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Well, bear in mind that the outrage at JetBlue stemmed not from being stranded “at JFK” but from being confined in an airplane for up to ten hours without food, working sanitary facilities, or a legal means of exit. Also, it’s worth noting that automobile travelers on I-78 have the ability to delay or cancel their trips without financial penalty, so comparisons between the two situations could in fact lead one to support extending the same right to air travelers.

The WSJ writer’s reliance on market mechanisms seems unhelpful in this instance. JetBlue’s confinement of passengers on the tarmac, and the widespread meltdown in its schedule, stemmed from inadequacies in internal controls and processes that are invisible to the market. I share the skepticism over affording some form of private right of action to passengers in these instances, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable for Congress and the FAA to propound regulations governing passenger health and care just as they do for any other aspect of airline operation.

I also find the WSJ’s market-based prescription unhelpful, and agree that creating a private right of action or a legislative “solution” is not the way to go. In these “stuck on the tarmac” situations, airlines and airport authorities should give passengers one chance to vote with their feet, perhaps 2-3 hours into the ordeal. Those who want to leave the aircraft could do so, and those who want to take their chances would have to do so while forgoing a lawsuit later.

Could some type of held against will charge work in these cases? I mean is there some sort of law already on the books that could keep airplane companies from arbitrarily holding people hostage rather than returning them to the gate?

As usual, the problem seems to be the fault of a particular rule that can be changed, rather than malfeasance on the part of the airlines.

Why not allow planes that have been delayed on the runway to go back to the terminal without losing their takeoff slots? Just bump other planes ahead, and when they’re ready to return slip them into the next available opening.

There, problem solved, without any cause for lawsuits.

I believe that the queue for takeoff is an actual physical, rather than theoretical, queue, and thus slipping a plane into an opening in the takeoff queue requires traffic policing that often isn’t safely feasible.

FAA regulations also complicate matters: in most of the incidents where planes have been on the runway for several hours, a plane returning to the terminal would require the pilots to take a twelve-hour break.

Most of these delays come about because the airlines are trying to reduce problems from flight cancellations, and are mistakenly optimistic about the chances of flights taking off in a short window of time. One can certainly do more to prevent these rare Type I errors, but only at the cost of increased Type II errors of unnecessary flight cancellations that inconvenience many more passengers. It’s far from clear that passengers would prefer that option ex ante, as nightmarish as the rare “trapped in the plane with overflowing toilets and no food” scenario that pops up once every few years is.

You could do what we europeons did and pass a law that favors large state run airlines by mandating payouts for delays that would be 10 times what a discount ticket would cost. Ain’t Socialism great? France even has streets named after their Russian communist heros and their cities.

Ted’s comment that these Type I errors are rare, seems to be a bit off the mark. From Sept. 06 to Jan. 07, there were at least 3 incidents involving passengers held captive in a plane on the tarmac in excess of 8 hrs.

If you’ve never been trapped in an aluminum tube with 120 other people, overflowing toilets and no food or water, I don’t think you can appreciate the experience.

The planes involved in the most recent incidents were not on a taxiway, waiting for takeoff. They were parked in the ramp area, mere yards from the terminal, awaiting instructions (that never came) from management.

Ted’s comment that these Type I errors are rare, seems to be a bit off the mark. From Sept. 06 to Jan. 07, there were at least 3 incidents involving passengers held captive in a plane on the tarmac in excess of 8 hrs.

Lets’ do the math:

Accoding to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, there are appriximately 87,000 flights in the US per day. Of those flights, roughly one third or 28,537 flights are commercial flights.

There were 104 days between 9/6/06 and 1/7/07.

That is 2,967,848 total commercial flights.

The three Type I incidents would be 0.000101083% of all flights.

I believe that most people would consider that statistically insignificant or “rare.”