I think you mean “Rochester, Minnesota” not “Rochester, Minneapolis”

I’ve been stuck on the tarmac for two or three hours on some rare occasions, and I’ll happily attest to the hellishness of it.  The real joke is that you’ve got an open terminal not fifty feet from you, with real bathrooms and food stands and more comfortable chairs.  There really is absolutely no excuse for this kind of thing.  It’s bad corporate policy, straight off the bat.

At a certain point, you’d think the airlines would want to save themselves.

THIS. 

I’ve been saying this (but not as eloquently) for a long time.  Health care is about treating people like human beings worthy of compassion.  Health insurance is about treating people like ATMs. The current discussion is how to force insurance to pay for care.  I hate the thought of an insurance mandate; it would simply force people to have high-cost, high-deductible plans that won’t pay out, which makes it legalized theft. And the argument that we’re moving too fast?  Just exactly how long are we to allow insurance companies to “get it right” and quit screwing us before we stop them?

Why yes, this is a touchy subject for me.  Why do you ask?

And, back on topic and more to the point, corporations exist to treat people like ATMs, not just insurance companies.  Sure, they can be soulless and cold, but that’s their nature.  It’s the people who run them that way who are culpable…. they have no excuse but evil.

I’m off to get more coffee and calm down now.

This sort of thing happens every few years. Remember the midwestern blizzard of 1997? Passengers stuck on the Tarmac for over 8 hours, horror stories of no water, people stranded at the airports for days on end…

Shortly thereafter, we started hearing about how we were going to have a “Passenger’s Bill of Rights” passed through congress that would require passengers be let off of a plane back into the terminal if they’ve been sitting on the tarmac for more than X hours (I think it was pretty low, like 3 or 4?).

Whatever happened to that?

This is the best Democracy ever. People get temporarily outraged, legislation is proposed, and it sits until our attention is somewhere else, and then it quietly dies. Rinse and repeat.

So how do they enforce the no-electronics rule?  I’d be emailing and calling every reporter I could… and if they evicted me from the plane, so much the better.

If the airlines want to whine about their razor-thin profit margins, then maybe they shouldn’t be dooming themselves by making their customers miserable.  Some regulation might improve business, because a few people would be more willing to fly on planes if they knew they wouldn’t have to sit on the tarmac for 6 or 10 hours.  Of course, in the Libertarian fantasy, airlines just wouldn’t make customers wait 6 hours on the tarmac for fear of losing business, so the them, this incident just never happened, because they believe it couldn’t happen.  Their ideology trumps reality.  It reminds me of a debate that I watched in a college ethics class, where one student claimed that we don’t need to worry about students cheating, because no student would risk getting expelled to cheat.  Fortunately, the teacher pointed out to him that you can’t just ignore reality.

I used to watch a tv-lawyer show (can’t remember which one exactly) that had an episode in which one of the lawyers got stuck in tarmac hell and used his cellphone to get an injunction against the airline to let them off the damn plane. They played out the jurisdictional issues, but at least the poor passengers weren’t jailed while they did that.

I wish fiction were more like truth sometimes.

The thing I don’t understand is, WHY don’t they just let people go back into the terminal? In Rochester the airline gave some bullshit excuse about security- which was promptly contradicted by the airport manager, who said there would have been no problem with letting the passengers back in.

I await the Republican bleating about how this whole situation is all the FCC’s/TSA’s fault, and therefore the Government’s, and therefore the poor airline is just as much a victim as the passengers, and you see therefore Government-run health care would cause people to be miserable and die.

...

Anyone care to start a betting pool?

The thing I don’t understand is, WHY don’t they just let people go back into the terminal?

Unloading and re-loading passengers takes a pretty long time.  Sometimes the airline is waiting for just the right weather to take off, so if everyone is inside and the weather is right, by the time everyone boards the plane, they might miss their chance.  That’s why I think that a 2 or maybe even 3 hour wait isn’t so unreasonable as long as it’s rare.  However, there’s a certain point when it’s just cruel to force passengers to continue to wait, and 6 hours is ridiculous.  That’s why airlines need to have specific plans that if passengers end up waiting for X hours or the amount of time the entire flight would take (whichever is shorter), they will let the passengers off and cancel or reschedule the flight.

Just to clarify, this wasn’t the fault of the airline who operated the plane.  Another small airline (affiliated with Delta) who were the only people left at the terminal when the plane arrived were telling the pilots on the plane that they couldn’t deplane because the TSA had left (false) and they couldn’t get them a bus (also false).  Delta is supposedly looking into why one of their subsidiaries have a bunch of jerks working for them.

The one time I was stuck on the tarmac, it was for only about three hours.  Not so bad, if I hadn’t had the children (I think the younger one was three or four, the older eight or nine) with me.  Both hyperactive.  Both Asperger’s - not an excuse for bad behavior, but they like to know what’s going to happen; they get distressed when things get unpredictable.  Both on the second leg of a long trip, the first having been several hours long after getting up very early.  The younger was in diapers and the older needed the restroom, which we weren’t allowed to use.  The temperature was in the nineties, as I recall.  We got cups of water while we waited.  Warm water.
When we were allowed off and shuffled off to another gate to wait, wait and wait for a new flight, younger boy, who had been remarkably patient (considering) decided to run laps around the seats.  I confined myself to preventing him from running into anybody.  One of the airline employees came over to us and said something along the lines of “Your child’s being pretty rowdy.  Is he going to be able to stay quiet on the flight?”
Look, I bring toys, I bring snacks, I do everything I can to keep my kids occupied and non-annoying to other people, but there are limits to the patience of a young child who has just been trapped in his seat in a plane on the ground for three hours.  If you want him quiet, let me get him off the damn plane so he can walk around.
Three hours is nothing compared to six hours, but remembering that still makes me angry.

Amanda, the corporate drones who oversee this kind of mess forget that business isn’t about dollars and cents alone:

Drucker also was influenced, in a much different way, by John Maynard Keynes, whom he heard lecture in 1934 in Cambridge. “I suddenly realized that Keynes and all the brilliant economic students in the room were interested in the behavior of commodities,” Drucker wrote, “while I was interested in the behavior of people.”[7]

Over the next 70 years, Drucker’s writings would be marked by a focus on relationships among human beings, as opposed to the crunching of numbers. His books were filled with lessons on how organizations can bring out the best in people, and how workers can find a sense of community and dignity in a modern society organized around large institutions.

Wikipedia Peter Drucker

where one student claimed that we don’t need to worry about students cheating, because no student would risk getting expelled to cheat.

We had a tradition where exams could be taken back for a regrade in science classes, in this case it was a biology class.

One day, the professor walks in and tells us that some of the exams were photocopied before they were released for a regrade, and that some of the regrades were changed before they were handed back.

He stated that they’d flunked his class, and that they’d have to meet with him at XX:XX time at his office.

When he was there, there were twice as many people as he had detected.  Imagine that.

If the airlines want to whine about their razor-thin profit margins, then maybe they shouldn’t be dooming themselves by making their customers miserable.  Some regulation might improve business, because a few people would be more willing to fly on planes if they knew they wouldn’t have to sit on the tarmac for 6 or 10 hours.

This.  I live in Minnesota, and anyplace I want to go in the continental US, I prefer to drive.  The unpleasantness of dealing with air travel is a fairly substantial part of why.  I’d rather drive for eighteen hours than fly for four or five, because when I drive, I’m in a comfortable seat, not inflicted with dozens of strangers and their small children, can stop and get out whenever I want to, can stop and eat or drink whenever I want to and whatever I want to, and don’t have to worry about my luggage being accidentally sent to Buenos Aires.

And I’m missing a few.  Security, the no-liquids rule, et cetera.

Without regulations that demand ethical behavior, any corporation with a fiduciary responsibility to its stock holders ends up in a conflict of interest with its customers. When spending as little as possible on creating a product or service while selling it at the highest possible price, the customer always gets short-changed.

I used to have some brand loyalty in food purchases, mostly out of sheer laziness, but now I check every label for changes that signal “give the least for the highest price” behavior. There are at least two products that I bought for years that have become inedible. I no longer shop with convenience in mind. I spend a great deal of time making sure that the foods I buy will not slowly poison me while making money for somebody else. And no, I no longer go into Whole Foods or Malwart.

The link is bad for me…  Although I can edit it in my browser bar

FYI, turns out it wasn’t Continental’s fault, it was a Delta subsidiary.  It should be noted that about a year ago, CO announced they were leaving the OnePass partnership with Delta.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gpzpxENOJlq5qouSmP0wWNjw2BUwD9A7BTGO2

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said an     investigation by his department found that the     captain of Continental Express Flight 2816 and other     officials for ExpressJet, the regional air carrier     that operated the flight for Continental Airlines,      repeatedly pleaded to allow the passengers to     deplane and enter the Rochester terminal.

      There were turned down by representatives of Mesaba     Airlines, who incorrectly said that the passengers     couldn’t be allowed inside because Transportation     Security Administration personnel had left for the     day, LaHood said in a statement. That was incorrect     passengers could have stayed in a separate “sterile”      area, he said.

I’m old enough to remember when you could 1) walk right up to an airport gate like you were strolling through a bus terminal, for a flight 2) whose cost was predictable and unchanging.

(1) is never coming back. But isn’t it time to bring back (2)? Isn’t it time to admit that deregulation of airfares was a terrible idea, and go back to setting fares that are resonable yet allow airlines to make a profit?

This why I now always bring a ridiculous amount of supplies on a plane trip. One of the primary things that dispelled the Libertarian myth of the benevolent corporation for me was seeing how the airlines started doing business and treating their customers in the 1980s.

The fact is, to a point most people will understand and grudgingly accept a short (2-hour max) delay if the crew provides regular and honest updates, maintains a comfortable cabin environment, and ensures the passengers that the corporation will find a way to make good on the problem. That the airline, in thrall to the Human Resources Culture and the almighty quarterly numbers like all major corporations, are unwilling and/or unable to do either doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that they’ll do the right thing if only they’re de-regulated.

That goes triple for the business practises of the large for-profit health insurers.

So how do they enforce the no-electronics rule?  I’d be emailing and calling every reporter I could… and if they evicted me from the plane, so much the better.

Up to the moment when your battery dies…  How many coach seats on Embraers have electrical outlets?

I used to travel often enough that this was a fairly regular occurrence.  My parents lived near Newark Airport, which is among the worst for air traffic delays, and I live near San Francisco, which often gets fog delays.  The worst is waiting on the ground in Newark after the flight landed for a gate to open up.  The flight’s over…  I’ve had waits of 45 minutes like that. 

I’ve never had something like the Rochester delay.  The longest delay was on a KLM flight from Kilimanjaro to Amsterdam via Dar Es Salaam, we were on the ground at Dar Es Salaam for a few hours as they had to repair the plane.  Fortunately, they let us into the terminal (which also wasn’t air conditioned, but it was 1AM) Also very fortunately, my parents were able to make their connecting flight.  (I stayed for a day in Amsterdam.)

the government is free to regulate against abuses.

Capitalism is a great way to ration goods…but it needs to be regulated or it will trend to monopoly and human abuses.  Capitalism doesn’t give a shit about people; people have to care about people.

The security excuse pisses me off so much b/c thoses passengers had already been through security before they were allowed on the plane.  Their next visit with security would be to CHECK THEM OUT.  They were safe.

Airlines don’t care about you after you leave the gate b/c they get rated for on-time departures from the time they push off.  They got rated from the time they landed, and since they couldn’t get dinged for holding them on the tarmac forever, they did.

The pilots and crew have legal restrictions about how long they can be on the plane.  The pilots and crew were taken off.  With no legal restrictions on mistreating passengers why should anyone be surprised that they abused them?  Once they’d been on the tarmac a couple hours, what’s a couple more?  They have to figure that after a couple hours, they’ve lost repeat business anyway, so what’s the downside of leaving them out there longer?  What’s the difference to the general public between 3-4 hours on the tarmac and 5-6 hours?  It’s bad, but it’s just one bad PR hit and they’re really just inconveniencing people who have already paid them and probably won’t ever be customers again, so why bother?

If they let them into the terminal, then they’d be required to put them on a bus or to put them back on the plane.  That would interfere with gate times for their other flights and for passengers who aren’t yet inconvenienced and might fly them again.  Better to just fuck these fliers than all of them.

This is what you get with unregulated capitalism.  When the only driving force is maximizing profit, there’s little downsize to fixing a major screwup, since those customers won’t provide more revenue in the future.

Dammit, I thought I fixed that.  I blame the cats for distracting me.  Oh well, everyone enjoys it when the blogger makes a mistake.

I’ve said this before, but it seems like a good time to mention it again: a six hour delay, trapped inside a plane, as described in the article would end only one way: With me arrested for either assault or whatever you get when you open a plane’s door illegally.

If they could let the flight crew off, they could let the passengers off.

The thing I don’t understand is, WHY don’t they just let people go back into the terminal?

It’s a combination of things.  One is that the bosses really do see the customers as enemies, and that comes out in stressful situations.  Second of all, the people making the direct decisions are scared to death to make a decision contrary to corporate policy.  But mostly, it’s because if you give people their freedom, they start making demands that cost money, namely that you get a bus, hotel voucher, or rental car so you can get home, as they are contractually obliged to do.

I’m a pilot and fly small aircraft for charter. In my personal flying I have a survival kit, since I do a lot of Mountain flying and over water stuff. I now take that same survival kit on major airlines, since I figure I’m more likely to be held hostage in a 757 for a longer period of time than it would for Search and Rescue to find me if I actually had to put down in the wilderness!

Shorter Airlines:

Hey, this could be a great business if we could just stop having to deal with those pesky passengers!...

Brilliant Amanda.  Well written.  Thank you.

“Any organism or organization’s first priority will usually be to keep existing itself, not to be useful to the organisms around it.”

In fact, many organisms are not indifferent to other organisms around them, but actively harmful to them, not just out of self-protection, but because they compete for resources, or can be used as resources.  They’ll even cannibalize their own environment (eventually leading to extinction) if unchecked.

In the case of Company vs. Customer, the customer will get the short end of the stick every time, unless the company’s leadership is interested in something more than next quarter’s profit, or the government steps in as a referee to ensure something like good behavior. 

A capitalist will happily sell you the rope with which to hang them, because the quarter’s profits are below analyst’s estimates…

I think in a more broad sense we’re all suffering from the frog in the boiling pot syndrome - over time we’ve become accustomed to indignity such that only outliers like the 6-hour wait strike us as a problem.  After being told to arrive at the airport 2 hours early because despite the contracted time we’ve paid to leave the airline feels free to change schedules; we’re told not to expect food or water despite being trapped in a metal tube for a number of hours; we buy accessories like sleep pillows and earplugs to endure the cramped and miserable conditions; we accept charges for excess baggage…and in the end we look around and wonder why we accept such conditions for a service for which we’re paying.

I liken it to the irritation that many people expressed when bank ATMs started charging for non-bank-issued cash cards.  We grumbled and eventually put up with it.  Since the toe was in the door, the banks started increasing their charges for accessing your own money; started charging more and more for overdraft fees; used the efficiency of electronic communication to charge those overdraft fees instantly while, of course, credits due you the customer are still subject to the 24-hour rule.

Ironically, the corporations will often cite measures such as the above as an effort to serve their stockholders.  Those same stockholders, however, although being acclaimed as the ‘true owners’ of American businesses, have no power - witness the many corporate takeovers or mergers where the stockholders have been stuck with reduced value for their investments and no voice in the management of the corporation, even though as we’ve all been told they’re the people for which the corporations are squeezing out the service they provide in order to bolster profits.  It’s become such a rarity for a public corporation to pay out dividends (remember your grade school lessons, people own stock for the dividends) that such a payout (instead of taking profits to buy more businesses or expand some division or another so that you’ll get better profits in five years, honestly-would-I-lie) engenders headlines.  Instead stock ownership is a gamble - you don’t hold stock for the dividends or the long-term value but to dump it sometime when its price is high enough.  Therefore the corporations, in the end, serve only themselves - or, perhaps, the upper management.

Wow.  A bit tangential, there.

hey’ve lost repeat business anyway,

Sadly, they probably haven’t.  Airlines functionally have an oligarchy where they all stick to the same low standards.  They all have the same obstacles (airports, weather, plane limitations) and the same incentives, so they all do the tarmac stall.  You can’t get around it by going to the competition.

The “It wasn’t the operating airline’s fault” thing rings like utter crap to me. How long would have taken for the CEO of ExpressJet or Continental to have gotten the CEO of Mesaba on the phone, or to have reached ExpressJet personnel at home? They covered their asses enough to stay out of regulatory trouble, and that was good enough for them.

The thing is, businesses can always make an argument that treating the customer properly will be better for profits in the long run, and there isn’t a damn thing disgruntled shareholders can do but sell, which depresses the stock price. (Which is really what it’s about, because then all of those stock options aren’t worth as much to the managers as they “should” be.)

Airlines functionally have an oligarchy where they all stick to the same low standards.  They all have the same obstacles (airports, weather, plane limitations) and the same incentives, so they all do the tarmac stall.  You can’t get around it by going to the competition.

Exactly—it’s a semi-cartel. Just like the health insurance industry.

Instead stock ownership is a gamble - you don’t hold stock for the dividends or the long-term value but to dump it sometime when its price is high enough.

And, one hopes, when the corporate gains tax is low.

Dividends are seen by the shareholder class as something to be avoided in general, not because it takes money out of the company treasury (which is is the “old-fashioned” and reasonable rationale), but because Grover Norquist and Ronald Reagan and Gordon Gecko told them that, in any given year, the dividends might be taxed away by an Evil Socialist Blackazoid.

Value investing implies an investment perspective beyond the next fiscal quarter—a perspective which is hammered out of the head of your typical MBA long before he has money of his own to invest.

Ironically, the corporations will often cite measures such as the above as an effort to serve their stockholders.  Those same stockholders, however, although being acclaimed as the ‘true owners’ of American businesses, have no power

Most stocks are held by other corporations: companies that manage mutual funds, pensions, and such.  They do have power insomuch as they rubber stamp everything the board of directors wants.  Just getting 5-10 percent of stockholders to vote against the board is a major coup; it means that any stockholder who’s paying attention and isn’t a financial company is very, VERY unhappy.

I got stuck on a tarmac for several hours about 12 years ago.  The crew let us watch all the movies they had available, but they didn’t have any additional food for us.  By the time we finally reached our destination, I had severe stomach cramps from going too long without eating.

I don’t fly much anymore, but the last trip I took the planes were extremely stinky.  They had used so much disinfectant in the bathrooms, the smell permeated the entire plane.  If you spent just a couple minutes in one of them, you’d come out reeking of the stuff.  I don’t know if newer (cheapo?) planes have worse air circulation, if the airlines are cutting costs by using cheaper (and worse smelling) cleansers, or what, but it was the most uncomfortable part of the trip for me.

I got stuck on a tarmac for several hours about 12 years ago.  The crew let us watch all the movies they had available, but they didn’t have any additional food for us.  By the time we finally reached our destination, I had severe stomach cramps from going too long without eating.

Take a lesson from ayutokamina and always bring a big sandwich and some snacks to munch on—unless you want to pay $7.00 for a small sandwich they’re not gonna feed you anyhow. Also a nice big bottle of water. Avoid the temptation of going for fast food before you board—it’s over-priced and if you get stuck on the tarmac you’ll pay big-time for that decision.

I don’t know if newer (cheapo?) planes have worse air circulation, if the airlines are cutting costs by using cheaper (and worse smelling) cleansers, or what, but it was the most uncomfortable part of the trip for me.

From my experience, it seems to be a question of maintenance. JetBlue and Southwest fly newer equipment, but the WCs are usually clean because the crew polices them after every landing. Delta and United, on the other hand, can let them remain uncleaned for 2 or more landings. On occasion, entering them has been like that scene in Daddy Day Care.

Either way, I try to avoid sitting in the back of the plane next to those line-ups.

This is clearly good news for John McCain—and tort reform.

A local DA could do a lot for his career by charging some folks with unlawful detention.

Dammit, I thought I fixed that.  I blame the cats for distracting me.  Oh well, everyone enjoys it when the blogger makes a mistake.

My apologies for that impression…  It wasn’t a matter of “enjoyment” for me—I posted because it was easy for someone to edit the URL in the browser bar, so until it was fixed, there was that option.

I’m a pilot and fly small aircraft for charter. In my personal flying I have a survival kit, since I do a lot of Mountain flying and over water stuff. I now take that same survival kit on major airlines, since I figure I’m more likely to be held hostage in a 757 for a longer period of time than it would for Search and Rescue to find me if I actually had to put down in the wilderness!

Given how long it took to find Steve Fossett’s remains, that’s a lot of food and water to carry!

I fly for an airline and also spend a great deal of time in the back of aircraft.  I commuted for a year and a half.  I am really not thrilled with the passenger bill of rights idea.  I don’t think congress should make this law.  They are NOT qualified for it.  We already have an agency that deals with the airline industry, the FAA, let them right the law if there is to be one.  My company has already implemented a passenger bill of right to get people off the aircraft in 2.5 hours.  If they cant find a gate they bus them to the terminal.  The bill is a great threat, I should continue to be used as such, but I don’t think it should be written.

As for the bull shit announcements.  We tell you what we know.  We dumb (pore choice of words, not trying to offend) it down for passengers since they probably don’t understand a lot of what we would be saying anyways, but we give you the info we have. 

I spent 2 hours in a hot aircraft up front trying to get people to their destination.  Believe me I was no more comfortable for us than it was for you.  If you have no airflow, neither do we.  We stayed on the tarmac because we were waiting for a release from Center (Air Traffic Control).  The info we had was incomplete and vague.  We were in line for take off and there were a large number of aircraft behind us.  If we had returned to the gate we would not have gotten the people to their destination.  We gave what beverages we had to the passengers and allowed the use of electronic devices. 
We stayed in line because we were told that we would be leaving soon the whole time as well.

Sorry for the long post.  I dont normally do this.

While it wasn’t one of these horrible 10 hour delays, the most frustrating delay I was every involved in was a 2 and a half hour (no kidding) delay on the ground AFTER WE LANDED at the destination. Storms to the west meant that a significant number of planes weren’t taking off westward, although the eastbound planes still were. They kept telling us they couldn’t get a gate for us to deplane.

Then, of course, after 2.5 hours, they drove up a pair of shuttle buses and deplaned us on the tarmac, after everyone had already missed their connecting flights. 20-30 minutes, I could have understood. Two hours, c’mon.

The other delay I was part of DID take hours, but what amazed me was how dim the other passengers were. We had a delay taking off (“waiting on clearance”) then we had a “slight technical issue” during which the baggage team came and removed every piece of luggage on board. Then after another hour “sorry for the delay” the Chicago cops came on board and arrested three people “for smoking in the bathroom.” Another half hour and they told us that the technical problem meant we had to deplane and go wait in the terminal for a different airplane.  When we finally got loaded on the new plane, we waited another two hours “because the catering kitchens were closed and they needed to find someone to bring us our inflight snacks.”

A majority of the passengers appeared to seriously take this story at face value, and were trying to convince the flight crew to take off without the snacks. Me, I’m sitting there with my jaw in my lap realizing that these people honestly didn’t realize that there was either a serious bomb threat, some major drug deal, or something else similar going on. I sure didn’t say anything, not wanting to have a nice chat with some FBI person about “what I knew about it” but by golly, all our luggage had been “randomly” inspected when we finally got to the destination.

Ouch bad spelling and grammar, this is one reason I dont post much.

Anigone’s Hubby,

I don’t see anyone here really blaming the crew—we understand you’re at the mercy of the bureaucrats at the airport and corporate when it comes to the BS announcements. But please, please, please: don’t dumb it down if you have the choice —that’s insulting to the people you’re trying your best to serve, and ultimately it’ll make your jobs more difficult by alienating potential allies among the passengers who do understand.

Your insider’s view is appreciated, so don’t be a stranger on other comments. We’re remarkably tolerant of bad spelling and grammar.

I just love the idea of anyone looking upon an article about a 6 hour wait on a tarmac and trying to defend anyone involved.

Here’s a hint—when the crew deplaned without the passengers, they became accessories to kidnapping.

Could someone post the link with the crew leaving the aircraft.  I have not been able to find it.  (May just not be able to work computer )

unless the company’s leadership is interested in something more than next quarter’s profit,

This.  this is why our country is going to hell in a handbasket.  No one does what is good for the country or for people in general, of course, but they don’t do what’s good for long-term business either.  It’s all about this quarter or the quarter after.  Profits must go up so Wall St likes them, even if the long-term results are deadly to the business.  By then, you hope to have cashed out and moved on to ruin another corporation.

What’s aggravating to me is Southwest Airlines.  SWA is the CUT RATE, DISCOUNT airline.  They give you nothing in exchange for cheap fares.

Except that they now offer MORE than the “full-service” airlines.  You can still check a bag for free.  You still get snacks for free.  Yes, it’s general seating, but it goes faster and they now have lines with signs for every 5#s, so all the assholes who used to crowd the gate no longer have any reason to be assholes.  You stand by your number.

Prices are standardized and the big airlines try to match them—but then they charge extra for checking any bags, soda, pillows, blankets, etc.  What services are they providing that the “discount” airlines aren’t?

None.

I really think they should be forced to check one bag as part of the ticket price.  Too many people are trying to jam everything into a carryon, which slows everything down and creates havoc in the plane. 

and why do we need to have laws?  B/c we are dealing with oligarchies and near monopolies.  The free market really doesn’t do much without robust competition.

I apologize if I offend with the dumb it down comment.  I should explain.  I ment I at lease try to avoid using the technical terms by using layman’s terms when able.  In addition we tend (at least I do) to avoid being to technical when it comes to maintenance.  What I see as a major problem may be seen as a small annoyance to a passenger and what I see as a small problem with no major issues may be misinterpreted as AIRPLANE GO BOOM.  The vast majority of problems I have had, (have not been flying for a huge amount of time mind you) have been small problems that could be misinterpreted as large ones.  Gremlins in the electronics, messages that don’t go away when they should, or something that just involved paper work.  We are actually requested not to use technical terms in our announcements as they may lead to confusion.  (A lot of people are afraid to fly, and if its you please dont sit by me.  I try to help but have a terrible sense of humor )

I thought the crew actually came across pretty well in this case. 

Salon’s pilot columnist did a thing on this the last time it happened and the Passenger Bill of Rights was bandied about.  As far as that point goes, I found his arguments against any kind of set time limit pretty convincing.  This deals with it a bit:
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2007/03/02/askthepilot223/index1.html
Flight is a complicated thing logistically, and there’s probably not a simple fix beyond obvious bloody common sense, like get people off when it’s heading to six hours and there’s no sign of a solution from the airline.

I apologize if I offend with the dumb it down comment.  I should explain.  I ment I at lease try to avoid using the technical terms by using layman’s terms when able.  In addition we tend (at least I do) to avoid being to technical when it comes to maintenance.

Glad you clarified. Yes, plain English is better than technical jargon whenever possible, and the passengers don’t need to know that the Perkins Widget is 5-degrees off plumb. And I understand the need to accomodate the more skittish passengers.

But if it’s botched paperwork, tell us—we may not (ok, won’t) be happy about it, but people who fly (and pay those ridiculous airport fees) understand that it’s the airport bureaucrats who are responsible, not the crew. Similarly, most people who drive cars understand and appreciate the need to see if a blinking tell-tale is a false alarm or the real thing.

No information or vague information, on the other hand, is next to useless. Pilots and crew should demand that the company or airport give them adequate information, and if it’s not forthcoming they should make that fact clear to the passengers.

I’m sorry to say it’s nothing new- I was trapped in a plane on the ground at DWF over ten years ago. The irate lawyer in first class may have gotten more than an insincere apology out of the airline, the rest of us got squat. At least the former flight attendant in the next row was able to play UN interpreter for us, translating the updates into something like facts for us.

And yeah, they pretty much kept us on the plane because if they let us off they would have had to make certain adjustments/reimbursements. As long as we were on the plane we were merely delayed in transit, you see. Four hours on the ground, pushed back from the gate is not any reasonable person’s definition of delayed in transit, but hey, they already had our money.

Over 30 years ago I spent a hellish 16 hours on the ground in LAX with 2 toddlers, waiting for a flight that we were repeatedly told would be boarding in ‘just a few more minutes/half an hour/shortly’. And not once did the airline make a single gesture to make things better- I not only had to ask for meal vouchers for both breakfast and lunch but had to argue with a supervisor both times. It was an experience capped by the gate supervisor suggesting to me during boarding (finally!) that next time I fly with the competition instead.

I promised him that his airline would never see another penny of my money. And they never did.

I lost my gameboy and two games on the last Southwest I flew on ;-;  They don’t check that closely when they’re cleaning.

You know you are in trouble when you hear:

“Ladies and Gentlemen. In 30 minutes we will make an announcement as to when the next announcement will be made. Thank you for your patience.”

I don’t know that the people stuck on that plane are really what you’d call “customers”. I see them as being the product, myself. The customers are the travel agents, advertisers and sponsors, online booking agents who funnel the passengers into buying particular seats with particular airlines*, etc. Those are the ones that the airlines need to keep sweet, and that’s why they don’t give a fuck about the unhappiness of the passengers - they have no meaningful commercial relationship with those.

I think the difference is that state organisations realise that their entire reason for exisitng is to serve the population, and that while the population may not have much “choice” in the capitalist sense of the word (government is a monopolistic, if temporary, entity), if they all die, emigrate or manifest some change in behaviour on a massive scale, these organisations won’t just suffer loss of profit and face cut backs - they’ll be snuffed out of existence. And yeah, that might not make much of a difference to the overworked NHS nurse currently being rude and inefficient at me, but at a higher level of management there’s a level of accountability that simply can’t exist in the commercial sector, where, as Amanda correctly points out, the relationship is adversarial and not simbiotic.

* Maybe I’m wrong, and things are different in the US, but in Europe at least you buy the ticket from the online booker that can get you the best price and the best itinerary to fit your needs - nobody buys directly from the airlines, it’s crazy expensive.

Horrible situation. 

I can’t stand long flights, I can’t even imagine being stranded on the tarmac.

Not only do we need that vaporous airline passenger bill of rights bill to be passed, this is another example of why we need us some HSR.  Competition for the airlines, especially on the short-haul routes.

Actually, I think a strong HSR network would eradicate a lot of short-haul routes for the airlines. 

I’ll add the airlines to my list of nightmarish problems with corporate bureaucracy.  I’ll take a long line at the post office or the DMV any day over the hell that corporations enjoy inflicting upon the innocent masses.

jerry_101, I think our massive American High Speed Rail network is what they’re using to deliver our low-cost Universal Single Payer healthcare legislation.

The Insurance Companies and the Airlines are screwed! 

At the speed those trains go, it should be here any moment now…

Over 30 years ago I spent a hellish 16 hours on the ground in LAX with 2 toddlers, waiting for a flight that we were repeatedly told would be boarding in ‘just a few more minutes/half an hour/shortly’. And not once did the airline make a single gesture to make things better- I not only had to ask for meal vouchers for both breakfast and lunch but had to argue with a supervisor both times. It was an experience capped by the gate supervisor suggesting to me during boarding (finally!) that next time I fly with the competition instead.

I promised him that his airline would never see another penny of my money. And they never did.

That’s bad.  Was it a real airline, or a charter?

When I was a grad student in Scotland, the first time I flew home, something similar happened to me.  I knew there were weather issues at JFK, so I made certain the flight was on time before I went through emigration at Gatwick, since once you go through, there was no way to go back.  About ten minutes after I’d gone through, they changed the flight status from “on time” to “5 hour late departure.”  It eventually moved to a 9 hour late departure.  As it was a charter flight, they provided nothing.  As I was a poor grad student, I had less than a pound in my pockets.  Gatwick finally gave each us a three pound voucher.  Nine hours waiting in the departure lounge for my flight…  I read all my reading material before I boarded.

Worse, on the JFK side, they never told anyone the plane was delayed, so my father went to JFK to pick me up, and only at the airport was he told the plane hadn’t left London.  (This was 1983, before cell phones, and he was out of the office for most of the day, so I couldn’t call his office.  Cell phones are amazing technology for helping around these, and the next issue…)  He actually had time to go to our home in New Jersey, take a nap, and come back.

Eventually, the plane left.  Eventually, the plane landed at JFK.  JFK is, in my very unhumble opinion, the worst airport in the world.  I’m at baggage claim, waiting to pick up my bag.  And waiting.  And waiting.  It is literally four hours (1AM until 5AM, remember, we’re already 9 hours late) before my bag comes from baggage claim, and it is not the last bag.  I have no idea how long the last person waited, for all I know, they’re still there, 26 years later…  As you might imagine, my father, who was waiting for me, is extremely concerned, since the plane landed at 1AM and his son isn’t coming out of customs.  By the time I get out, he’s barely got time to get me home before he has to turn around and head back into the office for work that day.

I’ve paid him back…  A couple years ago, I had a business trip to Asia, so I left a week early, and using my frequent flier miles, flew him first class to Bangkok where we went to Angkor Wat and Bangkok, and then flew up to Beijing where we got to see the Great Wall and Forbidden City before I had to attend to my meetings.  He put up with a lot from me growing up…

“I don’t know a whole lot about the airline industry, hell, I don’t even fly much.  But even I know that the FAA is firmly in the airlines’ pockets.  They’re not going to write a law that the airlines don’t want. “

The FAA is not firmly is the airlines’ pockets.  Don’t get me wrong, the airlines have a large influence with the FAA, but if they the FAA was as deep in the airlines pockets as you are suggesting business aviation would be screwed, hard.  The reason I suggest the FAA as opposed to congress is simple.  Any law they make is not going to be useful enough.  It is either going to be so filled with BS and exceptions that it won’t be worth the paper its written on or it won’t have enough exceptions so a flight crew can do their job. 

The article posted by nicky explains the situation exactly as I was thinking.

Besides the FAA have written a large number of regualtions that the airlines do not want.  Crew rest and duty days are a good example.

Amanda,

You omitted one important difference between government and corporate bureaucracies and that is, when one of them screws you over what’s your recourse? With a government bureaucracy you can often summon a Higher Power (mayor, state rep, Congressperson) to be your ally. But with a private, corporate bureaucracy you have to Hire Power (a lawyer) as your ally, but at the hazard of entering the legal justice system (which is often skewed by the Golden Rule—them that has the gold makes the rules).

TheLady, I and most people I know in the US buy directly from the airlines for personal travel. We may use websites like Orbitz to find the cheapest prices, but nobody I know uses travel agents any more. When traveling for work, however, I have to fly United because they are the govt’s contracted carrier (I’m a federal employee), so in that sense, you’re right no matter how badly they treat passengers, I and more than a million others are stuck with them as long as they satisfy their real customer.

James @ #59- Both were regularly scheduled flights on major carriers.

The DFW fiasco we evidently got caught in a cascade of delays due to weather elsewhere. At LAX it was something to do with a part for the plane having to be flown in and no other planes available, let alone enough seats for the dozens of passengers on other flights. Like many of the stranded passengers my kids and I were changing planes in LAX from Hawaii and had already been in transit for hours.

I’ve been through the usual delays, changed gates, overbooked flights ect. in my five decades of air travel but those two flights stand out in my head as deeply awful.

Neither airline actually exists anymore.