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Why is it legal to keep passengers waiting on the tarmac more than five hours?

July 9, 2009

tarmac delays
Can you think of a good reason to hold a flight on the tarmac for more than five hours? I can’t.

But the passengers on Mesa Airlines flight 7262 from Washington Dulles to Rochester, NY, on May 29 may well be wondering. According to the Transportation Department, they waited 311 minutes before their flight was canceled and returned to the gate.


A look at the other most-delayed flight shows the the folks on Mesa 7262 were in good company. Two other Mesa flights make the top-five list, along with a Delta Air Lines and American Eagle flight.

The airline apologists among you will look up the weather forecasts for May 29 and, I’m sure, find a perfectly good reason for a delay.

But five hours? Come on.

That shouldn’t be legal.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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23 comments

  • Bill

    It should definitely be illegal, perhaps even crimminal. I don’t agree with it at all..

  • http://travelsabound.blogspot.com/ Maura

    As a former flight attendant, I can tell you that this was one of my worst fears. FAA regulations require that passengers remain seated while planes are planes are in active taxi zones (on tarmac, pushed back from gates). Airport scheduling is an intricate dance, which limits the ability of planes to return to gates once they have pulled away only to discover a long delay ahead.

    While I was in training, rumor of a passenger bill of rights initiative was circulating. Some carriers responded with generic messages about lengthy delays, while other avoided the discussion seeing it as an invitation for law suits.

    Some sort of compromise needs to be struck so that passengers’ basic needs and comfort are better accommodated without jeopardizing safety during long delays.

  • http://www.nomadicmatt.com Nomadic Matt

    I once got stuck on a chicago tarmac for 3 hours!!! It’s not like they don’t know when they are going. I think it’s completely ridiculous. Taxi us back!

  • Andrew

    Nobody should have to sit on a plane that long, especially a little CRJ (as I assume the Mesa out of Dulles was).

    Airports should be required to have available gates to accommodate the occasional, inevitable delay. Paying for these as part of the airport fees should be part of the cost of doing business for airlines, and they shouldn’t hesitate to use them.

  • Logan

    As one who got stuck on a hot piece of DCA tarmac in a full US Airways 737 for 4 hours in the middle of summer, I can honestly say that it’s one of the worst experiences for any passenger. We were permitted to taxi back to the gate after 2 hours, but no guarantees were made about connections or luggage or anything.

    For those who might be interested: I missed my flight from CLT to PBI that day (the last one of the day, I might add), and finally shuffled out of FLL at 2 AM lacking the luggage I had checked that morning at SDF.
    I wrote a letter to US Air describing how aggravated I was (they only served us seltzer water), and even created a new verb for the occasion: I wrote that I had been “JetBlued” (referring to the previous Valentine’s Day issues at JFK). For my 4-page, single-spaced missive, I received a $100 travel voucher, which I went on to use for college visits.

  • Bob

    My worst nightmare is to get stuck on the tarmac like that on a flight with my kids. Oh man, would that ever be a bad experience.

  • Aimee

    A few years ago I had a flight that connected through Minneapolis. We were on the runway (3rd in line for takeoff) when we were told that a tornado warning had been issued for the county and all takeoffs/landings were suspended during the warning. That would make sense, except that we sat on that runway for 70 minutes. Apparently there was no gate to taxi us back to and they couldn’t let us walk back for “safety reasons”. They can’t fly for safety reasons, but leaving 200+ people in a medal tube on a flat piece of land during a tornado warning is safe? Please

  • Dave

    I was once stuck on the tarmac in the Philidelphia airport for 3.5 hours. A combination of rain and mechanical problems kept us on the tarmac, but not at the gate. When we were finnaly about to take off (second in line), we had to go back to the gate. Apparently flight attendent union regulations did not allow them to stay in the plane after a certain number of hours without taking off. We had to taxi back to the gate and wait another 4 hours for a crew to be flown in from Chicago.

  • Deborah

    A few summers ago, I had the bad luck to be stuck on a British Airways plane for 9+ hours after the grounds crew in London went on strike to support the food suppliers. We were literally still at the gate the entire time. Apparently the ground crew, due to the strike, were unwilling to reconnect the airplane to the gate so we could disembark. It was so completely frustrating to be so close and yet so far. To make matters worse, the food suppliers strike meant no food on the plane. Luckily, BA had supplied food vouchers for use in the airport prior to boarding. BA was in such chaos because of the strike, that it took 3 days for me to get a flight back home. I’ll have to say, though, the cabin crew were great…and we were even entertained at one point by someone who had their violin with them.

  • John

    It seems to me that the airlines and the government are letting everyone down by not finding a common sense solution to this ridiculous and all-too-frequent situation. Perhaps a passenger bill of rights with teeth is the blunt instrument needed to force an answer, but wouldn’t it be simpler just to find a solution which allows pilots and air traffic control/airport authorities to achieve individualized resolutions when such problems arise? Holding passengers hostage in seats for indefinite periods of time is a ridiculous response to the problem. And asking flight attendants to mediate the situation when they have no control or information is folly. Surely we can do better than the status quo.

  • Caseyg

    I read the post but still don’t see anything that makes this conduct legal. Maybe a few local lawsuits, filed in your home jurisdiction, for time, missed connections, pain & suffering will cure the problem. If not, it would sure make me feel better knowing I caused the airline some headache.

  • J

    I got stuck for hours on the tarmac from chicago – Westchester NY with an infant and a toddler. They got pretty hungry and thirsty, but they wouldn’t bring out drinks at all for anyone, or even a bag of peanuts. Other passengers felt bad for them (especially since their crying was sincere whimpering and not loud crying) and we got a few apples and yogurt, thankfully, but then by the time the plane finally got to Westchester, all their food options were closed, and we found out they boarded the wrong luggage and ours were on the flight coming an hour and a half later!

    If the plane were merely delayed instead of us being stuck out on the plane, I could have at least planned out and purchased some food in Chicago instead of making the poor girls wait until our taxi ride home (after waiting for luggage!) to eat!

  • Nobody

    Airlines get away with it because the passengers let them. If everyone on board demanded return to the terminal, they would. But how many of you would just sit there when some passengers started claiming they were being held against their wills after 3 hours? The same percentage that sat in the seats while others had their throats cut or the few brave that acted when one shouted, “Let’s roll!” on 9/11

    “If they weren’t meant to be sheared, God would not have made them sheep.”–Calvera (Eli Wallach) “The Magnificent Seven”

    Here lies Quick-Draw Johnny
    RIP
    Nobody was faster

  • Ernest

    I was recently stranded on a plane on the DFW tarmac. We were waiting for take off when a severe storm blew in although I think they were trying to beat it. All the planes on the runway access turned into the 60mph winds and shut down the engines for about 1 hour. The stewardess served drinks and we were allowed to move around while waiting. It was actually the most enjoyable ‘wait’ that I have ever experienced on a aircraft, expecially since it was on an American Eagle (AA) flight back to Lubbock. Those guys hold the worlds record (according to me) in being jerks on the plane but this time they actually came through. I was only 3 hours late getting home. One of my best AA times yet.

  • Alan Fiermonte

    A great new term for forced, extended tarmac strandings would be
    “tarmacboarding”…the act of being blindfolded, having a barf bag stuffed in your mouth, taxied out to a tarmac, and having incessant delays, misinformation, starvation, and personal discomforts poured down your throat until you begin to drown in your own severe mental anguish, frustration and claustrophobia. Tarmacboarding…take a taxi-way to the dark side. Coming soon to a airport near you.

  • Linda Snow

    In response to “Nobody”, who suggests a “Lets Roll” approach to tarmac stranding:
    Are you kidding? People these days are being kicked off planes, arrested or even shot for anything interpreted as disruptive behavior – complaining, taking videos of surly attendants, even coughing loudly. We’re afraid to fight back, and justly so.

  • Ed

    @Dave
    “Apparently flight attendent union regulations did not allow them to stay in the plane after a certain number of hours without taking off. We had to taxi back to the gate and wait another 4 hours for a crew to be flown in from Chicago.”

    Isn’t that funny…the flight crew is protected by their union, but the passengers have to endure false imprisonment.

  • Deborah

    @J- With an infant and a toddler on a plane, why in the WORLD wouldn’t you bring AT LEAST snacks for them? Seriously. I am an adult, but always have water and protein snack in my carryon- in case of just this instance.

    I can’t imagine travelling with children without supplies.

  • Jeanne

    @deborah It was an emergency family situation and not my kids! Long story leading up to it, but I did not expect to be on a plane with small children that day

  • http://www.aspendew.com AspenDew

    I’m not sure how much control the airlines have over this. If there’s no gate, they can’t just let passengers off the airplane onto an active part of the tarmac. Seems to me some sort of solution involving the airlines *and* the airports in question needs to be found?

  • Wm Hope

    Excuses of having no gate are probably bogus; after all, I fly only abt a dozen times per yr, and even at that freq., I’ve had flites at major airports that were boarded/deplaned via stair/ramp, just like back in the 60′s. It might be a bit of a trial to the airline/airport staffs, but it would work. Oh, and if they say we’re unable to get close enough to terminals, what abt the buses that run interterminal airside at major airports? Once, when my wife was just limping post-op, at ATL they devoted the entire bus just to transport us to a domestic gate after we cleared customs at an int’l arrivals gate in a different terminal (we’d just asked for a wheelchair, expecting the customary golfcart at most>). These airline excuses may have a lot of reasons, some valid, but it is hard to avoid a conjecture that laziness in the customer service ethos is part of the problem a lot of time

  • Alex

    There’s an easy solution to waiting more than 2 hours on the runway – keep some ipecac syrup in your carry one – at 1 hour, 55 minutes into the tarmac delay, take two swigs – at the two hour point the plane will be back at the gate with a projectile vomiting medical emergency ;-)

  • Bill

    Alex, maybe people should start doing that to force the airlines to smarten up!

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