Safe in the Sky
More, December 2007

Q&A with Kate Hanni

Founder of The Coalition for Airline Passengers Bill of Rights

Aren’t we all enjoying the glamour of airline travel these days? Loving the food and the service? Arriving right on time?

Uh-huh. That’s why 47-year-old Kate Hanni founded The Coalition for Airline Passengers Bill of Rights. On December 29, 2006, it took Hanni and her family 57 hours to fly from San Francisco to Mobile–stranded, for much of that time, on planes without food, water, or clean bathrooms. Too mad to take it anymore, Hanni contacted her fellow passengers, built a website (flyersrights.com) and wrote a song she and her garage band have been performing every since: "We Gotta Get Out Of This Plane."

"Watch the passengers seated and helpless/See their hair is turnin' gray/People sayin' ain't got no rights today/We gotta get out of this plane/If it's the last thing we ever do…"

Talk about a grass roots, nonpartisan, hot-button election-year issue. I caught up with Hanni in New York, between interviews with the Washington Post and The New York Times and appearances on Good Morning America and Dateline.

Q: You gave up a thriving real estate career, mortgaged your house, and put your husband in charge of making the money and raising your 12-year-old son. How do you respond to critics who say you must be having a midlife crisis?

A: (Hanni laughs.) If this is a midlife crisis, a lot of other travelers are having it too. I’ve received more than 18,000 emails thanking me for what I’m doing.

Q: What about the critics who say there are more important issues to deal with than flight delays? My husband is a Vietnam vet. I know this issue isn’t on a level with the war in Iraq. But my kids and I watched a man go into diabetic shock while our plane was stuck on the tarmac. I never want that to happen to anyone again.

Q: What’s the most satisfying outcome of your efforts so far?

A: The calls that come in to our hotline from people stuck on planes, asking us what they can do. Yesterday I heard from a gentleman who’d been on the tarmac in San Diego for five-and-a-half hours. I told him to have the other passengers sign a petition saying they were being falsely imprisoned and wanted to be taken to the gate, and then bring the petition to the pilot. It worked. They didn’t get where they wanted to go, but at least they got off the plane.

Q: What’s your ultimate goal?

A: Wouldn’t it be just fabulous if airline passengers were treated like human beings, not cattle? If we could exit an aircraft in the same state of health we were in when we got on?

Q: As a first-time activist, who are your heroes?

A: Unsurprisingly, I admire women my age and older who are unstoppable. Hillary Clinton. Martha Stewart. Mother Teresa. (Hanni laughs again.) I’m not saying I’m Mother Teresa. But now that I’ve taken on Congress, I’m thinking about what my next cause will be.