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Flying the Stormy Skies
The Travel Critic · January 25, 1999

Some people just don't know how to fly.

Ask Daniel Nazar and that's what he'll tell you. Stranded for four hours in Kansas City on a recent Vanguard Airlines flight, the computer repairman from Milford, Texas, was denied meal vouchers or a reasonable explanation for the delay.

"Passengers were informed that the airline was not responsible for providing meals to the stranded passengers 'because if we don't serve in the air, we don't serve on the ground,'" he remembers. "Several passengers had been in the gate waiting on that flight since early that morning, as they had been bumped off the earlier flight from Kansas City to Dallas, without warning or reason."

Vanguard Airlines insists it didn't do anything wrong.

"I don't think we've had a substantial number of people saying the way we've handled our delays has been inappropriate," says Russell Winter, Vanguard's vice president for marketing and planning. "We tried to get all of our people out on time."

To be fair to his airline, let's not forget that this month's severe winter weather affected practically every flight operating in the Midwest. Vanguard also began offering vouchers for free flights when angry passengers all but threatened to storm the customer service desk at the height of the weather delays, according to Nazar.

Northwest Airlines didn't move as quickly. Over the New Year's weekend, one of the busiest travel times of the year, it locked many passengers in its aircraft for upward of six hours during a blizzard. The travelers were sometimes denied food and the use of bathrooms. A Detroit couple is suing the airline for false imprisonment.

The attorney who filed the case says more and more passengers are coming forward with their own stories.

Northwest claims the suit is meritless. Nonetheless, the carrier regrets the episode.

"We have great sympathy for everyone who was caught up in this," says Northwest spokesman Jon Austin. "It was an awful experience and we're sorry for it."

But Northwest's apologies come only after a loud public outcry that led to a stern letter from a Michigan congressman to Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater and investigations by both the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Late last week, as an appeasement, Northwest sent letters offering free flights to more than 4,000 passengers stranded by the snowstorm. (Austin says the notes were actually mailed a few days after the incident took place.)

Carriers like to hide behind the "Act of God" clause - the waiver that lets them do anything they want during inclement weather - but this time it seems they've gone too far. Snowstorms aren't the airlines' fault, that's true enough.

However, forcing passengers to wait in a plane without food or water, that's something you can't pin on the Big Guy Upstairs. I suspect that passengers like Nazar, and those suing Northwest, aren't really upset about the blizzard, or the delays that it caused. Or even for being trapped in a plane. What irks them, I think, is the way they were handled by the crew.

Nazar reports that Vanguard's gate agents told him the carrier would rather deal with disgruntled passengers than lose revenue. (Vanguard says that's nonsense.) Northwest says it is investigating a report of a passenger who was threatened with arrest after standing up on one of the prison-planes.

Travelers are ticked off because airlines treat them like children. They're herded onto flights and forced to wait for hours. The pilot gets on the intercom and tells them half-truths about their flight status. Then, when the passengers get restless, the flight attendants threaten them with a spanking. I know of very few people who would pay good money for this.

It seems to me that if airlines want to avoid further legal action, they need to focus on the things they can change, like the way they treat their customers, instead of dwelling on the things they can't change, like the weather.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.