Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/congress-introduces-airline-passenger-bill-of-rights Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Following last week's ice storms that left thousands of passengers stranded, Congress has proposed a bill of rights to protect airline travelers against lengthy delays. Two travel journalists discuss the legislation and the ramifications of industry-wide regulation. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JUDY WOODRUFF: A string of recent weather-related flight delays and cancellations have lifted efforts to create a passengers' bill of rights that could provide new protections for stranded air travelers.A Valentine's Day ice storm last week forced hundreds of passengers on JetBlue airways to wait on the tarmac for up to 11 hours at New York's JFK Airport. The low-cost airline ultimately canceled 1,100 flights, including all of those in and out of 11 airports last Saturday.While rare in scale, JetBlue's experience was not isolated. Last December, an American Airlines jet was stranded on the tarmac for eight hours in Austin, Texas. Another high-profile mishap came in January 1999, when passengers were stuck on a Northwest Airlines jet for seven hours after landing in Detroit.According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, planes carrying the nation's 658 million air passengers in 2006 arrived late almost 23 percent of the time; that was up from 20 percent in 2005.The bulk of last year's delays were related to the volume of air traffic and related issues, late-arriving aircraft, or airline-specific issues, such as maintenance and baggage. Only about 1 percent of all arrivals in 2006 were delayed because of weather or security issues.For its part, JetBlue has initiated compensation efforts for thousands of customers affected last week, but three members of Congress are promoting similar versions of a passenger's bill of rights.Among the major provisions, the different proposals would: allow passengers to de-plane after three hours' delay; and require airlines to provide food, water, and clean bathrooms for delayed passengers.But the industry's trade group, the Air Transport Association of America, has already come out against such proposals, advocating closer voluntary self-scrutiny. In a statement yesterday, its president said, "A rigid, national regulation would be counterproductive and could easily result in greater passenger inconvenience."That is a familiar message from the airlines, who have helped efforts to defeat other passenger rights measures in the past.