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Reader Lisa writes:

I would be interested in supporting a passenger bill of rights, if someone started a “movement.” I don’t fly that often, but worry every time I go that I’ll be subjected to something like the 9 hour wait on the runway. Please let me know if there’s somewhere I could email, or send a letter of support for such a thing.

The idea of a passenger bill of rights is not new, but there hasn’t quite been a “movement” yet. The issue is getting some fresh attention lately, though.

Looking back a few years, the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) has a longstanding proposal for a bill of rights. Some arguments in favor of such a bill are here. The airlines, predictably, oppose such a measure, and have been able to keep it off the books. (An account of the industry’s pre-9/11 efforts to block a bill of rights in Congress is here.)

As far as the new efforts to get a bill of rights going, I can’t find a petition address. But there IS a blog… here. The blog, titled “Coalition for Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights,” is presumably run by the lawyers for the passenger group that filed their complaints with Congress (though technically the blog is written under the pseudonym “Coalition for Reform of Airline Passenger Protocol”… or CRAPP.)

If you want to register your support, you might try leaving a comment on that blog. But above all, you should write to your senators and representatives, as well as Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

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