Petition for Rulemaking and 

Request for Sanctions against 

Delta Air Lines. Inc. of 

Donald L. Pevsner, Esq. 

PETITION FOR RULEMAKING 

AND 

Doc ket b () T ~ CIJ r~ 2JJ I /-0 D 7 7 

REQUEST FOR SANCTIONS AGAINST 

DELTA AIR LINES, INC. 

Communications with respect to this document should be directed to: 

April 15, 2011 

DONALD L. PEVSNER 

A ttorney-at- Law 

2010 Valle Cay Drive 

Vilas, NC 28692 

TEL.: (828) 297-7823 

FAX.: (828)297-7824 

EMAIL: DonPevsner@aol.com 
BEFORE THE 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION 

WASHINGTON, DC 20590 

Petition for Rulemaking and 

Request for Sanctions against 

Delta Air Lines, Inc. of 

Donald L. Pevsner, Esq. 

Docket -------------------

PETITION FOR RULEMAKING 

COMES NOW Donald L. Pevsner, Esq., pro bono publico, and files this ---

Petition for Rulemaking pursuant to 14 C.F.R. §302.16, as to both domestic 

air transportation and foreign air transportation: the latter pursuant to 

14 C. F. R. §302. 502. The requested remedies by the Department and, as 

may be relevant, its Secretary, are authorized pursuant to 49 U.S.C. §41501 

and §41507 with regard to foreign air transportation, and by 49 U.S.C. §41712 

as to both domestic and foreign air transportation: 

(1) On April 12, 2011, your Petitioner was forced to cancel a long-planned 

trip in domestic air transportation because of the present, inequitable limitations 

in Tariff Rule 240: set forth in Delta Air Lines, Inc.'s Domestic General Rules 

Tariff, as amended on February 5, 2011, at Page 42 thereof. Specifically, 

despite a delay of over two hours on Petitioner's Delta Air Lines Flight # 2032 

that would have created a misconnection in Atlanta en route to Petitioner's 

destination of Buffalo, NY, Delta refused on tariff grounds to either provide 

air transportation on another carrier or to provide any remedy for Petitioner's 

substantial losses other than refund of his Charlotte-Atlanta-Buffalo ticket. 

As the reason for Delta's position was the fact that the long Charlotte delay 

was caused by A TC in Atlanta, its unconcerned and cavalier treatment of 

your Petitioner is in fact permitted by the present wording of Rule 240 (B). 

It is important to note that every other air carrier maintains virtually-identical 
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tariff provisions in both domestic and foreign air transportation. Accordingly, 

your Petitioner requests the following, vitally-important change-s to Rule 240 

by mandate of the Department, as to both domestic and foreign air 

transportation, pursuant to the specific statutory authority granted to 

the Department by the above-cited Sections of 49 U. S. C. : 

(a) Force majeure provisions presently set forth in Rule 240 (B) of 

the Delta Air Lines domestic and foreign General Rules Tariff, and similar 

provisions in all other air carrier and foreign air carrier tariffs, shall 

not exempt any air carrier or foreign carrier from an express duty to 

arrange for transportation of any fare-paying passenger on another air 

carrier or foreign air carrier if such action will result in such passenger's 

trip being completed earlier than the ticketed trip which has been delayed 

or canceled by the original air carrier or foreign air carrier. 

(b) No air carrier or foreign air carrier shall impose any additional charge 

upon any affected passenger for such mandatory arrangement of alternate 

air transportation or foreign air transportation, whether on an identical routing 

or on a re-routing that is acceptable to the passenger. 

(c)When the delay or cancellation is the fault of the air carrier or 

foreign air carrier, rather than a force majeure situation, the present language 

of Delta Air Lines' Tariff Rule 240(C) and of all other air carrier and foreign 

air carrier tariffs containing similar language shall be amended to strike all 

provisions that make the provision of such alternate air transportation on 

another air carrier or foreign air carrier discretionery as to the nonperforming 

carrier. The specific Delta Air Lines language is as follows: 

II C.l. Delta will transport you to your destination on our 

next flight on which seats are available .. . At our sole 

discretion, we may arrange for your travel on another 
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carrier or via ground transportation. II [Emphasis Added] 

In actual practice, as your Petitioner discovered on April 12, 2011, the 

present tariff language results in a grossly-inequitable situation whereby 

the affected passenger is wholly at the mercy of low-level gate or counter 

agents at the airport of departure. These worthies deliver IIgastronomic 

jurisprudencell in the manner of Judge Roy Bean, the 19th-century II Law West 

of the Pecos II , in which frequent-flyer elite status and the willingness of 

an affected passenger to become a sycophant in order to achieve on-the-spot 

equity create a condition of prima facie discrimination, which is of course 

prohibited by several important Sections of 49 U. S. C. An affected 

passenger should be entitled to much more by way of curative air carrier 

action than the brush-off received by your Petitioner at the hands of Delta 

Air Lines on April 12, 2011: 

lilt's an A TC problem. We donlt have to do anything for you. II 

[Emphasis Added] 

(3) It is very important to note that an across-the-board, Departmentmandated tariff revision on point will result in millions of situations in which 

a passenger of one airline will be provided alternate air transportation or 

foreign air transportation on another airline. These provisions of alternate 

air transportation will not be lIone-way" in nature; !.~., solely from one 

air carrier or foreign air carrier to another air carrier or foreign air carrier, 

but will instead be reciprocal in nature. As such, there should be no 

financial benefit or detriment to any single carrier, but rather a IIspreading 

of the risk ll (the basic principle, after all, of insurance itself) among all 

carriers. As this would greatly benefit presently-damaged passengers, while 
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causing little or no economic detriment to any air carrier or foreign 

air carrier, it would appear that the Department has a manifest duty to 

impose the changes requested by your Petitioner if, indeed, it continues 

to champion consumer protection as one of its primary goals. 

REQUEST FOR SANCTIONS AGAINST 

DELTA AIR LINES, INC. 

(1 )As discussed above, your Petitioner was the victim of an ATC delay 

in Atlanta of over two hours' duration on the morning of April 12, 2011. 

Wh en it became obvious that his Atlanta connection would be missed, 

Petitioner deplaned to discover a totally-unmanned departure gate. 

He then proceeded to the Delta ticket counter at Charlotte International 

Airport, and spoke to one of Delta Air Lines' "red jacket" counter 

supervisors. This agent looked in his computer, advised by Petitioner 

that he must arrive in Buffalo, NY no later than 2: 30PM in order to make 

a further ground connection, and found another Delta flight (at Gate AS) 

that would take Petitioner from Charlotte to Detroit, with a connection from 

there to Buffalo that would arrive at 1: 13PM. Then, the "red. jacket" counter 

supervi sor telephoned Gate A5, and advised that gate agent that Petitioner 

was on his way and to make sure than his seat was held on that new flight. 

(2) Petitioner then proceeded back through airport security (wich took awhile, 

as the TSA personnel were arbitrarily closing clearance lanes and taking 

lessons on new screening machines at their victims' expense). When 

Petitioner arrived at Gate A5, the Delta Detroit flight was still loading 

baggage. However, the gate agent refused to let me board, repeating the 
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robotic mantra that, IIWe must depart on-time. II I then proceeded 

to telephone from the immediate gate area for more than ten minutes, and 

the airplane never left Gate A5 in that time. The gate agent, too, refused 

to use Rule 240 to place me on another airline to Buffalo, and further 

advised that lIall Delta flights for the rest of the day from Atlanta to 

Buffalo are sold-out. II With that, I drove 104 miles back to my home 

in a state of sheer infuriation, and spent the following two hours canceling 

ground arrangements on this five-day trip while attempting to minimize 

cancellation penalties imposed by those suppliers. At the end of the day, 

my net out-of-pocket expenses totaled $414.48. 

(3)A Delta Air Lines reservations supervisor offered me a paltry $50 

voucher good for a future flight on Delta, in alleged compensation for 

a full day's wasted time and a canceled trip that I had been eagerly awaiting 

for months. As I have vowed never to fly Delta Air Lines again, I rejected 

her ludicrous IIcustomer relationsll offer. My suggestion that Delta Air 

Lines instead permit me to cancel a future frequent-flyer-award trip 

without charging me a rapacious $150 to redeposit those 40,000 miles to my 

Delta FT account was summari Iy rejected by this same supervisor. 

I then emailed Richard B. Hirst, General Counsel of Delta Air Lines, with 

the same request. He failed to reply for 72 hours, whereupon I decided 

to seek a lot more equity for millions of other victimized passengers in the 

instant Petition for Rulemaking instead. 

(4) The Department has the authority, and indeed the necessity, to 

financially penalize carriers that treat their customers like carrion. 

Petitioner therefore requests that the Department penalize Delta with a 
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monetary fine that will be sufficient in size to compel Delta to employ 

counter and gate agents who are not rank incompetents in the performance 

of their duties, and will result in far fewer cases of malfeasance and 

negligence such as that which was unilaterally imposed on Petitioner 

on April 12, 2011. 

publico] 

April 15, 2011 

VERIFICATION 

Pursuant to Title 18 United States Code Section 1001, I, Donald L. Pevsner, 

in my individual capacity and as the authorized representative of the pleader, 

have not in any manner knowingly and willfully falsified, concealed or 

failed to disclose any material fact or made any false, fictitious or 

fraudulent statement or knowingly used any documents which contain such 

statements in connection with the preparation, filing or prosecution of the 

pleading. I understand that an individual who is found to have violated 

the provisions of 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 shall be fined or imprisoned not 
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more than five 

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE 

I, Donald L. Pevsner, Esq., do hereby certify that I have served 

the following respondents to this Petition for Rulemaking and Request for 

Sanctions by First Class Mail, on this fifteenth day of April, 2011: 

(1) Richard B. Hirst: General Counsel 

Delta Air Lines, Inc. 

1050 Delta Drive 

Atlanta, GA 30320 

(2)Douglas Lavin: Regional Vice President, North America 

International Air Transport Association 

601 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW: North Building, Suite 300 

Washington, DC 20004 

(3)David Berg: General Counsel 

Air Transport Association 

1301 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW: Suite 1100 

Washington, DC 20004 

(4) Samuel Podberesky, Esq. 

USDOT 

Washington, DC 

DONALD L. PEVSNER,.