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I remember when it was so uncool to not wear a seatbelt as a teenager.  I was sitting in a parked car in front of the grocery store with my seatbelt on with the car running waiting on my Dad to run inside and some kids walked by laughing at me hysterically because I had a seatbelt on.  Wearing seat belts is no laughing matter.

Not only will you get a ticket now for not wearing a seat belt but you will be risking your life for no need.  It really is hard to put one on soemtimes to goto the grocery store or some place nearby just because we are forgetful sometimes.  What happened to those sports cars that had those automatic seat belts.  I just loved those cars where you did not have to remember the top part but had to belt up the lap belt.

People can laugh at me all they want but wearing a seat belt is something I feel should be stressed more in highschool and middle school.  Some statistics came out this week stating that nearly 18% of younger drivers are still not wearing this protection in the car.  Belt use only increased 1% from 2006 to 2007 - they must be marketing this wrong.

What is even more saddening is that 68% of young drivers killed at nighttime are not wearing seat belts.  Something that can easily be prevented.  And please let’s all start wearing seat belts before they start passing more laws making more noises go off.  Buckle up!

I was at the hair salon earlier today while I was talking to an employee of American Airlines when the news came on TV that they had canceled 1,000 flights. We talked about how the high paid Airline executives keep getting these outrageous paydays while the employees slave away and the passengers fly with their fingers crossed. American Airlines can cut costs by reducing staff severely to such levels that we have seen this problem get worse and worse. They have even reduced the number of flights, reduced the amenities abroad, and made us fly on old airplanes that are outdated such as the Frankenstein Super 80’s.

Yes, these MD-80’s are the Frankensteins of the sky. These old aircraft will never see the day of Wifi and do not even offer in-flight video or radio. Lord forbid them offer XM or Sirius radio onboard. That just aint’ gonna happen.

Even the first class passengers of the Super 80’s get no TV’s or radios to listen to. I feel like I am riding on some aircraft from a third world country and now that I hear that the wires are all tangled up and ready to short out and cause an explosion that even makes American less attractive to fly.

Continental had a bright idea several years ago to do something like UM… buy new airplanes. Buying new airplanes not only saves the airlines on gas costs but it is an investment in your business future. How could the nations biggest airline not be investing in its future? Because its putting too much money into executives that aren’t doing anything for the company. Spending too much time battling Southwest Airlines and Love Field? Something has to explain how American is such a disappointment.

I live near DFW so I am monopolized by American Airlines so I do care about their future. I certainly do not have the choice to fly on relaxing airline such as Virgin America.

Maybe Exxon will use all that money they are not investing in alternative oil and buy American Airlines. All that cash sitting in Exxon’s bank. Isn’t American their biggest customer with the gas guzzling Super 80’s anyway?

I am sure American will pick up from this and return to it’s normal self again.

I think Jet Blue is taking too much blame for this tarmac debate in the media compared to American Airlines who got off easy. I am glad that the media is making a big circus out of this though because hopefully it will get a bill passed. Yes, I am sure it is the airports fault too and DFW, JFK, the Austin airport, and the Tulsa airports involved in these messes should have had better control of the situation… but the Airlines SHOULD have canceled ALL flights in these weather conditions in the first place. From now on if there is a tornado warning, lightning, or ice storm at the destination airport all flights should be canceled to that destination airport. Sorry but that’s the way it should be to avoid this mess again at least until some kind of federal bill gets passed to protect our rights.

Jet Blue is stepping up to the plate and created their own bill of rights which is going to cover all the people who were stranded. Jet Blue was still canceling flights yesterday and the CEO of Jet Blue was on the today show and said they just didn’t have enough employees to keep things running during the snow storm. I am glad he is stepping up with money back guarantees for sitting on the tarmac but they really should have anticipated what trouble the snow storm would have caused, after all their HUB is in New York and they do have snow there every year so I can understand weather delays. I just can’t understand loading people on a plane and holding them there for hours with no escape.

If you read down this story, you’ll note that Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Scarborough country was held hostage on the tarmac for nine hours.  I didn’t happen to catch his show tonight but it’ll be interesting to see if he has any more to say about that experience as things go along.  The article doesn’t specifically say, but from context a couple of paragraphs later, it sounds like it may have been American Airlines.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17145277/

There was also Jet Blue flight that a reporter from CNBC’s On the Money was stuck on for 9 hours on the tarmac.  This seems to be getting worse and worse without some kind of action from lawmakers.  Bad weather or not this is unacceptable behavior from Jetblue and American Airlines to leave passengers as prisoners for so many hours. 

Rep. Michael Thompson, a California Democrat, said on Thursday he planned to introduce a bill that would address delayed flights, time on the tarmac, cancellations, and lost or damaged luggage.

We are glad to see a lawmaker finally standing up for peoples rights who are stuck on an airplane.  I think as this thing gets more and more publicity and it happens to more of us we will be against the airlines attempt to fix this problem themselves.  They have failed so far and it will take lawsuits or federal laws to make sure this doesn’t happen again.  If you do not think we need something like this passed then I advise you to go sit on a plane headed to Australia and just look out the window and pretend you see the airport tarmac the entire time and also pretend there is no running water, overflowing bathrooms, screaming babies, and then breathe into a taco bell bag for the entire time for that horrible sense of smelly-stale air.

I wanted to give everyone an update on the American Airlines imprisonment of passengers story on December 29, 2006.  There are two flights from San Francisco area to the Texas area that had been reimbursed part of their flights on their credit card statements, vouchers sent out, and apologies written to the passengers.  This makes me feel much better about American Airlines.  I still think passengers need a bill of rights to protect us from being put on a tarmac for more than an hour (held like a prisoner).

This is certainly a step in the right direction to give out vouchers and credit card statement credits.  Some people over at  the flyertalk.com forums are still upset and some are pleased with the way the airline finally handled this problem.

There has been talk of a lawsuit against American Airlines for their handling of this just to bring up the fact that we need a passengers bill of rights.  I agree we need something done legally because the airlines have not stepped up to the plate to prevent us from sitting on a tarmac in future incidents.

For passengers of all the flights from San Francisco, CA to DFW Airport in Dallas, TX there was an apology sent out from American Airlines today.  A little late since the incident was on December 29, 2006.  Not only is this apology late but it’s a dollar short.  This apology is not enough from the mental issues they may have caused their passengers pinned up in their prison seats on board the flight that got diverted to Austin and Tulsa for over 11 hours.  Overflowing toilets, no running water, no electricity, no air conditioning, and contaminated air to breathe.  American Airlines should have responded better from this incident with a personalized message, free airline tickets, complete refunds, and maybe a few bottles of wine so families can deal with this mess.  These airline passengers were held like victims, hostages, or confined prisoners without any rights.

The issue was worse when one plane diverted to Tulsa and let people off but did not let the passengers begging to get off to have freedom off of the plane.  I feel laws need to be passed that say Americans should have freedoms INSIDE an airplane when its sitting on a tarmac for hours.  We should be able to get off the plane if it has sat there for more than an hour no matter the airport or labor policies.

I am normally not anti-business as you can see in most of my posts (which is contrary to your impression of liberal or democratic thinkers). I think business is what keeps America running and its great to have private enterprise going strong. On the other hand, I feel the Airlines like American Airlines the nations largest airline have too much control and treat their customers like dirt. The airlines treatment of customers always comes out worst during the holiday season. They are understaffed and so tight on costs that everyone looses out even the people flying in first class part of the time.

I feel that the Airlines get so many tax credits, so many free rides, and so much free reign that they are basically like entering their country when you step on board. I used to own American Airlines stock until this incident but it is now sold because I am no longer a supporter of American and the way they treat their passengers (including coach, business, and first class). American Airlines does give away a great deal to gay rights campaigns which I felt was great for an Airline and gave them points for that. American scores great with gay rights but not peoples rights of how they are treated inside a crammed packed plane.

BELOW is from one of the passengers on the horrific flight from San Francisco/Oakland to DFW that you can read here:

I will not be entering the airport any time soon and do not recommend anybody spend the night in the terminal like we did but we were among thousands of other people stuck in the same situation. I am just glad the airline part is over because now when I see pictures of people stuck in airports on the news and USA Today - I will first hand know their misery.

This tells of a disaster that came about after a few small thunderclouds and lightning hit Dallas, TX following the 2006 Christmas holidays. American Airlines has done nothing to help these passengers on Flight 1286 so far. This incident involves my family on the plane and I am very upset that American Airlines acted the way they did and treated their passengers so badly without any humanity at all. No running water, no food, no compromises - just plain imprisonment worse than any jail where you are stuck in a coach seat and cannot move for 11 hours straight. Here is what my family had to go through on the very low staffed American Airlines:

Our return Flight 1286 from Oakland to Dallas left at about 1:30 p.m. CST on Friday, December, 28, 2006, and after circling DFW for about an hour because of lightening on the runway in Dallas was diverted to Tulsa. We were forced to remain on the plane on the tarmac in Tulsa for over 4 hours with no water or food and everybody trying to use the restroom at once.

The pilot announced that the plane would leave the Tulsa airport and return to DFW, but no flights would be going out of Dallas that night. Since we knew we had missed our connection flight #1369 at 6:20pm to Oklahoma City and would be stranded at the airport in Dallas overnight, we asked if we could get off the plane at Tulsa at the same time they were letting the 5 Tulsa people off. We were told ‘No’; we had to stay on-board to return to Dallas.

We got back to Dallas around midnight, and at this point we had been on the plane since 11:30 Pacific time, 1:30 central time, making the time on board the plane about 11 hours, without food. By the time we finally were able to leave the airplane, we could not retrieve our checked luggage. We were told it would follow us on a flight to Oklahoma City. Then the stranded passengers from Flight 1369 lined up to wait for an agent to try and arrange for a standby flight the next morning. We were stranded at the Dallas airport at 12:30 am without food or a place to sleep. We were told we could catch a cab to a hotel and rent a room at our own expense.

After a horrible night in the airport, without any help whatsoever from American Airlines, we lined up at the gate the next morning to try and board flight 3587 to Oklahoma City. The agent arrived and told us that the gate had been changed so we rushed to the new location where the gate and flight time was changed two more times forcing the 44 people waiting on standby to rush from one site to another in hopes of getting on the flight. The agents were very rude. Finally they announced the flight and started boarding people, and then they called out a few names from the standby list. We did not get on that flight and the next flight was supposed to be at 10:30 a.m. and would be the last flight of the day.

Because no one could assure us that we would get seats on the 10:30 flight, we finally gave up and rented a vehicle and drove the 3 hours to Oklahoma City. The expense for a vehicle was $128.00.

Note: This compares to the horrible treatment from American Airlines for the good folks who flew from SFO to Austin on the same day as the USA Today Blog reported.