Fight for your rights

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- The April edition of Business Traveller looked at the issue of travelers rights and whether we needed a bill of rights to protect us against airlines, hotels and other companies who can make our traveling life misery. We need rights and they need to be protected.

So in this spirit I invited Kate Hanni, a leading proponent on this to write a guest commentary. Here is her view on legislation to protect airline passengers when their flights are delayed and they are stranded on board.

These represent her views and those of her organization and publication here should not be regarded as an endorsement either by me, CNN Business Traveller, CNN, Turner Broadcast... (you get the idea).
Richard Quest

The Coalition for an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights was formed after several "stranding" events where passengers had been held involuntarily for up to 13 hours inside aircraft. American Airlines, Jet Blue, United, Delta, US Airways and most of the domestic airlines in the United States are at fault.

My family of four was stuck for 9.5 hours on American Airlines, and we said enough is enough!

We turned our anger into advocacy. We have lobbied Washington and have a bill that we hope will be passed, the Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights.

We are asking to be allowed to disembark within three hours if stuck on the tarmac, essential needs of passengers being met on the tarmac in the event of an act of God, baggage being returned to people in no more than 24 hours, disclosure of chronically delayed flights on the company's web site and overhead announcements as well as real time updates of delays and cancellations.

There have been severe stranding events as late as April 24th 2007. The airlines clearly cannot fix this problem themselves. Without legislation, we don't believe it will ever be corrected.

If you haven't been stuck inside an aircraft with no food, running water, overflowing toilets, babies screaming and no way out, then you cannot possibly know what this is like, but surely you don't want it to happen to you.

We are committed to giving the flying public rights; committed to the flying public having the experience of being treated honestly and being given perfect information.

In short, we are committed to restoring customer service to the airlines who seem to have forgotten who their clients really are...us!

Kate Hanni, spokeswoman and founder, Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights

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