Propeller airplane ascending
Photograph ©2016 by Brian Cohen.

Why Airlines Cannot Be Sued For Delays; Less Stressful Flying; and Trump Wall From 1958

T hree different articles caught my attention recently which I thought might interest you: why airlines cannot be sued for delays of flights; less stressful flying as recommended by the five members of the Association of Flight Attendants; and that a Trump wall was mentioned in a television show from 1958.

Why Airlines Cannot Be Sued For Delays

“Federal preemption means that when it comes to an airline’s ‘price, route or service,’ only the federal government is permitted to make or enforce the law. Conversely, states, including state courts and local governments, may not make or enforce any law dealing with an airline’s price, route or service”, according to this article written by Mark Pestronk for Travel Weekly. “That’s why no state legislature can enact an ‘airline passenger’s bill of rights,’ as some states threaten to do from time to time. Only Congress or the DOT can do that.”

Pestronk further explains how the “courts have interpreted the federal preemption rule to go further than Congress ever intended” — including that “federal law prohibits airlines from engaging in deceptive scheduling practices, but no passenger can sue for deceptive scheduling.”

Less Stressful Flying

Five members of the Association of Flight Attendants spoke with Matt Lauer of TODAY to offer advice on what customers should do in order to ensure that their flights are less stressful.

“Approach your flight with a sense of community” as you are “going to be part of this for however many hours” and do not “treat the flight crew like we’re the enemy because we are all in this together” are two suggestions which were offered — as well as in terms of the consumption of alcoholic beverages, “The same alcohol that you’re drinking on the ground is very different when the cabin is closed and you’re at 8,000 feet” because “It affects you differently. And most people don’t recognize how alcohol does affect them. They get drunker faster.”

Trump Wall From 1958

A claim that “an episode of the 1950s western TV series ‘Trackdown’ featured a snake oil salesman named ‘Trump’ who promised to build a wall in order to prevent the end of the world” was verified, according to this article at Snopes — and the article contains both the actual full video as well as a snippet of four minutes.

Then again, there was a snippet of the television show Laugh In which co-host Dan Rowan correctly predicted in 1969 that Ronald Reagan would eventually become president of the United States — so I suppose the “Trump wall forecast” is not so amazing…

Summary

Information, advice and simply bizarre: that is what the three aforementioned articles represent — and I have no opinion pertaining to any of them…

Photograph ©2016 by Brian Cohen.

  1. Off course you cannot sue for delays. Delay(s) is/are unintentional. Sometimes even for safety/security. Its like sueing firefighter that broke your window to safe you when you were trapped in fire.

    What you can go after is something like lack of compensation or explanation for the delay(s). Just in case somebody is asking why the laws limit maximum compensation, well… nobody is forcing you to have that specific carrier for method of transport. Its also to prevent sueing for ridiculous amount of damage, since that will be a big burden for the court to examine big number of claims which most probably just a greedy passenger.

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