BART Cuts Off Cellphone Service To Stifle Protest

Last week the Bay Area Rapid Transit System area cut off cellphone service in its downtown San Francisco stations for four hours in an attempt to prevent a protest over a fatal shooting by BART police, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

A BART official explained later told the Chronicle that while there was some concern about the free speech implications of that decision, the courts have ruled that “public safety takes priority.” That’s a highly questionable interpretation. Many Americans still believe the Constitution does not hold that security, or speculative concerns about security, should trump liberty in every case.  On more practical grounds, BART seems to have failed to consider the safety of anyone who might have needed to call for help with a cellphone during that period.

The protest did not materialize but the backlash continues. Some have compared the action, fairly I think, with the communications blackouts imposed by oppressive regimes in the Middle East. Nobody said it better than a commuter who spoke to the Chronicle:

“We don’t want the government turning off cell phones in Syria, and we don’t want them turning off cell phones here,” said Patricia Shean, 72, of San Francisco. “We deal with things differently here.”

Critics of this action are not, as BART and its supporters have suggested, saying that travelers have an absolute right to cellphone service everywhere they go. We’re saying that when the government deliberately obstructs communication in order to suppress dissent – whether that’s achieved by turning off cellphone towers or forbidding people to talk to each other on platforms – we’re all in dangerous territory.

Could Passenger Rights Be Good Business?

It turns out that the airlines did not, as they claimed, have valid reasons for treating their customers like hostages.

The Department of Transportation reports that only three domestic flights were stranded for more than three hours on the tarmac last month — compared with 268 in July 2009. Last month was, not at all coincidentally, the first full month of new regulations that impose stiff fines on airlines that violate the three-hour limit.

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‘Procedures’ Kept Passengers Aboard Sweltering Jet

The Department of Transportation has concluded that “all of the established and appropriate procedures were implemented” by airline and airport staff when 300 passengers were left to swelter in the dark for four hours aboard a Virgin Atlantic jet diverted to Bradley International Airport last month, as The Hartford Courant reports.

The obvious implication is that “all of the established and appropriate procedures” suck, and need to be changed. It’s simply not OK to treat human beings like that, no matter what the rulebook says.

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300 Passengers Held On Jet For Hours At Bradley

The latest horror story about passengers being confined on a grounded aircraft comes from my own back yard, at Bradley International Airport, as the Associated Press reports.

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New Airline Rules Proposed

Once again, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has stepped forward where Congress fears to tread in order to rein in the airline industry’s excesses. That man is in danger of becoming my hero.

LaHood is proposing a new set of rules on how airlines operate, which he said he would like to have in play by fall, as The New York Times reports. The new regulations would:

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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.

DOT Steps In Where Congress Wimps Out

The Department of Transportation has fined three airlines for their roles in the stranding of passengers overnight aboard a regional jet at the Rochester, Minn., airport, the Associated Press reports.

This signals the DOT’s willingness to use its existing regulations to address these outrageous cases of passengers being forced to sit aboard planes for hours in unacceptable conditions. Meanwhile, Congress dithers, unable to pass an air passenger bill of rights, apparently seeking some kind of unnecessary compromise between basic human decency and corporate intransigence.

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Air Transport Association Softening On Passenger Rights?

As an airline passenger bill of rights inches closer to approval, a report in Business Travel News reveals that the Air Transport Association may be amenable to a time limit for keeping passengers on grounded planes, an idea it has been fighting off for years.

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How To Get Stranded Passengers Off Planes

Last year I flew from Istanbul to Kayseri, Turkey, on an MD-80 and when we landed the passengers got off on two portable stairways, front and rear, boarded a bus and rode to the terminal.

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