Oh, the poor, poor airline industry. My heart goes out to them for wanting to protect their bottom line over passengers'....bottoms. The airlines' trade group is suing the state of New York for crafting legislation to protect passengers who are stranded on airplanes that sit on runways for more than three hours. Airlines claim that this actually, hurts....yes, hurts them so much that they are trying to get a judge to throw out the law, since they believe states have no jurisdiction over them.
From Crain's New York:
The suit claims that airlines are not subject to state regulations in the first place. Beyond that they complain that under these rules airlines would face additional costs to have catering services and additional lavatory equipment at all airports, and that there would be undue costs of “training their employees” to handle the “new operational and safety challenges” posed by these rules.
They also objected to the idea that all aircraft would be forced to have prescribed supplies on board, which would increase the weight of each aircraft and affect costs.
Consumer groups don’t buy those objections. “It’s all because they don’t want to pay the penalty,” says Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.com, a coalition for the passage of the Airline Passengers Bill of Rights. “The airlines are saying, ‘you’ll put us out of business!’, well, if you’re not stranding people on planes for hours and hours, this won’t be an issue.”
All the legislation does is mandate adequate food, water and lavatory services if passengers are stranded or else airlines face penalties. For the airlines to protest this is ridiculous. It shows their primary concern is cost, not their passengers. Whatever happened to customer service anyways? I understand that the FAA does govern airlines, but if the planes are on New York territory, then they should be governed by New York law. If not, then the Congress should take immediate action to legislate similar rules for airlines across the country.
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