The Navigator: Airline passengers' rights overshadowed by tarmac fight

(Andrew Harrer -- Bloomberg)

Unlike tarmac delays, which affect a tiny fraction of air travelers, these issues factor prominently into everyone's flight. And that they are being ignored raises the question of who really benefits from the popular emphasis on aircraft delays, apart from a few media-savvy tarmac-delay activists.

I'm willing to bet that my friends in the airline industry, who insist that they oppose the new turn-back law, are quietly pleased that the tarmac lobby has hijacked the passenger rights cause. The movement is now conveniently contained, holding sparsely attended news conferences and pep rallies for passenger rights "stakeholders" in the Rayburn House Office Building.

That's not to say that the tarmac troopers don't have a valid point. There's no excuse for keeping a plane waiting for hours without giving passengers food or water. Anyone who has endured an extended delay on a plane can be forgiven for thinking it's the only thing that matters.

In the meantime, what do you do if you're stuck on a parked aircraft? Oddly, the media reports I've seen have fixated on the likelihood that a turn-back law will be passed -- it has a snowball's chance, in case you were wondering -- but have skipped the part where they help us actually fix the problem.

I had an enlightening conversation with Deborah McElroy, the executive vice president in charge of policy and external affairs at the Airports Council International-North America, an airport trade group, about the remedies available to stranded passengers. There are not many.

I've been asked whether there's an easy way off a parked plane, such as calling 911 and complaining that you're being held prisoner. McElroy said emergency calls are routed to local law enforcement agencies, which may pass your complaint along to airport police, but neither is likely to have the authority to force a jet to return. "Only the airport's federal security director, who is a [Transportation Security Administration] employee, has the legal right to order the plane back to the gate," she told me. You may be better off asking a crew member for help or, failing that, calling the airline.

Would a turn-back rule change anything? It might, she said. It might not. Meaning that the true cost of a passenger's bill of rights may not be just an unenforceable law, but also a long period of distraction from the truly important issues facing passengers.

Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine and for the Consumer Travel Alliance, a new nonprofit education organization. This column will appear weekly in Travel, and Elliott will be joining the travel chat Mondays at 2 p.m. at http://www.washingtonpost.com/discussions. You may also e-mail him at celliott@ngs.org.