A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Transportation has proposed new rules that would lay a groundwork for remedying America's airline delay disasters. The most important change is that passengers would be able to sue carriers for breach of contract. Additionally, the proposed guidelines would force airlines to develop contingency plans for lengthy delays, set time limits for delays, and publish delay information on their websites. Perhaps most importantly, they would make carriers liable for civil penalties on flights that are chronically delayed.

JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU) is having to deal with weather problems, leading to flight problems and canceled flight problems, leading to unhappy passengers causing a 'storm' of bad publicity. In an effort to be the good guys, it came up with it's own "Passenger Bill of Rights." At the same time it reported that these events would affect its financials for the next couple of quarters -- well da!

So what's going on here is something that has been going on in the airline business forever. If you are in the airline business, life hits you harder than other businesses. Weather is uncertain, passenger impatience is very certain, and having to pacify large numbers of people with timely and satisfactory responses is very difficult. The business is seasonal, capital intensive, technology dependent, security constrained, and a constant coordination nightmare. Oh yes, and then there's luggage which does not complain much but has to run through the same system at the same time, in higher numbers than the passengers -- Wow!

If you read my story Why no airline mergers? Finally the answer... you learned the answer was IT'S A LOUSY BUSINESS!!! In this story another subject I mentioned is that the airlines know all this and mergers happen only in dire straits. According to a news bite I read in Barron's on February 5, U.S Airways (NYSE: LLC) withdrew a hostile takeover offer for Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL) when creditors rejected it. Of course U.S. Airways had no interest in paying retail for an airline company and if you are considering investing maybe you should not either.

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Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm that does aviation and aerospace related projects.