted a three-hour limit for airlines to keep passengers on grounded aircraft.

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Passengers Stranded For Eight Hours At BWI

A little fill-in-the-blank exercise.

A(n) [name of airline]  jet with [number] passengers on board spent [number] hours stranded on the ground at [name of airport] on [day]. The failure to remove the passengers was blamed on [whatever].

The correct answers are: Air Jamaica, 148, eight, Baltimore, Saturday, snow.

More details from WBAL-TV.

This does seem to have been an extraordinarily difficult case. The plane was stuck on the edge of a runway in a heavy snowstorm and crews apparently tried for hours to move it. It’s not immediately clear why the passengers could not be evacuated.

But at least it appears not to have been as egregious as the stranding at the Rochester, Minn., airport in August, when nobody could be bothered when an ExpressJet pilot tried to get help for her passengers.

In every case, regardless of the weather, airports and airlines need to do their absolute best to put passengers first. Maybe that’s what happened Saturday in Baltimore and maybe it isn’t. Either way, we need an air passenger bill of rights so there are consequences when these things are handled badly.