After American Airlines canceled nearly 3,300 flights in five days last week affecting travel for a quarter million people, some passengers might feel a little hostile. And they would be justified.

Those cancellations, and dozens of earlier canceled and delayed United and Delta flights, resulted from years of lax inspections and enforcement by the Federal Aviation Administration. That came to a head when Southwest Airlines disclosed it had not done proper inspections for fuselage cracks on dozens of planes.

After that scandal in March, the FAA began auditing inspection records throughout the industry and demanding - rather late, to our way of thinking - that planes be grounded until inspections had been completed.

You may ask why the FAA had not enforced a regular inspection schedule that could have greatly reduced the widespread flight cancellations. It's a good question, and one that the FAA has not answered yet.

Members of Congress who have questioned airline officials during hearings on the issue believe the airlines did not do required inspections because they simply didn't have to. The FAA has adopted "partnerships" with the airlines that allow them to do their own inspections and has not followed up to see that they were done properly or at all.

Worse, it appears that this buddy system spawned an attitude of don't ask, don't tell in which whistle-blowers, concerned over safety, were ignored.

Of course, the victims in this charade are the stranded passengers forced to spend hours, and sometimes days, in airports. In some cases, after being told they could not fly, passengers were bused to hotels only to find they were full.

That's because the FAA does not force airlines to compensate passengers who are inconvenienced, or worse, by flight cancellations, overbooking, lost luggage and all-around poor service. Some airlines do offer accommodations, food and other essentials to grounded passengers, but only when they feel like being generous.

It's time for Congress to step in and require regular safety inspections by FAA inspectors and adopt a widely called-for "passenger bill of rights" that would dictate what airlines must do for inconvenienced customers.

Enforced customer service is better than none at all.