Henry Hudson's Transatlantic Travel Tattle & Tips - September 2009

Should there be a Bill of Rights for passengers?

The latest horror story about airline passengers left trapped on a tarmac for hours has provided fresh ammunition for activists pushing "passenger rights" legislation. It's also lit a fire under newspaper editorial boards.

A three-hour flight (with a small regional jet) became a marathon nightmare for some 50 passengers, after the plane traveling to Minneapolis from Houston early August was diverted to Rochester, Minn., because of bad weather. Forced to sit on the runway, in sight of the terminal, for six hours (after flying for three hours), the flight has become the latest proof that decades after moving from mail routes to passenger service, airlines still think of passengers as parcels. Their focus is on operations - maintaining schedules, keeping the hardware moving - not on the people sitting in their seats.

The Washington Post goes so far as to call the practice "torture", and argues that there's "no reason passengers should be held prisoner on grounded planes."  Ditto opinion from The New York Times.  And Loren Steffy of the Houston Chronicle spoke to one lawyer who thinks airlines that "imprison" passengers should face criminal charges. “If you're saying to a person, ‘No, you can't leave the plane,' and there's no food and water, the air is turning sour, the toilets are overflowing and you're basically strapping them down, there ought to be recourse,” said Joseph Gutheinz, a former military pilot and civil aviation investigator who's now a Houston defense attorney. “The airlines have been getting away with this for too long.”

Congress is once again considering a law that would codify those rights that would mandate that airlines provide, for example, working toilets. As is typical in these tarmac travails, the toilet on the above plane stopped working, spewing fetid odors into the cabin for hours - this all in addition to crying babies. After six hours of staring at the terminal 50 yards away, the passengers were finally released. The terminal was bright. The restrooms were clean. The restaurant was making omelets. Some passengers hadn't had anything to eat for 16 hours.

Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) have introduced legislation calling for planes to return to the gate after three hours on the tarmac. And passenger rights advocates have another reason that change is on the way: one cosponsor of a previous version of the Boxer-Snowe bill was a young senator named Barack Obama.

Where the Business Traveler Sleeps Best

The September issue of Wallpaper magazine includes a ranking of the world's best business hotels. The winning couple are the Park Hyatt in Shanghai and the Four Seasons in Florence, both of which the magazine displays in suitably gawp-worthy style.

Park Hyatt Shanghai & Four Seasons Florence

You can see trendy profiles of the judges on Wallpaper's website as well as the 50-strong long list from which the ten winners were chosen. Not all of the 50 are budget-breakers. For example, rooms in the Citizen M at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam start at €77 ($109), and in the Allerton in Chicago they're available from around $150.