At Home: Air travellers could get bill of rights
If a Winnipeg MP gets his way, Canadian air passengers could see an end to such travel frustrations as overbooking?or at least get paid for them.
Jim Maloway, an MP with the NDP, will introduce the passenger bill of rights on February 10. One proposal in the bill would see customers collect $500 an hour if airlines leave them stranded on the runway. The fees would kick in if passengers are kept waiting on planes ?for more than 60 minutes after the doors close.?
The bill would also require airlines to advertise ?all-in? ticket prices, meaning that the upfront price consumers see would include taxes and surcharges.
Other proposed measures include forcing airlines to make timely announcements about delays and cancellations, and offering meal and hotel vouchers for flights that are postponed until the next day. The bill would also strengthen the requirements for airlines to provide clear updates on the status of lost baggage.
As Maloway told the Globe and Mail, ?Happy customers are what we all want here. we’re making this bill friendly for consumers.?
The National Airlines Council of Canada declined the Globe?s request for comments.
In Foreign News: Leeds University student to sue over excrement error
David Bennett, a Leeds University student, spent seven years collecting lizard excrement for his PhD thesis?and is now taking legal action after Leeds staff accidentally threw the samples away.
Bennett was studying the Butaan lizard, a rare relative of the Komodo dragon and a creature thought to be extinct for over 100 years. As The Telegraph reports, Bennett spent five years ?investigating their diet, population size and behaviour by sifting through excrement found on the jungle floor,? and his research had taken him into remote areas of the Philippines.
He was then invited to complete his PhD on a scholarship at Leeds, but when he returned from completing more fieldwork he discovered that his carefully collected samples had been destroyed by technicians cleaning up a lab.
Bennett told reporters that the university took 18 months to issue an apology for the mistake, and after being offered £500 as compensation (which he refused) he is now suing.
The university has called the loss an ?unfortunate mistake? and said that ?lessons had been learnt.?
According to a Leeds spokesperson, ?The issue is being dealt with under the university’s student complaints procedure, though the completion of Mr Bennett’s PhD thesis has been unaffected.?