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Congress Sticks Its Nose into the Pay-To-Pee Business at Ryanair

April 13, 2010 at 4:00 PM | by | Comments (0)

Given how we're not totally comfortable with the government slapping down Spirit Airlines over their new carry-on fee, and given our abject loathing for that policy, you can imagine how we feel about Congress' next potential foray into airline consumer advocacy. At the end of last week, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee spokesman Jim Berard announced that the committee might call hearings to grill US airlines over Irish LCC Ryanair's pay-to-pee scheme. Let's count the ways this is stupid.

First, no American airline has suggested that they're even considering following Ryanair on this. If they did consider it the outcry would be earth-shattering and force them to drop the idea. If they tried to ignore the outcry, the loss of customers would force them to take notice despite themselves. And if they still didn't reverse their policy, the market would deal with them long before Congress got around to doing anything useful. All of which is why Berard's best hypothetical question for the hearings is "do you intend to follow Ryanair’s lead and why," which has all the sophistication of a third grader playing Make-Believe Newscaster.

The Department of Transportation pushed re-regulation on safety grounds last fall, just as US airlines were setting mind-blowing safety records. Congresspeople are speaking out indignantly on behalf of airline consumers who, if you follow the 2009 statistics on complaints, have literally never had it better. It's almost like they're trying to look busy, but that instead they're just getting in the way. Almost.

Even when they stumble into an actual consumer rights issue, Congress still usually manages to screw things up. Passengers were actually getting stuck in nightmare situations on tarmacs, so our elected officials leapt into action. They passed rules banning those delays and imposing huge fines on errant airlines. You know what happened? Before the regulations even went into effect, a bunch of airlines—American, Delta, JetBlue, and US Airways—all asked for exemptions. The alternative was that they'd get buried financially.

It turns out that airlines weren't stranding passengers on tarmacs and alienating customers for the fun of it. They were getting caught between a bunch of logistical and security challenges. Now maybe there are ways to overcome those challenges and airlines just needed a little push. But the point is that routing planes and keeping flights on time is really, really hard. It's not something that can just be legislated into existence, which is what airlines are now explaining to the new group of bureaucrats in charge of letting them do what they've always done.

So in sum, no we're not fans of this idea.

[Photo: Scrumshus / Wiki Commons]

Related Stories:
· House committee may probe US airlines on Ryanair pay-toilet scheme [TNooz]
· Political Travel [Jaunted]
· Congress [Jaunted]

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