Do airline passengers really need a "bill of rights?" The airlines say no. Ask the 47 passengers of Continental Flight 2816 and you might get a different answer.
The 50-seat commuter jet took off at 9:30 pm Friday from Houston, bound for Minneapolis. However, after a two hour flight, it was diverted to Rochester, Minnesota because of severe weather.
ExpressJet, the carrier operating the plane for Continental, told a Minneapolis TV station that the plane's crew had reached the limit on its flying time. That required locating another crew and flying it to Rochester.
Meanwhile, the passengers of flight 2816 had to stay on the plane. The airline told the station that it couldn't allow them to get off because of security. The TSA screeners had already gone home for the night so, if the passengers deplaned, the airline could not legally allow them to get back on.
Passengers remained on the plane overnight, finally getting off at 6:30 am, once security personnel had returned to their posts. But Rochester airport officials say the passengers were needlessly inconvenienced.
"They wouldn't have had to go through security. They could have come into the airport," airport manager Steve Legve told the Rochester Post-Bulletin.
ExpressJet fired back that airport ground crews never mentioned that option.
The 47 passengers, who describe their night aboard the jet as filled with crying babies and the unmistakable smell of overused toilets, finally got back on board the plane around 9:30 am and arrived at their original destination of Minneapolis about 11:00 am, about 11 hours after their scheduled arrival time.
Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration's Bureau of Transportation Statistics, indicates that passengers on 278 aircraft suffered through tarmac delays of 3 hours or more in June. Even that figure, however, fails to include international flights or those of many small regional carriers.
"These numbers belie the airlines' contention that, if they're only given time and flexibility to do so, they'll reduce tarmac delays voluntarily," said Kate Hanni, founder and Executive Director of FlyersRights.org, a consumer organization representing airline passengers.
Bipartisan legislation establishing an Airline Passengers Bill of Rights was introduced in Congress in 2007 but has not been enacted. In the Senate, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have authored a bill to ensure that travelers can no longer be unnecessarily trapped on airplanes for excessive periods of time or deprived of food, water or adequate restrooms.
A similar bill was introduced in the House. The measures are in response to highly publicized incidents of passengers held aboard an Amereican Airlines plane in Austin, Texas, in December 2006 and the Valentine's Day 2007 ice storm that resulted in a similar fate for Jet Blue passengers at New York's JFK Airport.
