The Star's Tuesday editorial

From January through July, more than 770 U.S. commercial airline flights have been stuck on the ground waiting to take off, with passengers confined aboard for more than three hours.

A decade ago, in one of the more famous of the flight-delay cases, a winter storm in Detroit stranded hundreds of people for up to eight and a half hours. Last month, passengers aboard on a jet in Minnesota were trapped overnight. Usually, the cause for these delays is bad weather — planes fill with passengers and queue for takeoff, with the hope the weather will improve. When it doesn’t, they sit.

As these cases continue to appear in the news, many are concluding that it’s time for Congress to legislate. Some observers call for a three-hour limit on how long a plane can be idled with passengers aboard, an uncomfortable delay even for healthy travelers.

Industry and federal transportation officials should quickly come up with workable solutions before lawmakers resort to a one-size-fits-all rule.

Some airlines and airports are making progress. In Allentown, Pa., airport officials bought a school bus and wheelchair lift for passengers who want to deplane after a long delay.

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport acquired a catering truck that rises up to the plane’s cabin level for passengers in wheelchairs who need to exit rather than endure a longer wait. That airport also bought a covered mobile stairway and buses to take passengers to the terminal.

At Kansas City International Airport, officials encourage airlines not to keep people cooped up for long periods, and will make empty gates available, if airlines need them, to allow passengers off airplanes.
American Airlines tries to get people off planes after four hours.

Continental uses buses to transport people who want to leave.

But some industry observers bemoan the lack of a comprehensive effort to protect passengers. Robert Crandall, former CEO and chairman of AMR Corp. and American Airlines, told The Wall Street Journal: “Airlines should have led the way in laying out a program.”

The Air Transport Association, an industry lobbying group, opposes the proposed three-hour limit.

It argues that this would result in an unacceptable number of cancelled flights, with vast numbers of passengers marooned in stop-over cities, unable to immediately find seats to their final destination.

“We don’t disagree we need to find better ways to service airplanes during delays,” said David Castelveter, Air Transport Association vice president for communications. “We’re working on ways to make this better, and the numbers show we’re making it better.”

But as he acknowledges, a great deal more must be done. As Crandall noted, the bottom line is that “you don’t need to trap people in airplanes for six and seven hours.”