Buying an airline ticket is not a jail sentence.
Some enterprising Congress-critters could create a lot of good will among their bosses (that would be voters) by getting their name attached to the proposed legislation that will give airline customers basic human rights.
So far it’s not clear why customs officials couldn’t be bothered to interview a small number of hungry tourists. If it turns out to be a staffing issue, then that needs to be addressed. Flights sometimes get diverted due to weather, and it’s not like PDX is some teeny tiny airport or something, and it does handle other international flights.
But good on the firefighters who bought the passengers hamburgers and helped some sick people.
This doesn’t make any sense.
Remember that when you get off an international flight at SEATAC, you don’t go through customs at the airplane doorway. You exit into the international terminal, where you wind your way (eventually) to immigration, then collect your baggage, then go through customs (with your baggage). It’s pretty similar to what I’ve seen in most international airports. In essence, your presence in the international terminal means you are still “in transit”. If you are catching another international flight, you may not even go through immigration & customs at SeaTac, you just hop on the other flight and go through the process at your ultimate destination.
As long as PDX had a secure place where the passengers could deplane (so they don’t mingle with the other domestic passenger traffic), they could have been let off the plane and kept in such a secure location until such time as the plane departed. They would still be “in transit” on an international flight. If the airline decides to put the passengers on a bus from PDX to SEATAC (which is what they should have done, rather than return to Mexico), THEN you would have had to have them go through immigration and customs.
And I’m sure the Port of Portland has a customs officer, somewhere, who could handle those issues, if they had been consulted. I’m betting nobody at PDX had the after-hours number, or those who had it were unwilling to give out the home number of the customs supervisor.
I think I might have taken the police up on the offer of arrest. At least I wouldn’t have been flown back to Mexico City, and presumably would have eventually made bail in a U.S. court.
@1 It does make sense — George W. Bush was president for 8 years and this is how Republicans treat American citizens and average consumers. They didn’t give a damn about our constitutional rights, so you don’t think they cared about fare-paying airline passengers being imprisoned on planes, do you? Barack Obama has been president for only 1 day and hasn’t had time to fix this. There WILL be an air travelers’ bill of rights. There WILL be re-regulation of the airline industry (and a whole slew of other industries). There WILL be an end to treating hard-working, tax-paying, ordinary American citizens like cattle. But it can’t be done overnight. Bush is gone, the Republican Congress is gone, all their consumers-be-damned policies will be reversed, and line employees of the TSA and Customs and other federal agencies will realize they have a new boss with a different philosophy about how to treat the public, but there’s so much that needs to change that it will take President Obama and the Democratic Congress some time to do it all.
I would have flipped the cop the bird and said arrest me first. You’d be on your way home in a couple of hours tops and if it did make it to trial no jury would convict you of anything.
@3
Yes!!!
Gitmo’s closing, funding is being restored to NGO’s teaching family planning. This IS the kind of change I can believe in.
Baaaaaad day for the wicked fools on the right. Translates to GOOOOD day for America!
Hey, all you wingnuts out there, repeat after me: “President Barack Obama, Senator Al Franken, Governor Chris Gregoire.” Doesn’t that feel good? It sure brings pleasure to me.
All the more reason why I choose to fly when it’s only an absolute necessity. I’ve been driving back and forth to New Mexico from Reno for gigs there, and not only is it cheaper to drive there, even with meals and an overnight stay at my condo in Vegas, I get better service every step of the way!
When I do choose to fly, I fly foreign carriers, because they still treat their passengers…… y’know, like paying customers that actually expect to be treated with respect and dignity!
Bill O’Reilly has been all over this issue several times. He ain’t too crazy about how the airlines have been treating their customers.
I only get on an airplane when it’s absolutely necessary. I detest being treated like a criminal when I get there and being treated like a piece of cargo once I get on the damn plane!
@9 Not surprising the airlines are losing money hand over fist. Treating your customers like potential criminals isn’t a plausible long-term business strategy.
Under the Patriot Act passed by a Republican Congress (with votes from some misguided Democrats), any behavior that a flight attendant subjectively decides is unruly can be prosecuted as terrorism.
Since 2003, over 200 airline passengers have become convicted terrorists for offenses as minor as spanking their children or arguing with a flight attendant.
A California man was convicted of terrorism for resting his head in his girlfriend’s lap. He was on chemotheraphy and wasn’t feeling well. A male flight attendant construed his posture as “sexual behavior.”
Sure, confining 200 strangers together inside an aluminum cylinder for several hours creates tensions and sometimes brings out the worst in people, and airlines have to do something about unruly passengers. But they’ve had the authority for years to kick disruptive passengers off planes, and obnoxious passengers also can be fined by the FAA and prosecuted by local authorities.
But only Republicans could come up with the cockamamie idea of prosecuting a parent for spanking her children as a terrorist. Like everything else the Republicans did after they broke into the candy store, that’s out of whack. [Intentional pun.] Apart from the nuttiness of using anti-terrorism laws to prosecute disorderly conduct as terrorism, the sheer arbitrariness of the law that allows flight attendants to label virtually anything they choose as “disruptive” at their discretion, does not meet the most minimal standard of due process.
Did Chief Justice Intentionally Flub Oath?
You’ve got to wonder. Roberts is a partisan justice who was appointed by an extremely partisan president, and we’ve learned from experience that Republicans love to “game” the political system and no dirty trick is too devious or too low for them to do it.
Which makes me wonder whether Bush’s partisan chief justice intentionally flubbed the oath of office to set up Obama for a legal challenge of his authority to sign legislation and executive orders, run the executive branch, and carry out the other duties of the presidency.
The fact Roberts flubbed the oath again at the CYA oath-taking makes me wonder whether Roberts wasn’t trying to pull off a cheap political dirty trick …
Of course, there’s an alternative to the airlines: If you have enough money, you can buy or charter a private jet. No Republican of any consequence — CEOs, wealthy donors, GOP lobbyists, etc. — travels by airline. So the abysmal treatment of airline passengers is no skin off their back. You don’t get prosecuted for terrorism for fucking the flight attendant in flight aboard your private jet.
@12
I think your tinfoil hat is squeezing your mellon to tight…
Get it right, it was Bush’s fault.
@13
The more you comment, the whackier you get…
Democrats only drive Hybrids, right?
Better yet, Democrats only take public transportation….
Well, either Roberts is just too dumb to memorize the correct words – or he flubbed it on purpose.
Really – those are the main choices. I choose the too dumb excuse – or maybe the too distracted excuse. But you would figure that a Supreme court head justice would be up to the task. Maybe his meds were off – but it makes you wonder about the guy.
CNR @ 16
At least Obama will appoint justices who KNOW the Constitution :)
@14 How can someone smart enough to get appointed chief justice flub the oath twice in as many days — unless he intends to? Or do you prefer to argue that Bush appointed a moron to be chief justice of the Supreme Court?
@17: good point
What we don’t need are more Federalist society rightthinkers on the bench. They are all for strict constructionism – until they aren’t.