Columnist John Katsilometes: Mulling over an airborne Bill of Rights

Tuesday, June 29, 1999 | 9:42 a.m.

John Katsilometes' column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Reach him at 259-2327 or kats@vegas.com.

This has probably happened to you:

You buy a round-trip plane ticket to some far-off locale, such as Providence, R.I., or Aiken, S.C. The ticket costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $300.

For your payment, you fly from here to there and back. You get to stand in four separate lines -- two to board each way, two to check your bags each way. During the three-hour-or-so flight you are fed two bags of peanuts (total number of peanuts: 16) and given a complimentary container three-fourths full of diet Sprite with a swizzle stick/cocktail napkin set you get to keep.

You stand, stretch and visit the lavatory only when the flight attendants turn off the fasten seat belt sign. And, just as you begin to doze off into a tiny cotton pillow about the size of a marshmallow, the pilot intones on the in-cabin loudspeaker, "This is your captain speaking! We have reached our cruising altitude of 34,000 feet! Those of you sitting on the left side of the plane have a breathtaking view of a gigantic wheat field and grain silo!"

Thrown into the deal is that, outside of grumbling to powerless ticket agents or flight attendants, airline passengers have no recourse to complain about late or canceled flights, overbooking, missed connecting flights or any number of recurring problems with air travel. However, in the aftermath of some truly maddening crises over the Christmas holiday (such as snowed-in flights in the Midwest and fog shutting down three airports in the San Francisco Bay area), the Senate Commerce Committee is examining a passengers' "Bill of Rights" proposal to force airlines to better care for customers.

Sounds like a great idea, but what are the customers' most pressing complaints? To find out, I embarked on a grueling fact-finding mission, which consisted of spending an afternoon suspiciously wandering around McCarran International Airport and bothering unsuspecting tourists. After talking to scads of travelers (and even a couple of tight-lipped pilots and one flitty air-traffic controller), I discovered a handful of consistent grievances:

Food. The most frequent complaint from passengers just departing a long flight is a lack of nourishment. One woman, scarfing down a platter of onion rings at the Home Turf Sports Bar, said she'd flown in from New Orleans with two brief stopovers and had been fed the previously referenced itty-bitty bags of salted peanuts.

Equally insulting is the small-sized beverage cup passengers are provided. As one woman noted, when a customer pays $200 or so for a plane ticket, the fare should include an entire can of pop. Or, as another suggested, carriers could have a better variety of food and beverage products for sale ($3.50 for a sandwich, etc.) passengers could simply buy.

Lines. Long lines at the baggage check-in counter lead to an annoying and time-consuming domino effect. No one wants to check bags, so some passengers try to cheat their way onto flights with refrigerator-sized bags and wind up having to check their baggage anyway just before boarding. Several airlines require customers to check bags, then stand in a second line to receive a boarding pass. Why not pick up the boarding pass when checking bags?

Also, the feeling here is passengers prefer assigned seating. Inexpensive as it is, the Southwest Airlines cattle-call approach (where customers are rounded up and herded on the craft in clusters of 30) is far more stressful and far less organized than assigned seating.

"I'm about to fly for two hours," one woman said. "I don't want to feel like a cow."

Punctuality. Without dropping the name of a specific airline (such as United), the air-traffic controller said a few major carriers are too preoccupied with volume and punctuality suffers. It's common for an airline, during peak periods, to try to run 40 flights an hour through McCarran. To travelers who have planned months for a vacation, a half-hour delay is substantial. Also, it isn't too much to ask certain airlines (such as United) to halt reservations when a flight is full and avoid inexcusable overbookings.

Accountability. When customers run into problems, a well-informed point person with some sort of voice-amplification device to tell passengers what's going on should be available. Nothing is more frustrating than to be waiting for a delayed flight and asking a ticket agent when it might be arriving, then being told, "It's on approach."

Hey, we know it's on approach. Even if it's circling over Greenland, technically it's on approach. We just need to know how late we're going to be landing so we can tell Aunt Betty not to hold dinner.

But mostly, when passengers really gave the issue some thought, the term "consideration" prevailed. Air travel is not fun, nor is it cheap, even on economy airlines.

"I got a great deal, $80 round-trip from here to Sacramento," one woman said. "But it's still $80. I deserve $80 worth of consideration."