Passengers

In a season of crowded planes, long security lines and numerous delays, there are only two kinds of travelers: those who dislike the airlines, and those who loathe and abominate the entire industry with every fiber of their being. So the Department of Transportation is not risking a mass revolt when it entertains the idea of making carriers pay large sums to passengers who, after buying a ticket, find it doesn't come with a seat. Airlines overbook to ensure full flights, but when everyone shows up, not everyone gets to go. Involuntary "bumping" of passengers is an old custom that has gotten more onerous, since it's not as easy to get on the next flight as it used to be. So groups claiming to represent consumers have been demanding that the government force airlines to boost their compensation.

I recently had an issue with Princess Cruise Lines about their charges for shore excursions. In Belize, we decided to go cave tubing, for which Princess charged us $99 each. People on the same bus that took us to the place said they booked the excursion online for $45 per person. Isn't Princess gouging the passenger? That's a definite maybe. When you book a shore excursion, essentially you are doing the same thing you do when you book any packaged tour, whether it's cave tubing in Belize or 10 days in Europe: You're leaving the details to someone else.

Parks department holds Holiday Mart The Howard Count Department of Recreation and Parks will hold its 2007 Holiday Mart - a juried arts and crafts show that includes entertainment, door prizes, a children's craft corner and photographs with Frosty - from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow at Centennial High School, 4300 Centennial Lane, Ellicott City. Admission is $3 at the door; $1 for children ages 3 to 12. Information: 410-313-7275; TTY, 410-313-4665. Symphony of Lights open through Jan. 5 The Symphony of Lights, a display benefiting Maternal Child Services at Howard County General Hospital, is open to vehicles and this year, groups of walkers, through Jan. 5. The display of more than 70 giant animated and stationary light creations is open from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week, including holidays.

Travelers had another bad year of flying in 2006, according to two university professors who have been ranking airlines for the last 17 years. The nation's top 18 carriers lost more baggage, bumped more passengers and were late more often last year than the year before, according to the Airline Quality Rating, released yesterday. And while that was no surprise to travelers in and out of Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport yesterday, few felt like they could complain after listening to recent news reports of passengers stuck on planes all day with little access to food or bathrooms.

Just in time for the travel-heavy holiday season, the federal Department of Transportation is proposing a hike in the amount of compensation air passengers can get for being bumped from a flight. And not a moment too soon. Under current federal guidelines, people with reservations who get tossed off a flight because of overbooking are entitled to a ticket refund plus an additional sum up to $400 - an amount that hasn't changed since 1978. The proposed change would result in a healthy $1,248 in addition to the ticket price.

For eight Girl Scouts from Howard County who sold hundreds of boxes of cookies to travel to Hawaii, the dream trip never got off the ground yesterday. US Airways canceled the first leg of the teenagers' trip, a 7:30 a.m. flight to Phoenix, and then added another dose of bad news: No other flights - even on other airlines - would be available to fly them to their final destination until a day before the Scouts were scheduled to return to Maryland. "It was crushing news," Troop 251 leader Patty Salazar said.

WASHINGTON -- Responding to growing complaints about poor airline service, President Bush told his transportation secretary yesterday to find solutions by the year's end. "Endless hours sitting in a airplane on a runway, and there's no communication between the pilot and the airport, is just not right," he said. In an Oval Office meeting, Bush told Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters and acting Federal Aviation Administrator Bobby Sturgell to report back to him this year about what steps are being taken to reduce delays and ensure fair treatment of delayed passengers.

The number of people flying from Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport has surpassed pre-Sept. 11 levels for the first time, thanks in large part to Southwest Airlines, which now carries more than half the airport's passengers. BWI this week reported that a record 20.7 million passengers passed through the airport last year, bumping the previous high set in 2001, the year of the terrorist attacks. The initial downturn in travel that followed the attacks, plus a weakened economy and spiking fuel costs, caused financial havoc in the airline industry in general.

At least 18 passengers became sickened on a charter bus that stopped near White Marsh Mall last night. They were treated at four area hospitals for symptoms of carbon monoxide exposure, a Baltimore County Fire Department spokesman said. About 9 p.m., three teenage passengers complained of nausea after getting off the bus when it stopped at an Exxon station on Honeygo Boulevard, said Lt. Pierre Thode, the department spokesman. Within minutes, an additional 15 passengers began complaining of nausea, and someone called the Fire Department.

The footage is painful to watch - there's no audio, but from the reactions of other passengers stopping to stare or cutting a wide swath around her, it's obvious the woman is screaming, just losing it, in an airport. Eventually, police officers approach and surround her, she either falls or is wrestled to the ground, and they handcuff and take her away. The rest isn't on tape - some things, believe it or not, still occur beyond the seemingly unblinking eye of YouTube - but soon after this episode was captured by an airport security camera, Carol Gotbaum died, apparently strangled on the chain that police had used to secure her to a bench in a holding cell.

For those with cherished memories of the golden days of air travel, there's a new indignity to stomach - no more airport-wide paging at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. At the end of the month, the state is eliminating the eight-person communications center that steered travelers to the appropriate "courtesy phone" and connected passengers with their parties. There are worse services to lose, of course. In this age of cell phones and text messages, it's slightly shocking this didn't fall under the budget ax earlier.

The Coast Guard's final report on the 2004 Baltimore Harbor water taxi accident that left five dead and one child with brain damage urges pontoon boat inspections and new stability standards based on heavier passengers. The 63-page report and recommendations, which a Baltimore Coast Guard official acknowledged took "longer than we would like" to complete, says the Lady D capsized March 6, 2004, with a full load of 23 passengers and two crew because of a combination of bad weather, overloading, movement and direction of the 36-foot boat.

When the Metro train pulled into the Silver Spring station late Monday afternoon, Michael Corcoran made a split-second decision that might have saved his life. Rather than hoof to the end car, which would conveniently deposit him beside an escalator at his destination, Union Station, he stepped into the third car and took a seat. Corcoran, 39, just felt happy to be escaping his job as a federal contractor before 5 p.m. for a change. Even with the punishing two-hour-plus commute to Jarrettsville, he figured he'd get home early enough to play with his four kids, maybe even mow the grass.

When swine flu broke out a couple weeks ago, several airlines offered travel waivers. US Airways was first out of the gate with an offer to jettison change fees for passengers who wanted to avoid Mexico. The airline seemed to recognize, hours before media hopped on the flu hoopla, that this was going to be an issue for travelers. But in its hurry, US Airways overlooked the details of its response. While the airline offered waiving the change fee and advance ticketing requirements, it mandated that travelers take the rescheduled trip within 14 days of the original flight.

City homicide detectives are investigating possible links between the recent deaths of two men believed to be unlicensed taxi cab drivers, sources said. The shootings took place over the course of four days last week and within about a half-mile in East Baltimore. Police believe the victims - ages 63 and 78 - were "hacks," or unlicensed cab drivers, though it is unclear whether they were transporting or seeking passengers at the time they were killed, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. The latest occurred Saturday, when Calvin Hayes, 78, was found about 6:50 a.m. sitting inside a blue Cadillac suffering from gunshot wounds to the upper torso.

The image of one woman buffing another woman's nails in a railroad dining car struck Keith Gabel. Their hairstyles are clearly from another era. But the black woman is dressed as a servant in the black-and-white photo from the early 1900s, an image that Gabel said highlighted their different roles during that period. "It's kind of glaring, when you saw that," said the Bel Air resident, visiting the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum's Black History Month exhibit yesterday. Various displays highlight the experiences of African-Americans as both railroad passengers and employees from the start of Jim Crow laws after the Civil War through desegregation.

WASHINGTON - After helping to deliver the District of Columbia's first baby of the year, Dr. Kashif Irfan boarded a flight to Orlando, Fla., with his wife, his three small children and other relatives. But instead of taking off as scheduled, Irfan and his family were ordered off the plane and detained in the airport, surrounded by armed guards. "I was thinking, 'What could we have possibly done to arouse a degree of suspicion this high?' " said Irfan, a U.S. citizen born in Detroit. The airline's handling of the Irfan family, after comments one of them made about airline safety aroused suspicions of two teenage pasengers, caused an uproar among Muslim Americans yesterday and prompted AirTran Airways to formally apologize to the family and to make amends that the airline had refused a day earlier.

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. - I made my long-delayed Flight 93 pilgrimage a week before July 4 this year. This is where the United Airlines plane crashed on 9/11. It's the final resting place of 40 passengers and crew, some of whom apparently overwhelmed a group of terrorists - in all likelihood saving lives and national treasure in Washington, D.C., the terrorists' target destination. I've always marveled at the story: the image of ordinary people accepting what surely they feared would be a fatal challenge.

Airline passengers involuntarily bumped from oversold flights will receive as much as $800 in compensation - double the current limit - under new federal rules announced yesterday in a move the government hopes will increase protections for passengers bedeviled by increasing congestion and delays. Such passengers rescheduled to arrive more than two hours late at their domestic destination will be entitled to twice the cost of their ticket, up to $800. Those delayed between one and two hours will receive the value of their ticket, up to $400.

Anne Arundel County prosecutors have dropped handgun charges against the son of the civil rights director for the Maryland attorney general's office, authorities said yesterday. Kojo Lummuba Malik Snowden, 22, who lives with his father, Carl O. Snowden, on Garden Gate Lane in Annapolis, was arrested on gun possession charges Feb. 14 when police found a loaded .45-caliber handgun in the vehicle he was driving in Crownsville. Two passengers in the car also were charged. Initially, none of the men claimed the weapon, which was in a jacket in the back seat.