"3-hour tarmac rule may strand more U.S. fliers"
 

Posted at this was reported in a hub-city newspaper, so we could see a lot of this. I'll buy into this logic. I flew in Feb during the big weather, and following the bucket availability showed that bumps and cx could be stranded for days. Great for MR departure cities (just book out until the mess clears), total mess for returns and for people who "need" to be somewhere.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100...re-U.S.-fliers

Dallas -- New government rules make it less likely that you'll be stranded for hours on the ground inside an airplane this summer.

But could you be grounded for days instead?

With planes expected to be full this summer, bumped travelers will have difficulty finding a seat on a later flight.

"The misery index for airline passengers is definitely going to go up," says David Stempler, an aviation lawyer and president of the Air Travelers Association.

A lot of meaningless hype by the airlines IMO.

A couple of years ago I was flying BWI -> MSP sometime in the summer; weather at BWI was clear as a bell, but 175 miles to the west there was a line of summer storms and due to reroutes/congestion ATC imposed a ground hold.

NW Captain from the gate explained the situation, said he wanted to taxi out to get in line and wait and asked passengers if anyone had a problem with doing so. No one did, we taxied out, waited 1 hour and ATC hold was lifted and on our way.

This is how it is supposed to work. 3 hours to return to gate is entirely reasonable. The airlines brought the rule on themselves by irresponsible behavior.

Typical
 

At the risk of this becoming an OMNI/PR thread, I think it's typical fear-mongering.

It's how big corporations convince normal people that the corporation's interests are really their own.

"Being trapped on an airplane for 6 hours is for your own good."

A big "Screw Off" to any airline who even tries to say this with a straight face.

Please don't buy into their rhetoric. They want to make their lives easier by being unfair to you, at the expense of your discomfort.

Don't forget that the largest airline (NW) at this hub-city airport wrote the book on tarmac delays with an epic 8-hour ordeal in a snowstorm. The successor (DL) to that airline is now trying to weasel out of full compliance with the new tarmac-delay rules.

This is just corporate scaremongering.

I believe the government ran ATC system is more to blame then the airlines'.

Perhaps the airlines should rethink clogging up the NYC airspace with mucho CRJs and a lot of crappy DCA<->LGA shuttle flights @:-) :D

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I always figured if I got stuck that long, I would have a "medical" situation requiring immediate attention.

+1

The problem runs deeper than just the airline. The "system" makes it unattractive for a pilot to interrupt their place in the departure queue among a myriad of other problems that all contribute.

Of the thousands of flights ops that take place every day the media has highlighted a handful of failures and our gov't has applied a "solution" just to appease the public without really addressing the problem. However in some of the extreme cases the airline or pilot could have/should have sucked it up and done better.

Absolutely I think the airlines will now pull the plug on certain flights rather than risk the penalties provided under the 3 hour law. If that occurs too often, the gov't will apply another quick fix with new CX rules and penalties once again not addressing the underlying problems.

Perhaps the public should accept fewer daily flights, less convenient and longer connections and more milk runs to get here from there.

Yes $27,500 per pax on the plane is quite expensive. Does the pax get any of that.....nope just the government which allowed the plane to pushback and taxi which got stuck on the taxi way.
:-:US ATC Best In Class:-:

This is not a DL specific topic and I am moving it to Newsstand.

RSSrsvp - Moderator

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Actually, they will use the fines to lower our taxes. Yeah, what am I thinking.

Personally I think we are gonna get the raw end of this "3 hour rule" deal. There have been so many times that my aircraft has missed its "wheels up" time because we were waiting for people to board the aircraft and the flight ends up cancelling. I have been in JFK where there was a massive thunderstorm and we were stuck out on the taxiway for over 3 hours while our aircraft was getting pounded by heavy rain and shook by thunder. Sorry, I don't want the ground crew and the jetway operator to get struck by lightening. Sure I may not be comfortable on an aircraft, but at least there are no people potentially getting hurt because the airlines are forced to make sure the aircraft has returned within this amount of time or the airline gets fined huge amounts of money.

This is another reason why big government is bad. But thats a different discussion for a different thread.

zz

Who set the amount of slots per hour? Who released these aircraft off the gates?

If this rule was not in place, would you want to have been on a plane on the taxiway at JFK last week when this announcement came over the PA: "Folks, there is a volcano slowing up traffic to Heathrow, we're just going to sit here till it clears up"? :eek:

It's not the government's decision to "allow" an airline to push back & taxi. Ground operations at a number of airports -- e.g. Delta has its own control tower at CVG -- are controlled by the airlines. It is the airline and ultimately the captain that decides when & where each plane goes; the government's (FAA's) responsibility is only to see that they operate safely within the available resources.