Passenger bill of rights

The way Kate Hanni tells it, an ill-fated holiday trip that left her family stuck inside a grounded airliner for nine hours without food, running water or working toilets amounted to "cruel and inhumane" treatment that no passenger should have to endure.

Infuriated about the ordeal in December, she and her husband started a coalition of fed-up fliers to press for an industrywide passenger bill of rights. Earlier this year, after JetBlue's cancellations of hundreds of flights stranded thousands of passengers across the country, their cause caught the attention of legislators on Capitol Hill.

On Wednesday, the Napa resident appeared before a Senate panel to lend support to a bill by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) that would create a federally mandated set of rights to supplement the airlines' voluntary guidelines.