This aviation law column typically addresses the important legal issues that arise from aviation accidents, which thankfully have become rarer over the past decade. But while the rate of aviation accidents has decreased, passenger service complaints remain a recurring problem. These complaints range from serious claims of discrimination after an airline refuses to board certain passengers because of alleged security concerns to mundane claims involving missing bags.

Long delays at airports are a familiar problem to any traveler, and passengers rarely know their rights when faced with unexpected delays, cancellations or overbooked flights. After the much-publicized tarmac delays during a blizzard in 2007 that left hundreds of passengers stranded in airplanes for up to 10 hours without adequate food, water or functioning lavatories, Congress took action by passing the Federal Aviation Administration Modernization and Reform Act of 2012,1 and the Department of Transportation (DOT) issued rules guaranteeing specific rights to passengers. Nevertheless passengers' rights in the United States still lag behind those in the European Union, and a federal court struck down New York's effort at legislating passengers' rights as preempted by federal law.

The size of the passengers' claims means that passengers will often have difficulty affording lawyer fees and will, therefore, find themselves at a disadvantage in dealing with airlines over a dispute. This article provides a concise summary of the law that is designed to protect passengers, which we hope will help our readers provide sound advice to passengers on their rights.

Rights Against Discrimination

As a consequence of the growing security concerns following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, airlines have been sued for failing to allow passengers to board flights or taking passengers off flights for allegedly posing security threats. For example, in Shqeirat v. U.S. Airways Group, 645 F.Supp.2d 765 (D. Minn. 2009), six imams traveling on board a U.S. Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix were taken off the flight and interrogated for several hours after they publicly prayed before the flight, asked for seat-belt extensions, and sat in a seating configuration that was deemed suspicious. Similarly, in Dasrath v. Continental Airlines, 2006 WL 372980 (D. N.J. Feb. 16, 2006), a passenger who was a U.S. citizen but born in Guyana was removed from a Continental flight at Newark airport because he was sitting next to two other passengers whose behavior appeared suspect, and because a fellow passenger told the aircraft's captain that “those Brown skin men are acting suspicious.”