Delta Air Lines Sued Over Alleged E-mail Hacking

alphadogg writes "Delta Air Lines is being sued for allegedly hacking the e-mail account of a passenger rights advocate supporting legislation that would allow access to food, water and toilets during long delays on the tarmac. Kathleen Hanni, executive director of Flyersrights.org, alleges Delta obtained sensitive e-mails and files and used the material in an attempt to derail the 'Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights of 2009,' of which four versions are pending before Congress. The suit was filed on Tuesday in US District Court for the Southern District of Texas and seeks a minimum of $11 million in damages. Flyersrights.org, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007, had been investigating surface delays in air travel."

Comments

Delta "clearly, obviously" innocent

[Creosote]

Another story on the lawsuit currently circulating on the wires includes this nugget: "Through a spokesman, Delta denied that it was involved in any hacking. 'Obviously, the idea that Delta would hack into someone’s email is clearly without merit,' spokesman Trebor Banstetter wrote in an email."

Without prejudging the facts in the case, I'm not sure that "clearly" and "obviously" are adverbs that belong in any statement relating to wrongdoing on the part of a huge corporation.

Re:Delta "clearly, obviously" innocent

[NeutronCowboy]

But they certainly belong in the statements of anybody speaking on behalf of the corporation. The originators of these types of comments are always PR, marketing, legal and executive people. Which is also why I think that there a special place in hell that should be reserved for them.

Re:Delta "clearly, obviously" innocent

[Martin Blank]

"Obviously" has drifted into everyday corporate parlance, and it's very irritating to me. It is the audible equivalent of the long-running lose/loose spelling issue across the Internet -- I just notice it every time. We have sales people come in that are demonstrating products we've never seen before, and they talk about how their product can "obviously" perform some function. If it were obvious that it did all of these things, we wouldn't have them here. And it comes across as demeaning, because we didn't know those features were included, but by saying that they "obviously" were there and yet we were ignorant of them, it comes across as suggesting that we didn't do our homework or weren't bright enough to realize how superior their product was.

I have stopped one in mid-sentence and pointed out this problem. To his credit, he tried to avoid the word, and caught himself using it several more times, correcting himself each time. I should try that on more of them.

Re:people are spoiled these days

[El Torico]

I'm old enough to remember the days of air travel before deregulation. It was very expensive and you had to dress well, but you were treated with respect. There were even SST sticker books for the kids.

It would be interesting to see an airline with only business class and first class. How long would it stay in business?

High Speed Rail

[royallthefourth]

I'd like to point out that we may suffer many fewer flight and road delays if our country had a well-developed passenger rail service.

Busy routes like LA-SF, LA-Phoenix, and Miami-Atlanta could easily be replaced by fast trains and therefore take a lot of load off of our air and highway infrastructure at a relatively small price.

Re:High Speed Rail

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to point out that we may suffer many fewer flight and road delays if our country had a well-developed passenger rail service.

Traffic expands to consume whatever amount of road you're willing to build. Your high speed rail will be consumed and the airlines will still suffer delays.

Poor service from airlines is a consequence of extreme price competition. The airlines have long since ceased to compete based on on-time performance or comfort. Price is the only remaining factor. Most of the cattle they're hauling around seem to be willing tolerate any level of degradation short of pissing themselves as long as the ticket price is $2 lower than the other guy. If that $2 means there are no extra aircraft, no extra flight crew, no open gates at the destination, etc. then you can just sit on that runway for 7 hours.

Consider this; if the airlines were allowed to collude to some degree they would almost certainly try to earn higher margins. The higher prices would shed a large fraction of optional air travel (no, you don't really need to attend a training seminar on the other side of the continent.) Less traffic would alleviate runway and gate schedules and reduce fuel consumption and pollution. Airlines would feel less pressure to squeeze as many asses into their aircraft as possible. It could be that the airlines, freed from competing exclusively on price might adopt a system that would actually be a benefit on many levels, despite their super price sensitive customers.

Frankly I would prefer some collusion if it led to those benefits over the filthy, degrading hell that is modern air travel.

Re:High Speed Rail

[QuantumRiff]

High speed rail won't be filled. The cost to add another car to the train is completely marginal compared to the basic infrastructure needed to start service. With airlines, planes are the most expensive part of the process, and they don't scale. Every plane needs another crew, ground crew, etc.

The Industry

[DaMattster]

I work in the industry and I believe that a Bill of Rights for passengers is long overdue. Will it necessarily cost the airline more in revenue, no. But, the demands need to be reasonable.

Re:The Industry

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense intended, but I've read the article, and the bill of rights items are things I consider to be an extremely low bar.

Three hours of sitting on the tarmac, knowing that even after the plane takes off you have to endure the flying time as well, would be very stressful to me. For a short flight, it could double or triple the time spent in that can. For a long flight, it could turn an eight-hour flight into eleven hours.

The others are just absurd to think of being missing. Air? Medical attention? To hell with airline rules or the law; my health comes first.

Maybe I've been spoiled by air travel in the past (absolutely terrifying thought given my experiences), but the situations that people have endured are heinous. I'd be on the phone to 911 to tell them I was being held against my will long before 12 hours passed.

Re:Air vs. Rail

[Ichijo]

A quick point about security. If terrorists start to targets trains then security theater for rail passengers may be as bad as it is for air passengers.

I doubt it, because you can't steer a train into a building! The overwhelming majority of people killed on 9/11 were in buildings.

Re:Air vs. Rail

[M. Baranczak]

Trains are also much less vulnerable than planes. If there's a major malfunction on a plane, it crashes; a train just stops.

Re:Headline appears to be inaccurate.

[sjames]

So you allege that the someone in step one sent the mails to the Senior VP of Metron just for the hell of it? In general, when you want to know who committed a crime, you look first at whoever benefited from it. Sometimes that doesn't pan out (and then you should look at who benefits if the obvious suspect is prosecuted), but the vast majority of the time it proves out.

Re:Air vs. Rail

[CraftyJack]

For the itinerary you found, an 18-hour trip, you should probably expect to add a random number of hours from 0 to 6 into your arrival time.

Agreed. But in fairness to Amtrak, you'd probably do well to add that kind of margin to a flight as well.