I’ve really tried to avoid writing about the passengers’ bill of rights for a few days now. Really, I have.

But as much as I wanted to avoid The Story That Won’t Go Away for a few days, I realize I promised you a post which included some of your answers to my poll (now closed) regarding a bill of rights and its odds of becoming law.

As you may recall from an earlier post, a whopping 69% of you expressed the belief that, yes, a PBOR would become law. If the same poll were taken today, we might see an even bigger number.

Why? Just last week, United joined the club of airlines leaving passengers stuck on board a plane for hours. Seven hours, to be precise. Nice work. And great timing.

PBOR naysayers argue that this doesn’t happen that often, and that this is a case of over-reporting, not a major trend in the air travel experience. So let’s see the numbers! Well, okay, here you go.

An AP report provides some statistics:

To be precise, statistics show that passengers sat for two to five hours on 7,369 flights parked on taxiways before taking off in 2006 — not as rare an occurrence as some airline advocates argue, but still only a tiny fraction of the year’s total 7,141,922 flights. Another 36 airliners were stuck on taxiways for more than five hours after leaving the gate last year, according the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Two more were parked for more than five hours after landing.

Fair enough, 38 total flights stuck for five or more hours is a tiny percentage. 0.0005%, give or take a few decimal points. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do something about it.

Imagine a city mayor saying that there were “only 38 murders” in a city that year, so he was going to let the police force go. (No, I’m not saying that being stuck in a plane for hours is equivalent to murder. I’m just saying that a low rate of incidence doesn’t excuse inaction.) And besides, 7,369 flights were stuck on taxiways between 2 and 5 hours. That’s still a small percentage (0.10% of flights) but let’s put that in human terms:

Even if all those delayed planes only carried 50 people each, that comes to more than 350,000 people whose lives were put on hold for hours and hours. That’s big.

(As an aside, I’d love to see the numbers broken down by hour. 2 hour delays and 5 hour delays aren’t comparable, in my view. Anyway…)

So what’s happening? Bills have been introduced in Congress, and will be entering committee for debate. Now, separately, the Department of Transportation is getting in on the game, investigating airline policies, to see what went wrong and how it could be prevented in the future. We’ll see where it leads.

So what did you folks say when asked if a PBOR would pass? Roll the tape.

Yes. Democrats are in power, and the public is sufficiently pissed off. But the devil is in the details. I bet we see a bill that addresses delays, but doesn’t require cash payments.

Yes. The real question is, will any of the various bills of rights floating around actually fix the problem?

No. People have short memories and shallow pockets – won’t want to pay more, and the airlines will tell them that the bill would increase prices.

Yes. If this ever happens to me, I will pop the door and pull the emergency chute and let them arrest me. I’m sure the rest of my fellow passengers would put up bail money.

No. At the last minute, Homeland Security will come out and call this a security risk, and then it will die. Of course that will not be the truth, but welcome to America!

Thanks for these and the many other comments. I think you’re raising the right questions, and you’re appropriately cynical. The unbridled cynicism of the last comment makes me chuckle, but only because it sounds so plausible. Sadly, I think that might be right.