Federal officials are poised to broaden new tarmac delay rules to include overseas carriers, closing a loophole that was exposed during the Boxing Day blizzard that shuttered New York City’s airports.
The U.S. Department of Transportation said Thursday it expects to issue the latest passenger protections in April and will likely build on a controversial 2010 rule that set fines of $27,500 for every passenger on board planes operated by domestic carriers that idle at an airport for more than 180 minutes.
The airline horror stories published in the Dec. 26 storm’s aftermath focused on passengers on board United Kingdom-based British Airways and Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific flights who were trapped for hours on the ground at John F. Kennedy International Airport while crews struggled to locate empty gates and immigration officials.
Although U.S. carriers canceled thousands of flights because of the storm, none violated new rules that require domestic airlines to provide passengers with food, water and a chance to exit an aircraft that has been on the ground for more than three hours.
Three flights saw tarmac delays beyond the new federal limits during December, according to data released Thursday: Delta Air Lines flight 1329, from Detroit to Miami, was delayed 192 minutes on Dec. 12; United Airlines flight 147, from San Diego to San Francisco, was delayed 189 minutes on Dec. 27; and Pinnacle Airlines flight 3829, from Detroit to Cedar Rapids, IA, was delayed 186 minutes on Dec. 12.
Proposed rules issued by the Transportation Dept. last year would broaden the number of airports subject to the three-hour limit for tarmac delays and require foreign carriers to draw up contingency plans for getting stranded passengers off of planes at U.S. airports.
Although government officials won’t yet provide details of the final rule, Transportation spokesman Bill Mosley said they would take into consideration passenger complaints as well as the operations meltdown by foreign carriers at Kennedy.
But it’s not clear that the rules would have helped the international passengers stranded in aircraft at Kennedy, since the airlines, airport authority and federal security and immigration officials disagree as to who is to blame for their ordeal.
“There’s questions and confusion about gate availability, and questions and confusion about the availability of customs officials to process the international passengers,” said Steven Lott, spokesman for the International Air Transport Association, which represents 230 airlines around the world. “The New York City situation makes it more difficult for the Department of Transportation to write their final rule because it clearly shows that there are many different parties involved here.”
No U.S. carrier has been slapped with fines for excessive delays that could reach into the millions of dollars. Transportation officials are investigating 148 reports from carriers, consumers and the news media, Mosley said.
Data filed with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics showed that there have only been 15 total tarmac delays since the first rule took effective last spring, down from 584 such delays during the same eight-month period of 2009, the Department of Transportation said.
Lott questions whether the U.S. government has the authority to levy similar fines on overseas carriers. “The U.S. government has few rights in what it can dictate foreign airlines to do on their home soil.”
Meanwhile, Chicago-based United Airlines reported the best on-time results among its peer group for the month of December and for full year 2010, BTS data showed.
Chicago’s Midway Airport continued to lag the nation in on-time departures, finishing last among major airports for December and full year 2010, according to BTS. Less than half of the airport’s flights departed on-time for the month of December, a reflection of similar struggles at Southwest Airlines, which accounts for 87 percent of the airport’s traffic.
