Stuck and Steaming

In the air travel nightmares replayed daily across the country this summer, the big losers are hapless business and vacation passengers. They are steaming mad and no doubt will long remember their shabby treatment by the airlines.

Recent months have seen some of the worst airline schedule disruptions ever. A combination of bad weather early in the season and record numbers of travelers strained the nation’s airports, many of them already way over capacity, and the aging air traffic control system. Flights canceled in one city often have caused ripples of misery for travelers across the nation. Although every carrier has been affected, United Airlines, the largest, moving some 8 million passengers worldwide each month on 74,000 flights, has been particularly hard-hit, with labor unease adding to other problems.

The airline’s contract with its 10,000 pilots expired in April; now mechanics also are working without a contract. Progress in negotiations has been glacial. Pilots are apparently refusing the overtime assignments on which the company has depended to maintain its schedules. The result is that the paying customers are caught in a giant game of chicken between the airline and its employees. Routinely, throngs are stranded because of canceled flights, hours-long delays, missed connections and lost bags. Each side in this dispute hopes the public’s anger will pressure the other into concessions.

Adding insult to injury for passengers, United frequently has been less than straight--for example, coyly telling those waiting that departure has been delayed 20 minutes when, because pilots or mechanics are nowhere in sight, it’s actually hours away, if the plane leaves at all. Just tell us the truth, stranded passengers plead. Tell us when or if our plane will leave and why we’re delayed. And fix the fixable problems.

United says it expects agreement with its pilots by Labor Day, nearly a month away. If it can predict a settlement, why should the two sides take weeks to get there?

For its part, Congress can help fend off repeats of this mess in years to come by appropriating funds to upgrade the nation’s ancient air traffic control system.

One thing is sure: It will take more than an extra package of peanuts or a free drink to erase the bad feelings generated this summer.