- Airline ruling makes sense
C'mon, we all know that the airline business has to be regulated by Washington, not Albany. Interstate travel and all that. So was it all that surprising that the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals threw out recent NY state laws that require airlines to provide food, water and clean toilets to travelers if they are delayed aboard an aircraft for more than three hours. The court found that the Airline Deregulation Act pre-empts states from regulating activities of the nation's air carriers. That puts relief for passengers in the hands of Congress - and I'll be you can figure out how far that's gotten. From CQ Politics:
It’s unclear how Congress may deal with the ruling, but it would likely be in the context of an eventual conference on legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration for four years. That legislation contains some language intended to improve the lot of stranded airline passengers, but it does not go as far as the New York law. And the FAA bill is stalled, possibly for the rest of the year, by a battle between competing airline sectors over how upgrades to the air traffic control system should be funded.
You might recall that NY lawmakers passed the first "bill of rights" for air passengers after severe weather left some travelers stranded on board planes for hours at JFK.
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| 02:29 PM Mar 25, 2008 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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