U.S. slaps limit on tarmac waits

Fliers must disembark after 3 hours

Stranded passengers aboard a JetBlue Airways flight to Cancun walk around the cabin while waiting hours to take off at New York’s Kennedy International Airport on Feb. 14, 2007.
Stranded passengers aboard a JetBlue Airways flight to Cancun walk around the cabin while waiting hours to take off at New York’s Kennedy International Airport on Feb. 14, 2007.

— The Obama administration took aim Monday at tarmac horror stories, ordering airlines to let passengers stuck in stranded airplanes to disembark after three hours.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the three-hour limit and other new regulations are meant to send an unequivocal message to airlines not to hold passengers hostage on stuck planes. Coming on the eveof the busy Christmas travel season, the announcement was hailed by consumer advocates as “a Christmas miracle.”

The airline industry said it will comply with the regulations - which go into effect in 120 days - but predicted the result will be more canceled flights and more inconvenience for passengers.

“The requirement of having planes return to the gates within a three-hour window or face significant fines isinconsistent with our goal of completing as many flights as possible. Lengthy tarmac delays benefit no one,” said Air Transport Association President and Chief Executive Officer James May.

LaHood, however, dismissed that concern.

“I don’t know what can be more disruptive to people than to be stuck sitting on a plane five, six, seven hours with no explanation,” LaHood said at a briefing.

The Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission adopted a seemingly stricter policy governing tarmac delays than the federal policy in January 2008 after passengers on an American Eagle Airlines flight were stranded on the tarmac at the state’s largest airport for more than four hours in December 2006 because of poor weather in Texas.

But the policy for Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field, only encourages airlines to allow people to deplane at a gate if delays are expected to exceed an hour and a gate is available. The airport also makes buses available if the delay is expected to exceed 1 1/2 hours and a gate isn’t available.

The policy was invoked for the first time on the afternoon of March 18, 2008, when heavy rain and winds diverted at least seven commercial airplanes from Dallas to Little Rock National, where as many as 600 passengers filled the terminal’s main concourse for several hours.

T.J. Williams, a spokesman for Little Rock National, said the federal policy will complement the commission policy.

“The federal government’s policy is the policy required for the airlines,” she said. “Over that, the airport has no control. The airport’s customer service statement is primarily our expectation of the airlines in working to address passenger complaints related to flight delays, baggage delivery and staffing shortages.”

The airport keeps no records of how many times the commission policy has been invoked since its adoption, Williams said. “The operations manager just uses it whenever there is a need.”

This year through Oct. 31, there were 864 flights across the U.S. with taxi-out times ofthree hours or more, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Transportation officials, using 2007 and 2008 data, said there are an average of 1,500 domestic flightsa year carrying about 114,000 passengers that are delayed more than three hours.

In November, the department fined Continental Airlines, ExpressJet Airlines and Mesaba Airlines $175,000 for their roles in a nearly six-hour tarmac delay in Rochester, Minn. In August, Continental Express Flight 2816 en route to Minneapolis was diverted to Rochester because of thunderstorms. Forty-seven passengers were kept overnight in a cramped plane because Mesaba employees refused to open a gate so that they could enter the closed airport terminal.

It was the first time the department had fined an airline for actions involving a ground delay. Transportation officials made clear the case was a warning to the industry.

Under the new regulations, the only exceptions to the requirement that planes must return to the gate after three hours are for safety or security or if air traffic control advises the pilot in command that returning to the terminal would disrupt airport operations.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she thought the 3-hour rule would not cause any problems for security. “I can’t imagine it would. I call it the rule of common sense,” she said.

Airlines could be fined $27,500 per passenger for each violation of the threehour limit.

The regulations apply to domestic flights. U.S. carriers operating international flights departing from or arriving in the United States must specify, in advance, their own time limits for deplaning passengers. Foreign carriers do not fly between U.S. cities and are not covered by the rules.

Tarmac strandings have mostly involved domestic flights, but the department is studying extending the threehour limit to international flights, LaHood said.

“This is the beginning,” La-Hood said. “We think we owe it to passengers to really look out for them.”

Airlines will be required to provide food and water for passengers within two hours of a plane being delayed on a tarmac, and to maintain operable lavatories. They must also provide passengers with medical attention when necessary.

Airlines also will be prohibited from scheduling chronically delayed flights. They must designate an employee to monitor the effects of flight delays and cancellations and respond to consumer complaints. And they would have to post flight delay information on their Web sites. Carriers who fail to comply could face government enforcement action for using unfair or deceptive trade practices.

Provisions sponsored by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, in pending legislation also would impose a three-hour limit, but the new regulations go even farther, giving passenger rights advocates many of the reforms they’ve sought for years.

“No more will they be able to strand passengers for over three hours in hot, sweaty, metal tubes,” said Kate Hanni, founder of Flyersrights.org.Hanni, who called the rules a Christmas miracle, was stuck on an American Airlines jet in Austin, Texas, for more than nine hours in December 2006 when storms forced the closure of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, stranding more than 100 planes.

Past efforts to address the problem have fizzled in the face of industry opposition and promises to change.

Congress and the Clinton administration tried to act after a January 1999 blizzard kept Northwest Airlines planes on the ground in Detroit, trapping passengers for seven hours. Some new regulations were put in place but most proposals died, including one that airlines pay passengers who are kept waiting on a runway for more than two hours.

The Bush administration and Congress returned to the issue three years ago after several high-profile strandings, including a snow and ice storm that led JetBlue Airways to leave planes full of passengers sitting on the tarmac at New York’s Kennedy International Airport for nearly 11 hours.

After those strandings, Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel recommended that airlines be required to set a limit on the time passengers have to wait out travel delays inside an airplane.

A year ago, the Bush administration proposed airlines be required to have contingency plans for stranded passengers, but the proposal didn’t include a specific time limit on how long passengers could be keptwaiting. It was denounced as toothless by consumer advocates.

Information for this article was contributed by Joan Lowy, Harry R. Weber and Suzanne Gamboa of The Associated Press and by Noel E. Oman of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/22/2009

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