Washington — A $917 ticket to fly between Washington, D.C., and Charleston, S.C.? An outraged senator said he had to pay it. Late flights and high fares? A House member says it's the source of constant constituent frustration.
No wonder the industry is a leading congressional target this year, with nine bills introduced so far to regulate airlines.
"With every day that goes by, the airlines build a case against themselves," said Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y., who has introduced two bills.
"It's the greatest source of aggravation for every member of Congress. You can't walk through an airport without having a constituent stop you and relate some bad experience."
One of Sweeney's bills, among other consumer protections, would give passengers the right to leave a departing plane after it has been delayed at a terminal ramp for an hour or more and will not be taking off within 15 minutes.
The other would direct a Transportation Department investigation if an established airline boosted the number of seats or unfairly lowered fares in an attempt to stifle competition from a new carrier attempting to provide service on an identical route between a hub airport and another airport.
Lawmakers want to hold down fares, increase competition, give passengers more information about late or canceled flights, improve medical equipment aboard airplanes, and allow passengers to get off a plane that has been stuck on the runway or at the gate for at least an hour. Mergers are another target.
Most of them fly home each weekend that Congress is in session, and are not immune to delays and expensive tickets.
Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, complained about the $917 it cost his wife to go home.
The industry attributes most of the delays and overcrowding to a lack of runways and an air traffic control system unable to handle the sharp increase in flights.
"If you alleviate the delays and gridlock, you eliminate the No. 1 customer frustration," said Michael Wascom, a spokesman for the Air Transport Assn., the trade group for the major airlines.
Last year, more than one of every four flights was delayed or canceled, the Transportation Department's inspector general found. In December alone, 178,707 of 475,398 scheduled flights failed to arrive on time, a single month record, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The old record was 166,950 late or canceled flights in January 1996.
"The aviation system is not working well," the inspector general reported.
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