Passenger Rights Cleared for Takeoff

The Obama administration has ordered airlines off the tarmac.

After numerous horror stories of airline passengers being stuck in planes on the ground without basic conveniences for hours on end, new rules announced by the Transportation Department give domestic flights three hours to take off or return to the gate, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the three-hour limit and other new regulations are meant to send an unequivocal message to airlines not to hold passengers hostage on stuck planes.

The latest horror story: Air Jamaica flight 40 out of Baltimore was supposed to depart at 7:00 in the morning Saturday, but got stuck heading out to the tarmac, and didn't get back to the gate at BWI until eight hours later.

LaHood said, "This is a way to say to passengers, we are going to avoid these long, long delays sitting on a runway."

After two hours, airlines must provide food and water. The planes must also have working bathrooms.

They must also provide passengers with medical attention when necessary.

Failure to comply will cost the airlines plenty: Fines up to $27,500 - per passenger. On a flight with 150 passengers, that's more than $4 million.

Airlines will also be prohibited from scheduling chronically delayed flights. They must designate an employee to monitor the effects of flight delays and cancellations and respond to consumer complaints. And they would have to post flight delay information on their Web sites. Carriers who fail to comply could face government enforcement action for using unfair or deceptive trade practices.

The new rules will take effect in 120 days. They apply only to domestic flights.

New Consumer Rule Limits Airline Tarmac Delays (DOT, 12.21.09)

The only exceptions to the requirement that planes must return to the gate after three hours are for safety or security reasons, or if air traffic control advises the pilot in command that returning to the terminal would disrupt airport operations.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she thought the 3-hour rule would not cause any problems for security. "I can't imagine it would. I call it the rule of common sense," she said.

The rules were originally announced and put on the books in November 2007 (having been proposed a decade earlier), but were opposed by the airlines, said former Department of Transportation official Mary Schiavo.

Appearing on CBS' "The Early Show" Tuesday, Shiavo said the rules would come into play in a relatively few cases.

"Putting it in perspective, there are 557,000 flights a month, and about 88 on average are delayed over three hours," Schiavo said. "But for those passengers on those 88 flights, it is truly just unbelievably stressful."

She said the rules on providing basic necessities in such a situation are necessary because "the airlines simply would not do it voluntarily, although they promised they would."

According to the new rules, the $27,500 per passenger fine is negotiable. Schiavo said that while she was Inspector General of the DOT, she found that penalties imposed by the Transportation Department and the FAA were usually paid at ten cents on the dollar.

"Everyone's focusing on the airlines paying $27,000 per passenger; not to be overlooked is the fact that the government figured that last year passengers lost $14 billion themselves waiting on the airlines," said Schiavo.

"So this is to even the score a little bit."

Provisions sponsored by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, in pending legislation would also impose a three-hour limit, but the new regulations go even farther, giving passenger rights advocates many of the reforms they've sought for years.

"No more will they be able to strand passengers for over three hours in hot, sweaty, metal tubes," said Kate Hanni, founder of Flyersrights.org. Hanni, who called the rules a Christmas miracle, was stuck on an American Airlines jet in Austin, Texas, for over nine hours in December 2006 when storms forced the closure of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, stranding more than 100 planes.

Last month, the department fined Continental Airlines, ExpressJet Airlines and Mesaba Airlines $175,000 for their roles in a nearly six-hour tarmac delay in Rochester, Minn. In August, Continental Express Flight 2816 en route to Minneapolis was diverted to Rochester due to thunderstorms. Forty-seven passengers were kept overnight in a cramped plane because Mesaba employees refused to open a gate so that they could enter the closed airport terminal.

It was the first time the department had fined an airline for actions involving a ground delay. Transportation officials made clear the case was a warning to the industry.

The airline industry said it will comply with the new regulations, but predicted the result will be more canceled flights, and more inconvenience for passengers.

"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. Lengthy tarmac delays benefit no one," said Air Transport Association President and CEO James May.