Gov’t imposes 3-hour limit on tarmac strandings – Yahoo! News

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 4:35 am

WASHINGTON – Stinky toilets, crying babies, airless cabins — the Obama administration said Monday passengers don’t have to take it any more. It ordered airlines to let people get off planes delayed on the ground 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. 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, more inconvenience for passengers.
LaHood, however, dismissed that concern.
Transportation officials, using 2007 and 2008 data, said there are an average of 1,500 domestic flights a year carrying about 114,000 passengers that are delayed more than three hours.
Last month, 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. 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.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she thought the 3-hour rule would not cause any problems for security. Airlines could be fined $27,500 per passenger for each violation of the three-hour 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. Tarmac strandings have mostly involved domestic flights, but the department is studying extending the three-hour limit to international flights, LaHood said.
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. Airlines will also 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. Hanni, who called the rules a Christmas miracle, was stuck on an American Airlines jet in Austin, Texas, for over nine hours in December 2006 when storms forced the closure of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, stranding more than 100 planes.

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. After those incidents, DOT Inspector General Calvin Scovel recommended that airlines be required to set a limit on the time passengers have to wait out travel delays grounded 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 can be kept waiting. AP Airlines Writer Harry R. Weber contributed to this report from Atlanta. Department of Transportation http://www.dot.gov

Air Transport Association http://www.airlines.org

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