Steph3n

every time I have seen such delay they allow phones. My phone allows internet, I'd be calling the airport(looked up on internet) and maybe the police if waiting this long without allow to leave the plane and find my own way, it is quite frankly: unjust imprisonment!

there is no reason for keeping people locked up like this for 9 hours, in fact if I were sitting on the ground and phones weren't allowed, after 2 hours I'd be on the phone anyway, kick me off the plane, PLEASE!!!!!

pptp

Thank you! Any company that hires a subcontractor does so with the explicit expectation that said subcontractor will conduct business in a professional and responsible manner without much or any supervision. That's the whole point of the concept. While I have conceded that he who hires the sub may have some liability, I still maintain that there's only so much the hirer can/should do to babysit the sub. That's supposedly why you hire particular subs, because they can be relied upon to act autonomously on a similar level as the hirer. When the sub goes awry, the hirer gets the shaft too since their name is on the subs work, but it isn't their fault that bad judgment was used.

channa

Nonsense. With such a large contract, CO most certainly has some pull with ExpressJet. It may not be via ownership, but if CO is not happy with them, ExpressJet will most certainly respond, or they risk not being renewed.

CO could have made a policy that if tarmac delay > x hours, then page our Ops people, or whatever.



I feel bad for CO, but not because of ExpressJet's actions. They sell the tickets, the plane has their name, they're responsible to an extent.

That said, I feel bad for CO because they've had a pretty bad run over the past year. The DEN incident, the BUF crash, the GIG turbulence/injuries, and now this.

It's a pretty bad run.

MIA-SAT

Anyone care to guess the half-life of the efforts on the Passenger Bill of Rights statements that result from this incident? I give it a week and the REAL sheeple factor will come back again. The statements on this law come out again and again. Maybe we will get some token hearings again, and it will die, again.

Expect to hear the following in the upcoming weeks: "Gee, we need a law on this." Followed by "Ooh, you libruls and regulationists want to interefere in how business works by forcing inflexible rules on the airline industry." Then expect to hear that the airlines can better do this with voluntary regulations. Then we will hear the refrain "How can you impose this rule on the struggling airlines in this economic climate?" Then there will be a flow of political contributions from Houston, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta through their PACs to members of Congress. Then the issue goes away for a while.

I see the sheeple comments earlier in this thread. The real sheeple are those of us who let the airlines influence their way out of this problem again and again.

SAT Lawyer

Legally, it very well may be their fault due to settled principles of vicarious liability.

Practically and morally, it may be their fault as well due to bad judgment in selecting the subcontractor, bad judgment in defining and specifying the roles and responsibilities of the subcontractor, and/or bad judgment in supervising the activities of the subcontractor.

channa is right: CO can insist that ExpressJet follow specific practices and procedures including its own as a condition of their agreement including specific practices and procedures for the treatment of passengers following diversions.

OPFlyer

Don't forget about the two UNAMs who were 'misplaced.'

radonc1

Expressjet is CO in name only. They are a subcontractor of CO, and have their own ops and staff. Last week I had several flights to and from STL and was on both COEx and Chautauqua. Each airline had a flight where a crew-member or members did not show up and were not to be found. Each time the parent company (CO) had nothing to do with the problem, it was the subcontracting company which had to go out and find replacement crews. That took hours to do, and many people missed their connections (some to once a day flights). It wasn't CO's fault but you can bet that the bad taste left in many mouths was blamed on CO.

I think that if we find out who the CAP was on this flight, we will discover that he is quite young and inexperienced in these matters. Someone older and with more experience would have given up many hours earlier.

Finally, I agree with Channa. CO will get all the blame. However, I disagree that CO will be able to do much about it. They probably have a lot less leverage over these incidents than one may think. The real pressure should be put where it belongs, on the feeder airlines.

Lehava

I work with clients who have subcontractors all the time, and there are two very different sub scenarios...one where you have your sub manage the business and act as their own agent...and hence their own responsibility. And a second where you use the sub as one of your agents and represent to the public that you are providing the service (but are using others to get it done). This falls into the 2nd, as many posters have said, when CO slaps its name on the side of the plane it doesnt matter who is flying the plane, it is CO's problem. Most of the flying public has no clue these little regionals are not the airline they booked with. CO needs to make this right for people and guarantee it never happens again. And if doing that means they break their relationship with ExpressJet then so be it. But this one in the end falls to CO.

KD5MDK

I work in customer service for a company that has both in house and contracted contact center employees. At no point would it begin to be acceptable to suggest that at any point we could begin to say to a customer that the reason we are not responsible for their poor experience is because they interacted with a vendor agent. They have their own managers, their own chain of command, but we take full responsibility for their actions.

johdhj

I respectfully disagree.

The RJ services wear the Continental livery and has the Continental name on the fuselage.

It's like this: Suppose I had a moving company, and you paid my company to move you from point A to Point B. I couldn't do this economically with my trucks, so I ask a smaller company to move you. To make it look "official" and "seamless", I paint the smaller company's trucks with my company logo, and allow their employees to wear my uniform.

At the end of the day, I will be held responsible. I cannot say "Oh, I'm sorry your stuff didn't make it to your new house, but I can't refund your money. That's the contract company's fault, take it up with them."

hughw

As others have said CO probably is not legally at fault, and they have little control over operations. And they will be blamed. But they can't have it both ways. It's fine to code share, but when you let a subcontractor put your name on the plane, boarding pass, etc., you are doing it to "show the flag" and spread your operations so that the public thinks you are larger and have more coverage than you actually have. When things go wrong, you will be blamed, and you should be blamed, because you should be making your subcontractor meet your standards. ANd if they don't, there should be hell to pay.

,

sbm12

Legally you can if the contract you sign with the customer permits such a shift of liability. I am pretty sure that legally the CoC permits such shifting of blame at all the US-based airlines that have express ops. That is one of the reasons why they are required to disclose the operator of flights, not just the code that you are purchasing.

From a business perspective, of course, it is horribly foolish. But that doesn't mean it is not legally permissible, which is generally what "held responsible" means.

DukeBBFan

While I agree this is a serious fault on the part of the carrier, don't make it sound worse than it was. Accoring to flights stats this flight arrived in Rochester at 12:26 AM. Accoring to the passenger they finally entered the terminal at 6 AM. This means they were "imprisoned" for a period of 5 1/2 hours, not nine as stated in the article. Exagerating doesn't help your cause.

MIA-SAT

Rules 3 and 18 of CO's contract of carriage make it liable for Express Jet service on a ticket purchased from CO. That is the good news. The bad news is that Rule 28D exempts Co from liability for delay, or punitive, consequential or special damages and Rule 28d4 extents these protections to agents and employees in their scope of employment. So if you are passanger stuck on the tarmac for 9 hours maybe you can get your ticket refunded and a dollar from CO, but I am having trouble thinking of much of anything else you are going to get of CO.

Beckles

I don't think it's unreasonable at all that CO monitor what is going on with its Express carriers, quite frankly to not know what is happening on flights they pay for, schedule, sell, and market is inexcusable.
This simply ignores the fact that ExpressJet works for CO, they are hardly equal partners, so your analogy is simply not valid.
To say that CO "simply has a licensing agreement" is a gross understatement of the relationship I believe. Here is how ExpressJet describes the relationship in their annual report: