ONE WOMAN’S FLIGHT OR FIGHT RESPONSE
Trapped passenger seeks travelers’ rights
George Raine, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
sfgate_get_fprefs(); During her nine hours on a grounded airplane Dec. 29, Kate Hanni had one bag of pretzels and some water from the bathroom sink.
Check that, she remembered - she actually gave the pretzels to her 11-year-old son.
As American Airlines Flight 1348 sat in the Austin, Texas, airport, diverted from Dallas/Fort Worth, over which hovered a 1,000-mile-long thunderstorm, the toilets stank and the rage built up.
"People were victimized that night," said Hanni, a veteran Napa real estate agent, who was traveling with her husband, Tim, and sons Chase and Landen from San Francisco to a resort in Alabama - a respite they sorely needed.
Creativity flowed that night, too. Out of the raw experience came Hanni's notion of an airline passengers' bill of rights - legislation that would protect travelers subjected to seemingly interminable delays. And organizing to protect passengers has virtually become Hanni's full-time job.
Hanni and 40 people among the 138 stranded aboard Flight 1348 drafted a bill of rights. High on their list was a guarantee that no airplane would sit on the tarmac for longer than three hours without connecting to a gate.
Since then, more than 16,300 people have signed a petition pushed by the Coalition for an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights, the group she founded.
Hanni's congressman, Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, introduced legislation in the House for a passenger bill of rights. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, have offered similar legislation in the Senate. Language from both versions has been woven into reauthorization bills for the Federal Aviation Administration. Whether the bill that ultimately passes will force the airlines to allow passengers to get off stranded aircraft remains to be seen.
It's a tough row to hoe, of course. The airlines believe decisions "need to rest in the hands of cockpit crews," said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association of America.
The idea of a passengers' bill of rights surfaced in Congress after a snowstorm stranded about 3,200 passengers in Detroit in 1999. But the airlines persuaded Congress they could come up with their own storm contingency plans. Consumer advocates say they fell short.
This week Hanni, 47, is on her 14th lobbying trip to Washington since January. In part because of her doggedness, proposals to establish accommodations for stranded passengers are for the first time almost certain to be included when FAA legislation comes to floor votes.
Hanni's motivation comes in part from her horrific experience in June 2006, when she was assaulted by a man who feigned interest in a home she had listed and threatened to kill her.
She told herself at the time she would never again be victimized and acted on the pledge six months later during the delay in Austin.
The assailant had called her cell phone, disguising his voice to sound like an old man, asking to meet her at an unoccupied Napa home on the market. She figured she could show the house and still get to an Elvis Costello concert in San Jose that night.
A few minutes after she opened the house, the assailant, wearing a ski mask and work gloves, entered and tackled her. He grabbed her face and twisted her neck, threatening to kill her.
Hanni said she managed to stand up and tried to resist, but the man was powerfully built, like a "body-building type." He forced her down again, pulled her shorts partly down and pushed up her shirt.
She may have persuaded the man not to rape her by telling him that her first husband had died and that "if you kill me, my son will have no parents and will kill himself." In fact, her son had told her that. She kept repeating it, and in the Napa police report on the crime, she called it her "mantra."
"It was the only thing I could think of (to say) to not make it about me," she said. "I thought this guy hates women, he obviously wanted to dominate me. I was shaking but I could still think, and he hesitated and I knew I had gotten to him."
With one hand over her mouth, the assailant used the other to pull Hanni by her hair up a flight stairs. She bit his hand through a glove. He pushed her into a laundry room, told her to stay there for five minutes and fled.
During the nine-hour wait on the tarmac in the small MD-80 jet, Hanni said she felt panic not unlike what she felt during the assault.
"It brought back the sense of powerlessness I had not had since the attack. I felt trapped. I felt I was being held against my will," she said.
"I don't think I would have taken on this cause were it not for the decision that I made during my assault, when I decided I wouldn't be victimized again, and I won't watch anyone else be victimized."
For its part, American Airlines agrees that holding Flight 1348 on the tarmac for nine hours was too long, spokesman Tim Wagner said. The airline thought it was preferable to stay in place and wait for an opportunity to return to Dallas rather than inconvenience passengers, who would have had difficulty rebooking trips during the holiday period when planes were full.
That's little consolation for Hanni, who said her resolve grows stronger with time.
"If I say I am going to do something, it's going to get done. I am my word. Even if it is going to cost me financially, which it profoundly has, I'm going to keep going. If we have to sell this house, if we have to sell the cars, I will not be stopped," she said.
Hanni hasn't had any income since the assault. Donations made to her Web site, www.flyersrights.com , cover her transportation to Washington for lobbying.
Her husband, after a career at the Beringer winery, has started two companies. But she had been the primary breadwinner. They recently took out a $200,000 line of credit on their Napa home to pay bills, including her monthly cell phone charges, which reach $2,400 as she keeps in touch with riled passengers around the country.
Hanni considered the Alabama vacation part of her post-assault therapy. While she was stuck in the airplane without food, she knew that her therapists would tell her not to let the experience defeat her.
"They told me to face everything, so I did," Hanni said. "Whatever it is you are afraid of, you face it."
Less than two days after the Austin ordeal, Hanni telephoned Thompson, her congressman, from the Alabama resort asking for his help.
Reared on a small farm near Eureka, Hanni is the daughter of retired teachers. In the 4-H Club, she bonded with bees. Her mother bought her a piano when she was 4. She plays that and 11 other instruments and sings. She's still at it, performing rhythm and blues as Kate Hanni & the Toasted Heads around Napa.
Her day job for the past 17 years has been real estate. She was among the top agents in sales volume in recent years. But she's been away from work since June, and whether she returns is a question.
"I don't love real estate," she said. "I don't like it when I'm dealing with a $5 million client who bickers over a $100 toilet seat. As a consumer advocate, people love what I'm doing."
E-mail George Raine at [email protected].
