Originally Posted by
cordelli
Prohibits airlines from scheduling chronically delayed flights, subjecting those who do to DOT enforcement action for unfair and deceptive practices;
Not sure what they call a chronically delayed flight.
More than 30 minutes lat 50% of the time in the previous month.
Originally Posted by
stupidhead
You know what's deceptive? Being stuck on the tarmac for 3 hours when the flight itself is less than 3 hours long. The limit should be 3 hours or the length of block time, whichever is shorter.
Completely unmanageable for a number of flights in the DCA-BOS corridor. A 45 minute penalty box wait at DCA is quite common in the afternoon when heading up to LGA or EWR and the flight is only about 40 minutes. But the alternative is to essentially never offer the flights since there is no way to guarantee a <40 minute taxi time. And while it would be nice to think that such service could be replaced with high-speed rail that isn't likely to happen in the near future. Put PHL-LGA or PHL-DCA in there and the taxi requirement is even harder to meet.
This is one of those things that the "consumer watchdog" groups are going to claim is fantastic, right up until they see the actual impact. More canceled flights and passengers sleeping on airport floors instead of being delayed on a plane.
I'm happy for some of the provisions. They require airlines to publish more on-time performance details throughout their booking engines. And they will force airlines to avoid chronic delay flights, though it isn't clear if just changing the flight number every month solves that problem.
But the 3 hour rule really isn't the godsend that people seem to hope it will be. I'm not looking forward to being #4 in line at 2:55 and having to abort the trip and cancel the flight because we might go over the 3:00 magic number.
How many flights are operated daily? There were only 631 instances in the first half of the year. That is a minuscule fraction of flights and passengers that are affected. Sure, it sucks to be one of them but taking that out on the rest of the traveling public seems like a pretty bad way to deal with the problem.
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thewan...a-3-hour-rule/