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Airline Bladder Rule Must Go So We Can, Too

Tuesday, August 6, 2002; Page C11

Jim Rautenburg of Dayton, Ohio, was trying to describe what he had just gone through. First he tried English. Then he fell back on a four-second guttural groan that sounded like this:

"R-R-R-R-R-R-R-augh!"

Jim is not bucking for the role of the Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard of Oz." He is one of thousands to have run unhappily into a newish rule governing travel into and out of Reagan National Airport.

If you feel like being delicate, it's called the 30-Minute Rule.

If you feel like being cute, it's called the American Bladder Control Testing Act of 2001.

If you feel like Jim Rautenburg, it's total torture.

Jim was closing in on National Airport aboard a United Airlines jet. But "I couldn't go to the bathroom because the flight attendant told me we were within half an hour of Washington," said Jim, who was coming to town for a convention and almost ended up in prison instead.

"I was dying, Bob. I mean, I was hurting. I had drunk a beer on the plane, and I hadn't planned ahead, if you know what I mean."

Jim's abdominal agony would have been bad enough if the plane had gone straight into National without delay. But Jim happened to pick a late-afternoon arrival time.

As anyone hereabouts knows only too well, that's the thunderstorm time of day, especially during the summer. Schedules often go kaplooey when clouds and gusty winds threaten. So poor Jim had to sit there for an additional hour, thinking lovely, distracting thoughts, while the pilot did a grand tour of the holding pattern.

"If we hadn't landed when we did, I would have wet my pants," said Jim. "I haven't done that since I was a kid. That was an extremely long time ago."

Jim tried to reason with the flight attendant. He considered telling her (falsely) that he has a bladder infection and would be risking serious health problems if he didn't visit the loo.

But in the end, "I just decided to be a good boy. My boss wouldn't have appreciated it if I'd been busted," Jim said.

Jim's airborne urinary desperation is entirely too common. Many, many reader-fliers have contacted me in recent months, especially since the celebrated incident about two months ago involving a member of Congress.

Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) was aboard a flight that had left National, en route to Atlanta. Frustrated by long lines outside the restrooms that formed after the 30-minute curtain was lifted, Rep. Bishop borrowed a cup from a flight attendant and did his thing therein.

He wasn't arrested or charged (his line of work may have had a little something to do with that). But his decision (and his plight) focused renewed attention on the 30-minute rule, which has been in effect since shortly after Sept. 11.

Let's focus a little more attention still, with a humble proposal:

Do away with the rule.

It isn't making us safer.

It's only making us testier, and testosteronier.

It's causing men in particular to violate the law, or think about doing it.

One of these days, it's going to lead to a shoving match in the skies. Or worse.

I'd never play fast and loose with airline security. But if we do the anti-hijacking job on the ground, we don't need to do it again in the air. Even if a terrorist manages to smuggle a weapon aboard, he will still face a locked and reinforced cockpit door, and probably an armed and trained sky marshal. Not to mention a bunch of passengers who won't go down without a fight.

Chris Rhatigan, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, said it has "not addressed changing that [National Airport] rule." She declined to speculate whether the agency ever would, or what it would take for the agency to entertain the idea. "I learned long ago not to do hypotheticals," she said.

And I learned long ago that when you gotta go, you gotta go. Preventing us from doing that is punitive and unnecessary. It only makes people like Jim Rautenburg more desperate, and more unhappy.

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