It's the middle of July, and many of us have summer travel ahead of us. It's a good time to check out the state of the airline industry.

The Napa Valley-based Coalition for Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights recently issued a statement where it lauded certain members of congress for showing "tremendous leadership and a great sense of commitment to passengers' rights."

But, see, the group wants that bill of rights for passengers to become a reality. It acknowledged that "congressional rhetoric" is not enough. (Which, you know, can be applied to so much more than transportation issues.)

We first learned of the organization last January; as Jon reported then, Kate Hanni was one of the passengers caught on the infamous plane that spent 9.5 hours on an Austin tarmac. It was a flight that was supposed to go from SFO to Dallas. If you don't recall the story, her money quote was, "there were people getting ill, the toilets did begin to overflow." Hanni's the group's founder and spokesperson.

While some airlines seem to be putting a higher priority on passengers, other still let such things keep happening

We like the idea of the bill of rights a lot. It's good that the core issue has so much resonance, because as far as acronyms go, "CAPBOR" is a pretty forgettable one.

(Note to new organizations: think of the cool acronym first, then base full name on that. Like CAPBOR could have been "WINGS" or "ICARUS" or something like "PEE-YOO.")

CAPBOR does, however, have great art on its Web site! We've appropriated a little of it above, but you should click through to see it. Priceless! Especially the "share horror stories" logo.

With all the great (mostly MUNI related) transportation horror stories that you, our readers, leave on these pages, we thought you might have a few airline-related ones as well to share with CAPBOR. If you're interested in helping CAPBOR to take action and get the passenger bill of rights rolling, click on through. We're guessing that the airlines' habits of leaving folks stranded on runways and in airports for hours on end may not appeal to most.

CAPBOR has a complaint hotline for stranded passengers at 877-FLYERS6. Maybe program that into your mobile phone -- they may well let you use cell phones when stranded for that long. Not sure what they can do about you being standed in the short-term, but in the long-term your story can add fuel to CAPBOR's case. It's one of your few venues to fight back!