Kate Hanni: ‘The Ralph Nader of the Skies’

Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 09.20.07 | 6:05 PM ET

Kate Hanni (pictured) is the founder of the Coalition for an Airline Passengers Bill of Rights, and she’s so committed to federal legislation in support of air travelers that she quit her job and took out a $200,000 line of credit on the California home she owns with her husband to spearhead the fight, according to a new profile of her by Joe Sharkey for Portfolio.com. She did so after being stuck in an American Airlines plane on the tarmac in Austin, Texas, for nine hours last December in one of several well-publicized stranding incidents.

Sharkey writes:

The group’s success (it now has 17,000 members) has been helped by fury over the extraordinary number of planes stranded this year at domestic airports, as unprecedented travel demand smacked headfirst into reduced airline capacity, record delays and cancellations, and schedules that no longer have slack built in to accommodate even routine weather disruptions.

The strandings are an extremely sore point for travelers, and Hanni knows it. So do politicians. Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, which contains many of the “rights” Hanni and the coalition have been lobbying for, including a right to deplane after excessive delays. The legislation, of course, still needs to pass the Senate, and the White House has issued a veto threat based on a potential raise of aviation fuel taxes also contained in the bill, according to the AP. But that won’t stop Hanni from working in support of passengers’ rights.

I watched her in action yesterday at the Coalition for an Airline Passengers Bill of Rights “Strand-In” on the National Mall in Washington D.C. in support of the bill. The coalition built a tent in the shape of an airline fuselage, and attempted to recreate the feeling of being stranded. She ably presided over a collection of coalition members, politicians and frustrated passengers, all while surrounded by a pack of hungry media.

It was an effective—and often amusing—stunt. See and hear more about it in my audio slide show from the Mall.