Originally Posted by
Analise
This article shows clearly that airports need to be held to the same financial penalties as the airlines for delays of more than 3 hours. What is it....$27,000 per person that Congress mandated to be charged solely to the airlines? Time for airports to be included in these penalties to give THEM incentive to get people off the planes. ^
If the article has correct information in it, then BOS should also be bearing the cost of some of the fine levied against BDL, not to mention New York area ATC.
Start fining the airports and the next time, BDL will just say "Sorry, send your plane somewhere else, not here" and then no one is a winner.
This was a corner case cause by a freak event that was outside of the control of most parties. It wasn't a chronic situation that no one was attempting to resolve that needed a trip behind the woodshed.
99.9% reliable systems cost a whole heck of a lot more than 99% systems and so on. Given the rarity of these events, it'd be more cost effective for the airport to just pay the fine each time, than perform the upgrades and maintain the new equipment to get another 9 on the uptime.
They didn't fine USAir or Sully for landing in the river (at least as far as I know) -- This case doesn't warrant fines either. Learn from it, and move on.