Airlines must let passengers stuck in airplanes stranded on the tarmac get off after 3 hours, the Transportation Department today ordered. They’re also now only allowed to starve you for 2 hours, after which they must serve pizza or a reasonable facsimile. Toilets must be functional during the entire time as well.
In addition, airlines are prohibted from scheduling flights that are always always delayed.
Airlines that violate the rules will be subject to some sort of government enforcement action.
The new rules may not save anyone any holiday travel headaches; the regulations don’t go into effect for 120 days.
U.S. Limits Tarmac Waits for Passengers to Three Hours [NYT via Jeff Jarvis]
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“Airlines that violate the rules will be subject to some sort of government enforcement action.”
Bad airline! Bad airline! No! NO!
{airline gets bapped on the nose with rolled up newspaper}
Actually I don’t think the so called government enforcement action will be so severe.
Imagine a TSA guy out on the tarmac bapping the nose of the airplane with the newspaper.
Or at least climbing on the nose of the aircraft
Mommy! Mommy! What us that strange man doing to that airplane?
Don’t look dear, I’ll explain it when you’re older.
Not again! That guy from the Tub Stackers Administration already did this at O’Hare and damaged a whole bunch of static and pitot ports int he process.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5613502&page=1
$27,500 fine per person for violations… if the loopholes don’t save them. Sounds like quite a risk. I’d like to see Congress make a law though.
Airlines will be forced to agree to follow the law while blankly staring at the ground wondering how they ever got into this position.
This issue has been going on so long that there was actually an episode of LA Law about it.
probably just a fine, but it is better than nothing especially for the worst offenders.
However, the penalty for passengers complaining to airline personnel is life in Guantanamo without trial.
Quite timely. The other day, passengers on an Air Jamaica flight leaving Baltimore got stranded when the plane got stuck in ice. It pulled away from the gate at 8:35. They didn’t get out of there until 3 or so. Some passengers called TV stations and even the cops to get the word out.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bal-md.snow20dec20,0,5298133.story
The rule only applies to domestic flights. As for international ones:
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.
And, of course, Air Jamaica is not a U.S. carrier.
I’m not sure I see the problem with the Air Jamaica flight. It got STUCK IN THE ICE and couldn’t be returned to the gate, despite attempts to do so. I see no “wrong” that was committed there, as it wasn’t a deliberate refusal to let the passengers deplane.
Theres these great things, called ‘portable stairs’ that can be used to deplain people without needing a jetway. Works well at a lot of airports.
First one needs to get said portable stairs and busses out on to the taxiway in the middle of a major snow event, the 6th largest snow event ever recorded in Baltimore/Washington’s history. If a plane gets stuck in the snow, what is the liklihood that a bus and pick-up truck will not get stuck? Not always an easy task when by 9:00 in the morning there was 7 inches of snow on the ground. and it was around that time when the heaviest snow was coming down (this in a city that is lucky to see 7 inches of snow in an entire year, let alone 7 inches of snow in one day.
In my neck of the woods it’s called being prepared.
An airplane as you might not know makes a rather clumsy vehicle when on the ground. Airplanes are made to fly. They don’t really make them for moving around on the ground a lot. They are designed to taxi from here to there or to park it someplace. On the other hand a big truck like say… a snow plow, now those things are made for plowing snow and don’t make good airplanes. Now one could argue that a ladder or stairs are dangerous in the snow. This is where I introduce you to salt. Salt melts ice. It’s weird like that. Now add in something like a bus or another vehicle capable of driving a bunch of people on a newly plowed and salt covered ice melted tarmack and you can almost see the outcome.
I’d like to introduce you to _hi_. _hi_ makes comments that are awesome. Its weird like that.
You just can’t win around here. If it were the other way around, I’m sure you’d be complaining about how the poor passengers were forced by the big, bad airline into the unforgiving snow and ice to fight for their lives…
The article notes that it was stuck on the runway. Getting stairs out there would probably be rather difficult, since the runways at BWI aren’t exactly right next to the terminals.
The passengers didn’t get food or even a straight answer about how long they would be stuck there. It was probably a mistake to even let the flight try to go as scheduled, though a few did take off that day. At the end of it, I’m not sure if they even got any compensation.
And in any case, these rules wouldn’t have done anything for them, since they don’t extend to foreign carriers.
This is great. Though it still kind of boggles my mind that it took a government mandate for airlines to treat human beings this ‘well’.
Exactly. It’s horror stories like the people being trapped for hours on the flight that had the human waste slowly creeping down the aisle that make me laugh at people who truly believe that corporations can regulate themselves, that they will take care of the customers and not try to actively screw them over, etc. Even with government regulation and intervention they still treat people like shit.
The feces was allowed to remain in the aisle. If a passenger tried to move forward through the cabin, he would’ve been tackled, held by the TSA and put on a no-fly list.
I’d say the airlines treat shit better than passengers.
This mess originated with Homeland Security rules that gave Airlines legal authority to treat any passenger that complains about anything occurring inside of an aircraft as a terrorist suspect.
So you basically had to sit down, shut up, and take any crap that a flight crew subjectively decides to dump on you regardless of the situation. If you object to the flight crew for being treated that way, you risk being arrested when you deplane at you destination.
just in time for the hot months!
Airline then gets fined, and begs for government bailout.
The circle, of life.
grrrrr. I hate the nannerpuss. (Nothing against you of course… but that picture, *shivers*)
Aww, but its so friendly!
But…..but…..it likes pancakes!
Pizza? Isn’t that a poor choice, in that many people can’t eat it?
As long as I get my kosher, vegan, pizza that’s fat and gluten free, I’ll be fine.
My religion is deeply offended if anyone consumes pizza without copious amounts of meat and non-organic vegetables on it.
Good thing God is Dead, and no one should care. Just sayin’
As a member of PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals) I must agree with your outrage.
Heh, I’ve got some 8″ cardboard cake rounds that I could flog with some green beans for you.
The post says a facsimile of a pizza is acceptable. i don’t think there are dietary restrictions on faxes.
According to the actual text of the regulation (DOT-OST-2007-0022) which can be found at http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#documentDetail?R=0900006480a6e352 the regulation would actually call for:
>>an assurance that the air carrier
>>will provide adequate food and potable water no later than two hours after the aircraft leaves the
>>gate (in the case of a departure) or touches down (in the case of an arrival) if the aircraft remains
>>on the tarmac, unless the pilot-in-command determines that safety or security requirements
>>preclude such service;
This is further clarified:
>>The Department would consider snack foods
>>such as pretzels or granola bars that carriers typically provide on flights to suffice as “adequateâ€
>>food. We have clarified in this rule, as suggested by at least one commenter, that the water
>>required under our rule must be “potable,†i.e. drinking water.
The pizza stuff was an attempt at humor by the Consumerist, and is in fact wrong. Nothing more than snack food is actually required.
FTA: “The regulation provides exceptions only for safety or security or if air traffic control advises the pilot in command that returning to the terminal would disrupt airport operations.”
Seems like a loophole big enough for a 747 to taxi through.
i was just thinking that.
almost ANYTHING can be filed under safety.
just like the current “it’s the weather. in oregon. which is nowhere near your departure city or destination. but there’s bad weather somewhere in the world and we are totally blaming this flight delay on THAT”
i can’t wait for the news report: “the flight crew advised that a piece of laminate on the bathroom counter was slightly peeling up on the rear inside corner. this provided a safety hazard to the passengers, forcing us to hold them on the tarmac for 17 hours while someone located a tube of superglue”
ATC wouldn’t often say that. Usually it’s the airline that doesn’t want to deplane anyone. The airport itself operates on a much better bunch of policies most of the time.
I was mostly focused on the first part of that clause, which catastrophegirl expounded upon nicely. But all ATC would have to say is that they would have to stop one other taxing plane for 3 minutes in order for your plane to return to the gate, and technically it would “disrupt airport operations.”
I wonder who gets to determine “safety” though. It could make a big difference based on who’s allowed to say you can’t deplane due to “security” reasons.
No but the airline will use the “security” loophole, in that there isn’t sufficient security available at the gate in order to deplane. Which is odd, since obviously there was enough security available to get you on the plane.
“Disrupting airport operations” = there are no free gates available which if you have ever arrived early on a flight to your destination you know is true as you sit on the tarmac for a while, losing any time advantage you made up in the air.
yeeesss… but not quite an A380… MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
They also need to give passengers of canceled flights priority. With flights today being so full, your flight gets canceled and their response is that they might be able to get you a seat five days from now. There are people from this weekends storm that are being told the first available seat in on Dec 25th.
Well, I don;t know what the airlines can do about finding seats for passengers from canceled flights, given that most flights are already close to full around the holidays. I’m sure the canceled passengers will have priority as Stand-By passengers, but that’s always a crap shoot as to whether you and you family will be able to get on a flight.
Huh. I guess that’s one way DOT could do it, making a rule. Now some airlines will probably take them to court for overstepping their authority, they’ll get a preliminary injunction and nothing will happen until Congress gets its act together and actually passes a law.
120 days before it takes effect?
Standard practice for when an executive office makes a rule. It’s not legislation, which has much more flexibility in those terms.
I guess its a good thing that my corporate job doesn’t require me to fly often or have too many vacation days… I’ve never been stranded on a tarmac for three hours.
Looks like Dominos will be getting a sweet contract for jetway deliveries.
Domino’s is not pizza.
Just a guess, but I imagine that’s why he bolded “OR a reasonable facsimile.”
Dominos may pass for a reasonable pizza substitute in some parts of the country, but passengers flying out of JFK, LaGuardia and Newark will be spared.
Advanced Pizza Substitute?
A day-old donut and two packets – 1 each of “tamatoy catsup sauce” and “non-dairy creamer” – it doubles as a timekiller do-it-yourself project.
they can’t have non dairy creamer on a plane, can they?
seems it would be like handing angry, impatient people the tools to severely damage the plane.
http://www.madphysics.com/exp/non_dairy_creamer_free_radical.htm
No no no. They take a PICTURe of a pizza, fax it to the pilot (who will of course have a fax machine on hand for just such an occasion) and hand copies to all the passengers. Perhaps they will also waft the odor of cheese and basil through the cabin before not giving anyone any food.
Crackers, ketchup, and pass-around cans of Cheez-Whiz.
So if you were trapped for more than a few hours, you could conceivably break the toilet to make them take you back?
If I were desperate enough, I think i’d try it
It didn’t work in Chuck Palanuik’s Haunted…
Can’t airports build a standalone waiting room on the tarmac that contains vending machines, comfortable seats, and regular bathrooms? The airplane drives you to that standalone waiting room while it waits its turn to take off.
I was wondering that too. Maybe not on the Tarmac, but isolated from the rest of the terminal (maybe just behind an alarmed door? So, that if its cancelled they can enter the regular terminal.), so that they can quickly reboard without security concerns.
…how about a set of steps on all-terrain tires that can be tugged out to a plane on the tarmac so people can just get off and walk/get bussed back to the terminal?
Dulles basically already has these. They’re called mobile lounges (no bathrooms on them, though). They usually use them as shuttles between terminals, but we were on a British Airways 747 on our way back from London a few years ago and they deplaned us straight into the mobile lounges instead of a jetway and then drove us all to the terminal. Probably because it was a full 747 and thus huge, but it is definitely possible to set up a system that doesn’t need an available gate to get passengers off a plane.
Why the delay? The rules themselves sound like a good start.
Enforcement should include a manditory minimum $100,000 fine. I mean, it needs to be clear to the airlines from the start that it is just not worth it to violate the rules. Otherwise they’ll just decide it’s easier to suck up the stern warning than it is to let people get off the plane.
Only $100,000? Chicken feed.
The rules provide for a $27,500 fine per passenger if they don’t comply:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091221/ap_on_bi_ge/us_tarmac_strandings_12
Doesn’t take very many 100-plus passengers in planes breaking the rule to cause the airlines to start complying quickly (almost $3 mil per plane per violation).
Nice. Thanks for the info.
Prohibiting flights that are always delayed may be a problem. Take a look at the list of flights in and out of EWR/JFK/LGA, and by late afternoon almost every flight is delayed. That’s why airlines that fly there build in recovery time into their schedules to make up for expected congestion. Prohibiting always delayed flights will demand wholesale slashing of afternoon and evening flights in and out of NYC.
Does the order prohibit always delayed flights or always late arriving flights (if airlines can’t make their recovery time, that’s a problem)?
Beyond that one concern, this is a positive.
Why exactly is this such a problem for the NYC area, anyway? Seriously, 3 airports and delays still get that bad? This isn’t Kai Tak we’re talking about! Why aren’t flights being moved to Islip if crowding is that bad?
Combination of factors, but with a few major culprits:
1) Winds can be unpredictable in the NYC area, and it take just a few gusts to create a cascade effect
2) Yes, the schedules are overstuffed, but that is partly because of the size of NYC and the traffic that goes up and down the NE corridor. Think of this – even with all these flights, 95 is a parking lot and Amtrak(!) turns a profit. Once the cascade starts, the congestion takes a long time to recover from. And that doesn’t include international flights, for which NYC serves as a major hub.
3) They try to account for delays – you may be late leaving, but the reason your 45 minute DCA-EWR flight is scheduled to take 2 hours is so that they can recover. But, it isn’t always enough. If you are flying in/out NYC, early flights are nearly essential.
4) Who wants to go out to Islip? Really. It’s too far away to be convenient for most people (remember traffic concerns for getting to the airport). Competition means that you want those spots as close to downtown as you can get them. The only saving grace for CO at EWR are the idiots like me who have to be cajoled into even considering any other legacy carrier (and the AirTrain or whatever they call it).
I’m not surprised Amtrak turns a profit on these routes given such conditions for air travel. I really think that most NE Corridor traffic and traffic to upstate/eastern Canada at the very least should be moved out to Islip. It’s not convenient as it is now, but let’s look at Japan; most of its major int’l airports are inconvenient (Tokyo’s International airport is farther from its city center than Islip is from downtown NYC). They built rapid rail links to make this better, why can’t NYC? Run the AirTrain out there fast and it becomes a viable alternative for short-haul and some cross-border traffic (for example, to Toronto). Link it to JFK and LGA by AirTrain. Apart from a few feeders for int’l flights JFK should be all international and LGA should be all domestic medium/long-haul but an AirTrain would make connections go smoothly.
(You’ll notice I don’t mention EWR. This is because I think that airport may be beyond help.)
My last flight from NYC was out of LGA in the afternoon, after I booked it I found it had a 2% on time rating…. Needless to say I wasn’t the lucky 2%. My flight changed gates 6 times (that i know of, I gave up and went to the bar after #5) and was delayed over 2 hours.
The flights are always delayed because the airlines stuff the schedule so full, it cannot possibly be met consistently. They simply fail to build in enough time to account for the almost constant delays.
I guess I better be watching my flights closely. That blurb about they can’t schedule flights that are always “delayed” is bound the shake a few things up for future flights.
The real blame for the majority of tarmac delays should be placed with the outdated ATC system the FAA refuses to replace. There have been plenty of times that my flights have closed out, and either as soon as the last passenger has boarded, the door has closed, the plane has pushed back, or we have taxied the entire way to the runway, and ATC will inform the front-end crew that our destination city will not allow us to take off until a certain time. The airline AND ATC then usually won’t let passengers deplane, because when the takeoff clearance comes, it means right this minute, not 30 minutes from now because you’re waiting for passengers to re-board.
It’s ridiculous, and I’m sure there are better ways to do it, but for now we’re left with ol’ stick-in-the-mud FAA and their insistence that, yes, our computer and operations systems work just fine!
The problem isn’t the ATC system. For the chronically congested NYC-area airports, it is the airlines, who schedule more flights than the runways and taxiways can possibly handle if there is the least little glitch anywhere in the northeast.
When you hear “ATC delay” as a delay reason, it usually means one of two things: 1) The weather sucks, which means required increased plane spacing. 2) There are simply more planes scheduled to come in than the airport/traffic pattern can handle. This happens every time the weather delays (and then lets go) a whole wave of flights.
Every time the FAA tries to limit scheduled flights, the airlines bitch and moan, and get their way.
Thank You CitrusFA for spelling out the exact problem.
FAA wasted more tax payers money then any other gov’t agency and did nothing to do something about the issues. I’ll never forget the idiots blamed the Airlines for delayes and said that airlines should just schedule less flights.
Worse part is that Airlines just take it from FAA without much of opposition. Grow some balls already!
It’s about time! Lets hope that the Transportation Department can and will enforce this new rule better than how the SEC and Fed enforced financial regulation.
Yeah, unless returning the plane to the gate would “disrupt airport operations”.
Nice loophole there, but it gets trotted out every time people are stuck for more than 3 hours.
they will also give you a P.O.W. plaque
That’s good news. We are going back to the good olde days – although pizza (or a reasonable facsimile) isn’t exactly beefsteaks and fixings….
When Englishman Anthony Trollope (his mother was the original ‘trollope’) toured America in 1861 the Lake Michigan boat from Grand Haven to Milwaukee was delayed due to a storm…
…And I was soon informed with considerable energy, that let the boat be kept there as long as it might by the stress of weather, the beefsteaks and apple jam, tea, light fixings and heavy fixings, must be supplied at the cost of the owners of the ship.
“The first supper you pay for,” my informant told me, “because you eat that on your own account. What you consume after that comes out of their doing, because they don’t start; and if it’s 3 meals a day for week,it’s their look out.”
It occurred to me that under such circumstances a captain would be very apt to sail in either foul weather or in fair. – AT
The fine is $27,500 per person… I’d say that’s teeth, if the loopholes don’t eviscerate it.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/21/government-orders-airlines-allow-passengers-stranded-planes/
It’s a shame we have a ‘socialist’ regime willing to interfere with ‘big business’ and ‘capitalism’ in this despicable manner.
(I’m hoping my sarcasm’s coming through, here. Go get ‘em, Obama.)
I’m glad they finally took care of this because if they didn’t someone was going to die eventually. Most likely at my hands if I ended up stuck in an on-ground airplane for four hours.
120 days is quite a long time, and with the East coast weather it looks even worse. So I’ll use the solution from the Department of Aisley Transportation:
1. Make sure you’re seated and your seat belt is buckled up.
2. In the most polite and melodious voice call the closest flight attendant.
3. Still in a polite and sweet tone, ask the FA if you’re allowed to leave the plane.
4. When (s)he says “no”, say thank you with a polite smile and lean back on your seat.
5. Wait for 10 to 15 minutes.
6. Look for the closest FA and in repeat # 2.
7. Repeat #3
8. (S)he’ll repeat # 4
9. Go ahead and repeat from #5 to #8.
10. Ready, now you have yourself more than enough cause to take the airline to court for
kidnapping.
11. Enjoy!
ugghhh, I’m going to be getting on a flight from Sacramento to Co. Springs on Wed. and I’m not looking forward to it at all. I’m going to keep my point-and-shoot cam on me to catch an airline antics on video if we get delayed because of the expected snow in Co Springs that day.