Monday, December 21st, 2009
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U.S. to Fine Airlines for Tarmac Delays, Impose 3-Hour Wait Limit

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By JOSH MITCHELL and SUSAN CAREY

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Monday it will begin levying hefty fines against U.S. airlines for subjecting domestic passengers to lengthy tarmac delays, the government’s latest step in addressing airline consumers’ complaints after a series of high-profile incidents.

The new rule adopted by the Department of Transportation sets fines of up to $27,500 per passenger when airlines leave fliers stuck on a plane on the ground for more than three hours. Based on a delayed plane carrying 120 passengers, the fine could be $3.3 million. The rule would apply to planes with more than 30 seats.

The Transportation Department has rarely issued fines for tarmac delays. The first case in recent memory came last month when the DOT fined Continental Airlines Inc. and ExpressJet Holdings Inc. $50,000 each, and levied a $75,000 fine against Mesaba Airlines.

That stemmed from the airlines’ poor handling of an August incident in which 47 passengers on a plane operated for Continental by ExpressJet were stranded for nearly six hours overnight at the airport in Rochester, Minn. Mesaba, a unit of Delta Air Lines Inc., provided the ground handling at the airport and didn’t allow the passengers to get off the plane.

In recent years, an average of 1,500 domestic flights annually have experienced ground delays of three or more hours, affecting about 114,000 passengers. If all were fined under the new rules, airlines collectively would have been liable for more than $3.1 billion — an unwelcome prospect given that the industry generally isn’t profitable and now may have to restructure its operations to avoid violating the new rule.

The Air Transport Association, the industry’s largest trade group, said Monday that its members will comply with the new rule “even though we believe it will lead to unintended consequences — more cancelled flights and greater passenger inconvenience,” said James May, the ATA’s chief executive. “The requirement of having planes return to the gates within a three-hour window or face significant fines is inconsistent with our goal of completing as many flights as possible.”

Airlines have long fought congressional efforts to set a limit on tarmac delays and improve customer service. The issue came to a boil in 1999 after 50 Northwest Airlines planes were stranded on the ground for many hours at Detroit’s airport after a blizzard. To stave off legislative and grassroots efforts to pass an “airline passengers’ bill of rights,” the airlines agreed to new service standards that they themselves police.

That didn’t solve the problem. Kate Hanni, a Napa, Calif., real-estate agent, was stranded on a plane with her family for nine hours in Austin, Tex., in 2006. She has spent the past three years lobbying for stricter rules through her non-profit FlyersRights.org consumer group. “I am delighted beyond my wildest dreams,” Ms. Hanni said Monday of the new DOT rules. “Airlines are in financial trouble for other reasons. They can afford these fines.”

The Business Travel Coalition advocacy group applauded the rule because it could force airlines to scale back flights at over-scheduled major hubs, said Kevin Mitchell, the group’s chairman. “The problem of congestion and delays could be substantially alleviated.”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the administration wants to send the message that it’s getting tougher on consumer abuses. “We think it’s the strongest message we can send, particularly at this time of the year, for passengers,” Mr. LaHood said at a Monday news conference.

Mr. LaHood said the new rules would allow for exceptions in instances in which pilots and air-traffic controllers determined that tarmac delays were necessary for security or safety reasons. U.S. airlines operating international flights must specify in advance their own time limits for deplaning passengers. If delays become a problem on international flights, he added, the government will expand the rule to cover them.

On both domestic and overseas flights, U.S. airlines must provide adequate food and drinking water for passengers within two hours and maintain operable lavatories and, where necessary, provide medical attention.

The new rules, which will take effect in 120 days, would be more severe than those proposed in legislation introduced last summer by Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D., W. Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. That bill would require only that airlines give passengers the option to deplane if stuck on the runway for more than three hours. The bill doesn’t specify fines but allows the DOT to set them. A House-passed version of the bill doesn’t include limits on tarmac delays.

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