I enjoy politics and all matters civic, however I typically like to shy away from such things here on this blog where the main focus is travel.
Travel Junkie’s How To Fly Without ID by Joby Weeks is part politics, but also part travel. So I suppose it’s fair game. Since it struck a chord with me, I couldn’t help but chime in.
The crux of Weeks’ position is this:
As a die-hard Constitutionalist, I believe that we still have an absolute, unfettered, God-given right to travel from point A to point B without permission from the state — on land as well as in the air.
Yet, when I step up to an airline’s ticket counter, I hear the agent recite a familiar litany. The monologue goes, “has your bag been unattended; have you accepted gifts from a stranger; can I see your identification please?”
This Nazi procedure of “your papers, please” has never been appropriate for our country.
Straight away, Weeks makes a compelling case.
However, this piece really attempts to argue two very distinct points by blurring them into one. The premise here is that the only possible restrictions to flying could be those set by the FAA and that once we discredit that agency’s authority over same, anyone is free to come and go as they please.
As a “die-hard Constitutionalist”, I’m sure Weeks is aware that the FAA does not own or single-handedly run the private airline industry and that they are not the sole arbiter of who is and is not allowed to fly. In reality, there are two “gatekeepers”, so to speak, at work here.
The first is the State – the FAA. But, for argument’s sake, let’s assume Weeks is right and the government has no right whatever to dictate our coming and going, be it by plane, car, bus, jet pack, etc.
The second and more important decision-maker in this process – and the one Weeks neglects to mention – is the airlines themselves. And the airlines happen to be private businesses (notwithstanding the despicable bi-annual government bailouts) with their own set of rights that includes telling passengers to pound sand if they don’t like the boarding restrictions set by that very same airline.
It’s therefore not a Constitutional question, but an internal, business one. As private entities, the airlines need only answer to their shareholders (if they happen to be a public company) or the whims of their executives (if they happen to be privately held). If Delta wishes to restrict boarding only to passengers named Earl, carrying Blockbuster cards from the state of Kentucky, that’s their right to do. It’s a bad business decision, sure. But it certainly isn’t a legal matter. It’s none of the FAA’s business who and for what reason Delta denies boarding to any passenger.
Weeks goes on to say:
I also hit pay dirt in a discussion with another, much nicer Northwest agent on the East coast. In a candid conversation, he told me that FAA personnel had held training sessions with all airline agents in the fall of 1996. Agents were informed directly by the FAA that they absolutely could not bar an American citizen from boarding a plane, even if a passenger refused to produce any identification at all!
This is so ludicrous that it’d be funny were it not likely true.
As far as the government – federal and otherwise – is concerned, hitchhikers also have every right to perambulate ’round the world wherever and whenever they choose. But I’m under no obligation to pick them up. As a private entity, my car is my car and I decide who gets a ride and who doesn’t. Likewise, airlines are private entities with an absolute right to restrict access to any passenger for any reason they deem necessary.
I understand Delta Airline is facing two large lawsuits because employees twice denied this reality, and actually twice kept off a plane a passenger who had only private ID to show. Anyone want to own an airline, courtesy of a judge?
How can any rational person expect to advance their argument with statements like this? Sure the airline industry is not the most popular right now and, on a gut level, I’d love to stick it to them just as much as the next guy. But the notion that we would rely on government to strong arm any private businesses with legal and tortious threats simply because a passenger didn’t get his or her way is so Orwellian, it boggles the mind.
Do you have the right to move about the country as you please? Sure, I buy that. If you want to drive your own car, fly your own plane, or walk about wherever your choose, have at it.
But do you also have the right to board a private plane owned by a private company against their wishes and their rules? No. You may pay for the privilege of boarding same, but a right? Absolutely not.
To argue otherwise is not only un-Constitutional, but anti-Constitutional.