Passenger-rights advocates won a major victory Monday when the Transportation Department announced a rule to let passengers stuck inside stranded planes disembark after three hours.
The rule, which will take effect in late April and applies only to domestic flights, prohibits airlines from letting an aircraft remain on an airport tarmac for more than three hours without deplaning passengers.
Exceptions are allowed for safety or security, or when air-traffic controllers notify a pilot in command that returning to a passenger terminal would disrupt airport operations.
The rule came as a pleasant surprise to consumer advocates who had grown frustrated that a bill in Congress to help stuck passengers was stalled.
“We will comply with the new rule even though we believe it will lead to unintended consequences — more canceled flights and greater passenger inconvenience,” says James May, the association’s president and CEO. “The requirement of having planes return to the gates within a three-hour window or face significant fines is inconsistent with our goal of completing as many flights as possible.”
Last month, the Transportation Department for the first time fined airlines for leaving passengers stuck on a tarmac.
Continental Airlines and its regional airline partner, ExpressJet, were fined $100,000 for keeping passengers on a plane overnight at the Rochester, Minn., airport in August. Mesaba Airlines, which handled ground operations for the flight, was fined $75,000.
Other provisions of the rule:
•It requires airlines to provide adequate food and water and operating restrooms for passengers delayed for two hours, as well as any necessary medical attention.
• It prohibits airlines from scheduling chronically delayed flights.
•It requires that airlines designate an employee to monitor the effects of flight delays and cancellations, give consumers information on where to file complaints and respond “in a timely and substantive fashion” to complaints.
•It requires airlines to display flight delay information on their websites for all domestic flights.
•It prohibits airlines from retroactively applying changes to their contracts of carriage — the conditions passengers agree to when buying tickets — that “could have a significant negative impact” on consumers who have already bought tickets.
“Airline passengers have rights, and these new rules will require airlines to live up to their obligation to treat their customers fairly,” says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
The new rules are supported by business-travel groups and passengers who have experienced lengthy tarmac delays.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2009-12-21-tarmac-strandings-limit-3-hours_N.htm
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