[Butch Cassidy Slept Here]

First, I admire what appears to be your optimism of youth or, at the very least, youth not so long past. That having been said I don’t think any “average person” can bring about significant and meaningful change in the dysfunctional state of affairs most US-based airlines find themselves. There was a time when I believed Kate Hanni, the passenger rights advocate, was a latter day Don Quixote—with powers to knock-down the windmill that is the Air Transport Association (“ATA.”) Then I started following the health care debates and realized that taking-out a second mortgage is no match for the ability of a powerful lobbying group to “buy” votes in Congress; mount negative media campaigns; organize “shout-downs” at constituent meetings, and other dirty tricks. That’s not to say, someday, we might still see reform. However the reform I foresee will follow the same pattern as the reform of Bob The Drunk—that poster on this board who, between vomiting episodes, defends the airlines blindly. Both the airlines and Bob must hit “bottom” before there can be any hope of reform. For Bob it will mean the airline catering company he probably works for fires him for being drunk on the job, and Bob then takes-up residence in some doorway with a paper bag by his side. For the airlines it means substantially more outrageous behavior than they have already perpetrated: More delays, more baseless arrests, and probably even several more deaths. Colgan Air (Continental Express) could well wind-up having to make substantial pay-outs, for wrongful death, in connection with the crash outside Buffalo. Probably this board’s faux lawyer in Orlando will tell us how that crash was all the fault of the passengers on that flight! (lol!) Given the time that has passed since that crash, and the incident of a few days ago involving a Northwest/Delta Airbus, it’s clear that more passengers must die before the issue of cockpit crew fatigue is taken seriously. Hence this issue has not found its “bottom.” The same thing applies to tarmac delays. If deaths occur, in “sufficient numbers,” as a result of inaction on the part of the crew then, and only then, would there be serious talk about tarmac delays. Again only hitting that “bottom,” or sleeping in that doorway, in the case of Bob The Drunk, will bring about results. Fines are about as effective as spitting into an oncoming wind. Fines are frequently negotiated downward. The FAA once spoke of “tombstone regulating” as if it were a thing of the past. I don’t think so.

If I DON’T wind-up getting “reported,” for one or more slights—real and imagined—I will be very surprised. The airline people, and their supporters, rule this board 2 to 1. With those kind of odds the outcome of the game is, always, very predictable and, yes, sad, very sad.