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Nightmare On the Runway

Stranded Airline Passengers Organize after Holiday Delays

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

January 27, 2007

• Appeals Court Rejects NY Passengers Rights Law • Feds Unveil New Airport Policy • Newark Delays Trigger Passenger Rights Bill in NJ • Continental Passengers Fume Over New Tarmac Ordeal • American Strands Another Planeload of Passengers • Congress Wary of Airline Promises • Air Travelers Association Opposes Passenger Bill of Rights • Latest Ice Storm Chips Away at Travelers' Patience • U.S. Air Travel System at the Breaking Point • Long Tarmac Delays Still Common • Winter Weather Wreaks Havoc with United Flights • Feds Want Probe of Airline Strandings • Airline Passenger Bill Of Rights Introduced In Senate • JetBlue Sits Out NY Storm While Others Fly • JetBlue Unveils "Passengers Bill Of Rights" • JetBlue Offers Refunds, Free Tickets To Stranded Passengers • Passengers Organize After American Airlines Stranding --- • More about Travel ...

A horrifying experience for one planeload of passengers may turn out to be a blessing for all air travelers.

American Airlines flight 1348, bound from San Francisco to Dallas-Fort Worth on Dec. 29 sat on an Austin runway for nearly nine hours while fierce but slow-moving thunderstorms pounded the state of Texas.

Food, water, and patience were soon in short supply, along with working toilets.

But passengers had plenty of time to prepare the groundwork for a new Congressional lobbying group called the Coalition for Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights. With consumer-conscious Democrats controlling both houses, passage of legislation seems more likely than it did in 1999.

That was the year the airline industry adopted a voluntary standard that effectively killed a bill created after a Northwest plane was stranded on the tarmac for many hours.

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Furious passengers from the latest fiasco insist the voluntary standard is worthless. They've started a blog called www.strandedpassengers.blogspot.com.

"Enough is enough," said American passenger Kate Hanni in a Jan. 22 press release published by the coalition. "This is not the first time, nor it is likely to be the last, that this kind of degrading treatment is visited on passengers.

"Thousands of legitimate complaints by travelers mistreated by the airlines are regularly dismissed or inadequately addressed by the industry," she fumed.

Now that the legacy carriers are making money again, they do not figure to retain the sympathy of lawmakers who voted them generous subsidies and immunity from lawsuits after their airplanes were used in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In fact, carriers could be in for a rude awakening after legislators collect all the testimony from passengers trapped in grounded planes on New Year's weekend.

Flight 1348, for example, was an hour late leaving San Francisco because of a mechanical problem. Had that delay not occurred, it could have reached DFW before the bad weather arrived. Instead, the MD-80 was diverted to Austin as one of 85 American flights diverted from Dallas that day.

Not until 12 hours after departure from San Francisco could passengers disembark.

American flight 37 from Zurich to Dallas suffered a similar fate, landing at the airport in Tulsa, which did not have the appropriate customs and immigration personnel to clear passengers for entry into the U.S.

By the time the flight finally reached Dallas after a 10-hour wait on the Tulsa tarmac, the Zurich passengers had been on board for 22 hours.

AA flight 1682 from Oklahoma City pushed back from the gate at 2:07 p.m. and sat on the tarmac for eight hours and two minutes before it was cancelled and sent back to the gate.

Austin airport authorities, overwhelmed when 14 planes landed unexpectedly, managed to move flights headed for Chicago or St. Louis but didn't do much for Dallas planes other than deliver food and drinks. The only passengers allowed off flight 1348 were 20 passengers whose final destinations were Austin or San Antonio. Luggage retrieval posed additional problems.

Passengers remaining in their seats claim they suffered from hunger, thirst, unsanitary conditions, and anxiety caused by unfulfilled promises from the captain plus the frustration of watching other planes come and go from the four American gates at the Austin airport.

Witnesses said a woman complained her diabetes medication was packed in her luggage -- the result of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) guidelines limiting liquids in carry-ons -- while a smoker ran out of Nicorette gum. They added that hungry babies screamed incessantly.

Fifteen of the stranded passengers from AA flight 1348 explained their complaints in a letter sent to U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.

The proposed Passenger Bill of Rights would require that airlines:

• Establish procedures for returning passengers to gates during delays so that no plane sits on the tarmac longer than three hours;

• Provide passengers with food, water, sanitary facilities, and medical needs during delays that exceed three hours;

• Publish updated lists of flights delayed at least a half-hour 40 per cent of the time in any given month;

• Compensate bumped passengers or those delayed by cancellations or postponements of more than 12 hours by a refund worth 150 percent of the ticket price;

• Create a passenger review committee, including consumers, with the formal ability to review and investigate complaints.

Though it admitted no wrongdoing, Northwest settled a class-action lawsuit by paying $7.1 million in compensation to more than 7,000 storm-stranded passengers who sat on the Detroit tarmac on Jan. 3, 1999. That action is likely to be used as a precedent in any litigation arising from the American case.

Northwest now refuses to let passengers sit on airport tarmacs more than three hours.

For its part, American apologizes to stranded passengers and sent them vouchers valid for future flights.

According to AA spokesman Tim Wagner, "We have examined our reaction to the weather that day and we have reemphasized areas of our procedures that will help ensure that the situation never happens again."

Industry-wide, flight delays and reports of lost bags have both climbed steadily over the last four years. Staff and service cuts, coupled with congestion in the air and on the ground, have been major contributing factors. In addition, federal rules limit the number of hours flight crews work per day, sometimes making it impossible for delayed flights to take off because the crews have exceeded their allotted time.

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