Passenger Right's Bill: Denied!

[Photo via NY Times]

If you're a jetsetter, or anyone that's ever ridden a plane, period, perhaps you have had the all-too-familiar experience of being delayed on the runway for hours. If that runway experience happened to include being made to sit in impossibly cramped seats unable to use the restrooms because none on the plane were working, which you couldn't have used anyway because you were dehydrated from lack of water, a situation that probably wasn't helped by the denial of fresh air that wasn't pumped out by a hermetically sealed plane, then you were probably as relieved as we were when the good state of New York drafted a Passenger's Rights Bill. Basically, it told airline companies to treat their customers like humans instead of, say, detainees at secret black site prisons. After New York passed the bill, a federal appellate court shot it down yesterday, siding with the Air Transport Association of America (read: lobbyists.)

These fine people claim it "hinders the Federal Aviation Administration's ability to provide uniform air travel" according to the Times. Oh, that's right. We wouldn't want New Yorkers to think they're any better than the rest of the country by demanding water, working restrooms and air that's not produced by a jet-fueled machine. What next, are airline companies just going to charge us $1,000 each way to hog tie us and throw us in the cargo hold? Thanks, judges. I hope your next flight to Washington so you can play golf with lobbyists is held on the runway for six hours, and not a single restrooms is usable.