Classical Values :: If you're trapped on a plane, may God (PBUH) help you!

If you're trapped on a plane, may God (PBUH) help you!

I'm not much of a fan of litigation (or, for that matter, litigators). But reading something like this tends to make my blood boil vicariously:

Rahul Chandran said he was trapped aboard a Cathay Pacific Airways jet from midnight until nearly 9:30 a.m. Saturday, when the flight to Vancouver was finally canceled.

Throughout the night, the pilot repeatedly described problems with deicing equipment, including a lack of fluid, that kept the plane waiting endlessly to have its wings sprayed. When the airline finally gave up and tried to return the plane to its terminal, it took at least another hour to arrange a gate, he said.

"You can't keep your passengers on the plane for 9 1/2 hours," said Chandran, 30, of New York City. "They kept saying 'half an hour more, 45 minutes more.' But by the time it got to hour six, we were pretty much accepting that we weren't going to go ... At least in the terminal, you can get up and walk around."

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the metropolitan area's airports, said airlines , not the airport , are responsible for supplying and maintaining terminal deicing equipment.

Port Authority aviation director Bill DeCota said airport operators and the carriers need to collectively work out a solution quickly to what is evolving as a major problem with deicing.

Just last month, JetBlue stranded passengers on several planes for up to 10 1/2 hours during a similar storm. At the time, the airline said its inability to get planes deiced in accordance with the new FAA rules was a factor.

"We and the carriers need to sit down and find out whether there is anything we can do," DeCota said. "I know there are a lot of irate passengers, and they have a right to be."

I know there was a storm (it deposited six inches of ice in my yard, and I don't know when it will melt), but I can see no excuse for keeping passengers on a plane for 9 1/2 hours. The airlines are so callused that there is just no remedy for situations like this. I think that if for whatever reason a plane cannot fly, the passengers should simply be allowed to get off. There's no way that in that period of time they couldn't have gotten them off, and I think it constitutes false imprisonment. Unfortunately, there's no other way to teach the callused airlines a lesson than to sue.

And here in Philadelphia,

some passengers spent more than four hours strapped into airplane seats, idling on the taxiways waiting patiently for takeoff clearances that would never come.

While four hours is not as bad as ten hours, it's still inexcusable. I think the airlines are getting away with this stuff for three reasons:

1. People are more and more used to being herded like cattle; and

2. The more accustomed people become to bureaucratic restrictions, the less they complain and the more callused those with petty power become; and

3. A climate of corporate unaccountability prevails, in which there's no reliable chain of command, and no discipline exercised over individual employees.

What are the passengers supposed to do? Start a riot? Not a good idea -- especially because it can now be considered a criminal offense just to yell at airline employees.

Hmmm....

I think there might be a loophole.

Isn't it still legal to yell "ALLAHUAKBAR!"?

(Yes, it is legal. And if yelling "ALLAHUAKBAR!" frightens other passengers and gets you put off the plane, you can still sue for damages! That's a twofer.)

NOTE: This was satire. I do not advocate yelling "ALLAHUAKBAR!" -- not even if you're trapped on a plane with Ann Coulter and Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE (3/19/07): Via Glenn Reynolds, I read about a passenger who managed not only to avoid feeling stressed out by flight hassles, but got a free in-flight upgrade to first class! (This gives "final destination" an all new meaning....)

URGENT!