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Has there ever been a more stressful time to fly in the United States? Delays, cancellations, and ticket prices are all up from pre-pandemic averages. And then on Wednesday morning all domestic flights were grounded for hours after the F.A.A.'s flight safety data system experienced an outage caused by a "damaged" database file, creating chaos from coast to coast. But it was the unprecedented holiday meltdownof Southwest Airlines that should have been the impetus to create the kinds of protection and compensation that European passengers take for granted.
If you know anyone who traveled over the holidays this year, you probably have heard some horror stories. Two friends of ours were forced to drive 18 hours back to Chicago from Maine. Aside from dying in a fiery crash, that's pretty much the worst-case scenario for flyers. According to U.S. law they were entitled to precisely nothing, aside from getting rebooked onto a flight at some uncertain point in the future when Southwest manages to fix its endemic operational problems.
Southwest didn't have to put them up in a hotel, or pay for a cab, or buy them a meal while they waited. In the United States, all you can really do is hope that writing a stern letter to the airline's customer service representatives will lead to some meager flight credits.
It's all moral hazard for the airlines—they can park you on the tarmac for hours on a plane with broken toilets, return you to the gate, cancel your flight and strand you for a week wherever you are, and there will be almost no cost to them beyond reputational damage. And because the experience of flying pretty much all domestic carriers in the U.S. these days is identically unpleasant and degrading, there's no particular reason for airlines to care what we think of them anyway. What are you going to do, walk?
If a flight within or from a European Union country gets canceled or delayed, passengers are entitled to more than the right to huddle together for hours waiting for some overworked customer service skeleton crew to figure out how to rebook you. If, for example, the problem is the airline's fault, you can get compensated in cold, hard cash—not if the airline is feeling particularly generous that day but as a matter of law. The longer the flight, the bigger the payout. Friends whose flight from Italy to the U.S. was unceremoniously canceled over the summer due to mechanical issues on the plane were offered 600 euros a person in cash.
Even if it's just bad weather or some other unforeseen event, the airline must provide meals and accommodations for you. And the cash payment rules apply even to delays of more than three hours from the scheduled arrival that don't result in a cancellation. Does it stop delays and cancellations from happening in Europe? Probably not. Does it make you feel a little bit less like a head of cattle whose needs and desires are an afterthought? It certainly does.
The best part of the cash payment system is that it doesn't lead to unforeseen negative consequences. For example, when the U.S. created new regulations to limit delays on the tarmac in 2010, it may have led to other problems in the system, including increased cancellations as airlines tried to avoid fines. In Europe, tarmac delays are subject to the same compensation scheme as any other kind of delay because cancellation doesn't save the airlines any money in fines.
Knowing that there is basically nothing you can do when airlines mistreat you in the United States is a major stressor for travelers. It almost certainly contributes to air rage and mistreatment of public-facing airline employees, and to the race-to-the-bottom customer service regime in which the airlines have no meaningful incentive to hire enough staff for emergencies and unforeseen problems. U.S. airlines have a truly remarkable and near-miraculous safety record, and it is long past time for that excellence in keeping passengers alive to be matched by excellence in not constantly infuriating them.
Commercial air travel is an extraordinarily complex logistical undertaking, and no regulatory scheme can guarantee that you'll have a great day in the air. I'm going to feel claustrophobic and panic-ridden during any lengthy tarmac delay, especially when I'm flying with our 4-year-old, but knowing that the people responsible for my suffering have to write me a hefty check when I finally get off the plane would make it all go down quite a bit easier.
David Faris is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
