=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2009/08/15/BUHJ198PFU= .DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, August 15, 2009 (SF Chronicle) With no guidelines, airline passengers suffer Joan Lowy, Associated Press (08-15) 04:00 PDT WASHINGTON -- When Washington learned that 47 people were stuck overnight aboard a sma= ll plane at a Minnesota airport, the government reverberated with demands to protect the public from a recurrence. But in its hunt for blame, the government isn't owning up to the fact th= at it had a hand in letting the mess happen. Over recent years, nightmare strandings on the runway have prompted lots of posturing, but few results. From January to June this year, 613 planes were delayed on tarmacs for more than three hours, their passengers kept on board, the government says. None created the stir that Continental Express Flight 2816 did after it was diverted late Aug. 7 to an airport in Rochester, Minn. Passengers were forced to sit for more than six hours in a cramped plane with crying babies and a stinking toilet, though the plane stood 50 yards from a terminal. "It strikes me as very dysfunctional that neither the Department of Transportation nor the Congress has seen fit to bring some meaningful guidelines to this area," said Ken Mead, a former Transportation Department inspector general. Congress and the Clinton administration tried to do something after a January 1999 blizzard kept Northwest Airlines planes on the ground in Detroit, trapping passengers for seven hours. Some new regulations were put in place, but most proposals died, including one that airlines pay passengers who are kept waiting on a runway for more than two hours. Later episodes left the status quo in place, despite attempts by some to find a remedy. The airline industry, in opposing a limit on tarmac delays, argues that more flights will be canceled and passengers will spend more time in terminals than if they had continued to wait in the plane. Kenneth Quinn, a former FAA general counsel, said there is no reason for the Transportation Department to further delay requiring airlines to put contingency plans in their contracts of carriage. He said the department has the power to fine airlines that engage in deceptive practices. "Somebody needs to step into the void before more passengers get stranded without any recourse," said Quinn, an attorney with the Pillsbury law firm in Washington. Passengers' rights advocates said voluntary guidelines and allowing airlines to write their own contingency plans won't work. "No one believes the airlines are going to make any effort to fix this on their own," said FlyersRights.org founder Kate Hanni, who was a passenger on one of the airliners that was stranded for as long as nine hours after lightning storms and a tornado warning shut the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in December 2006. "The only time they have made any effort is when the threat of legislation was very real." -------------------------------------= --------------------------------- Copyright 2009 SF Chronicle <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> If you wish to unsubscribe from the AIRLINE List, please send an E-mail to: "listserv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx". Within the body of the text, only write the following:"SIGNOFF AIRLINE".