Bobster

They were in the air for 3 hours and 45 minutes, after departing more than an hour late. They sat the ground for 8 hours and 10 minutes.

stratofortress

I reckon that's why the good lord gave us those "lawyers" that advertise in the yellow pages...

hillrider

Just because you're within duty time doesn't mean that you're fit to fly: pilots have an "IMSAFE" checklist for this (I'm a private pilot), but you can guess what happens to the career of pilots who claim unfit way too many times. The FAA put into effect duty time rules to prevent airlines from abusing their power by working pilots too much. No such rules (yet) against passenger abuse, though.

dayone

Apparently at the keyboard, since you're averaging almost 11 posts a day.

MACH81

You cannot compare the US market and the finnish market and air traffic.I guess I don't even have to list the differences. I agree that often airports and airlines are not prepared for rough weather while some others, abroad work better.But a recent storm in europe had LH cancel almost all flights out of FRA, also before the storm hit.Same thing happened to BA with the fog.

I get more pissed off when I get to ORD or DFW and there's no free gate and I sit on the tarmac missing one or 2 connections.

I must add that sometimes airlines play the weather card so that they can avoid paying compensation and all and that is unacceptable.

oklAAhoma

Yes, although it was weather at DFW, not BNA, that caused the problem. I had booked the first flight of the morning BNA-DFW, but it was cancelled because the plane hadn't arrived the night before. The weather disruption was so widespread neither the EXP desk nor the airport TA could find us another route home, not even on another carrier.

oklAAhoma

I've experienced several 3-4 hour delays, although by no means have they occurred regularly, more like once every few years or so. (Knock on wood.)

The most memorable:
DFW-SEA. I was PLT at the time and had chosen not to upgrade (for some idiotic reason). Summer storms at DFW were causing delays. We sat on the tarmac for 4+ hours waiting for our turn to take off after the 50 or so other planes that were ahead of us in the queue.

DFW-COS. Again I hadn't upgraded. IIRC it was one of the last years I was still PLT and it helped convince me to shoot for EXP. Again storms at DFW slowed everything down and we waited 3.5+ hours to take off.

DFW-ORD-BRU. We were delayed leaving DFW for 3+ hours because the wind at ORD was causing problems. According to the pilot only half the runways at ORD were available for landing, so flights were being held at the departure airports. I had scheduled a long connection at ORD, but we ended up just missing the flight to BRU anyway.

?-DFW. (I had been in Austria but I absolutely cannot remember the route I took to get home.) At any rate, we were diverted to IAH due to weather problems at DFW. We weren't allowed off the plane for 3+ hours after landing as the pilot hoped to head to DFW when the weather cleared. Finally, sometime after 10pm, the decision was made to cancel the flight for the evening and try again the next morning. I had already had more than I could take, so I rented a car one way and drove to DFW. (The amusing thing was at the rental return I ran into a guy from Texas who had been diverted to OKC. We joked about our bad luck as he would have much prefered a diversion to IAH, and OKC would have been more convenient for me.)

stranded passenger

If you are talking about flight #1348 from SFO to AUS on Dec. 29, 2006, it was in the air about 3 1/2 hours. I was a passenger on that flight and it left approx 1 1/2 hours late, which means it left about 7:30 a.m. SFO time and it landed in AUS approx. 1:00 p.m. AUS time (11:00 a.m. SFO time). That is approx. 3 1/2 hours of flying time and it did not circle.... it landed when it got there as I recall.

Check out the stories from the passengers on flight #1348 and others at our site which is
www.strandedpassengers.blogspot.com

stranded passenger

I was a stranded passenger on this flight (#1348 from SFO to DFW diverted to AUS on December 29, 2006). Check out our blog site for stories about what happened to us at www.strandedpassengers.blogspot.com.

Yes, it's true about the food, water and toilets, CS in Austin and Dallas. It was HELL and yes, I got a AA voucher (not cash) that has to be used one year from the date it was issued. Yes, I got a form apology letter from AA. Yes, I got a phone call from AA executive office checking to see if I got my missing bag and voucher. AND YES, WE DO NEED A PASSENGER'S BILL OF RIGHTS!!! http://www.petitiononline.com/airline/petition.html

PresRDC

Your point?

These are two completely different issues. What makes sense in one case may not make sense in another.

Bobster

Thanks. I messed up the time zones.

So it turns that #1348 wasn't too different from my diversion experience: 6 hour flight + 5 hour diversion. About the same as 3.5 hour flight + 8 hour diversion . Except in my case the toilets were working, an admittedly huge difference.

On my diversion, no passengers go upset, and it didn't make the news.

Diversions are a hazard that air travelers must deal with. Just like broken wagon wheels where a hazard for the pioneers who spent 6 months doing what we now do in 6 hours. Too bad the pioneers had nobody to sue when the oxen died.

Still no excuse for the broken toilet. I'm not defending that at all.

PresRDC

I don't doubt for a second that your experience was awful and I comend your efforts to rectify what you see as a broken process, but your problem and the problem of the other passengers advocating for change is a failure to see the big picture here.

Fewer than 70 AA aircraft were affected that day and most of those did not experience anything close to what you experienced. Your flight was newsworthy for one reason -- it was a rare event. The vast majority of people flying that day were not subjected to what you were subjected to.

In the balance of interests, the interests of less than 200 people do not trump the interests of the majority of people who were not as badly affected and who could find rules such as the ones you are advocating cause more problems than they resolved.

Simply put, the system is no where near as broken as your experience makes it sound.

sipples

I agree. It's more broken.

Frankly the notion that there should be a set of minimum, legally enforced standards for the treatment of airline passengers is hardly radical. We have such quality standards for a wide variety of products and services, such as beef and credit cards, and there are already some airline standards, such as the FAA's cabin airflow standards.

PresRDC

No, it is not. The system works very well overall. The vast majority of flights operate on time. Even when weather affects a major hub, the system continues to function (albeit with less efficency). The AUS flight was a very rare experience. It was absolutely handled poorly, but that is not a reason to overhaul a system that does a pretty good job of moving large numbers of people across the country and around the world safely and almost always on or close to schedule.

Putting rules in place that adequate food and liquids are provided and requiring adequate toilet facilities are one thing, but instituting hard and fast rules related to operational issues (such as the time limit issue) restrict operational flexibility and will ultimately result in more passengers experiencing delays when aircraft are out of sequence.

The AUS experience does not warrant such a response. It is classic overreaction to a sensational media story.

krug

^ Quite right. All this does is set a generic standardised rule as a sop to the media (and no doubt to busybody lawyers circling for a class action), which does not take into account the exceptional circumstances of the delay in question.

Personally, I have been on a plane waiting for several hours (max was three and a half, at a diversion airport after a four hour delay on original departure from LHR ), and would much rather be stuck on the plane than not getting there at all, subject to the limitations of crew hours.