David J. Danto

Travel thoughts in my own, personal opinion

eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD on all

Help! Police! I’m A Victim! – March 2024

It’s always interesting when I get to bring you something from Captain Obvious, and today we have a doozy. Apparently, The FBI has been in touch with the passengers that flew on Alaska flight 1282 – the one where the side of the plane blew off – and informed them that they may possibly be the ‘victims of a crime.’ The full story and the contents of the letter sent to passengers are in the article here.

Now I have nothing but respect for law enforcement, but really? They are just now discovering that frequent flyers are victims? It took the side of a plane blowing off for them to notice?

What about when frequent flyer accounts are devalued – when airlines steal back passengers’ hard-earned miles or fail to deliver promised “lifetime” benefits? What about when luggage is lost? Isn’t that a case where the airlines charge for a service they did not provide…and repeatedly do so? Isn’t that a crime? Or, what about simply being forced to sit in seats without the amount of room that basic human decency calls for? I’d say the way airlines treat coach passengers every day is just about as criminal as it gets.

There is a terrific movie on Netflix now about the Victim Compensation Fund that was set-up after 9/11. (The movie is called “Worth” and it stars Michael Keaton and Stanley Tucci amongst a stellar cast. I have no idea why it was not more widely publicized – it’s really well done.) As a tangential part of the plot, we see the representatives of the US airline industry complaining that if the families of the people who died that day ‘were allowed to sue’ the airlines it would shut them all down. The US airlines have long known they were culpable for crimes committed, but instead of ever accepting any responsibility, they lobby lawmakers to prevent themselves from being held accountable for anything.

For this reason, only a fool would believe that the airlines will ever be called-out for anything. The only reason that the FBI is saying the passengers may be ‘victims of a crime’ is that the airlines can (and are) passing the buck to Boeing and to Boeing’s subcontractors. As I’ve written many times before, and has been pointed out by many others, Boeing as a responsible organization fell-apart after its merger with McDonnell Douglas, so it’s an easy target.

Still, informing airline passengers that they ‘may be victims’ is like informing people outside during a rain storm that they ‘may have gotten wet.’ Only an idiot wouldn’t already know that, and no one is going to do anything to fix anything so it doesn’t happen again.

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Hopefully while you read this I already landed in Florida – and the huge storm the day before didn’t impact me very much...or door bolts for that matter….

This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions.

All image and links provided above as reference under prevailing fair use statutes.

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