Enjoy more cancelled Flights

[Squirrel]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/21/AR2009122101607.html?hpid=sec-business

Have working in the airlines for awhile I will tell you now. This will result in so many cancelled flights it will be turnovered in 5 years. I can agree with making sure passengers have enough food and water and medical equipment. But a 3 hour rule will result in chaos for taxiing airplanes. Enjoy!

[Epistaxis]

I get what you are saying, but I think the rare horror story of flights sitting on the tarmac for 12 hours just pissed too many people off.

I'll tell ya I would have lost my mind with 2 kids under age 4 sitting on the ground for more than a couple hours.

And they would drive the whole flight batsh*t crazy too!

[Sultan33g]

what do you do exactly?

[Squirrel]

Right now nothing except drawing unemployment. But in my past life I used to work in the Operation Center for a airline. I was the person the Captain would call when he had problems.

[Squirrel]

I get what you are saying, but I think the rare horror story of flights sitting on the tarmac for 12 hours just pissed too many people off.

I'll tell ya I would have lost my mind with 2 kids under age 4 sitting on the ground for more than a couple hours.

And they would drive the whole flight batsh*t crazy too!

12 hours yes but you do get those days when you have Thunderstorms over the airport and snow and sleet days. Think the longest I had was 3:30 but I worked for a charter airline and we could schedule our flights for later or earlier if the weather was bad. Biggest problem is gate space. It is a premium on bad weather days they want you to unload load up and get fuel as quickly as possible. ATC does implement policies to curb traffic into those airports. You get a clearance time and you are not allowed to takeoff til that time. Problem with that is it is as changing I've had a clearance time go from 1 hour delay to 6 hours with a a one hour increase so I received 6 time changes. Makes the airlines look bad and passnegers pissed off.

The thing that needs to be done is improve ATC that is the biggest problem right now. The airway structure is the same since the invention of it. Small tweaks here and there. But they need to do a complete overhaul.

[Delhommey]

In the past, the industry has fought government action on tarmac delays in court. In 2008, a federal court struck down a New York passenger bill of rights that called for airlines to provide food, water and restrooms for passengers stuck in grounded aircraft for more than three hours.

It's pretty bad when the government has to enforce decent customer service. Even worse when the industry fights it.

Obviously, there are exceptions like Southwest, but the airlines have gotten bailed out too often and have been too unresponsive to customer needs as a whole for too long.

The airlines basically opened themselves up to this. If they would have cleaned their own houses, this wouldn't have happened.

[Sultan33g]

. I was the person the Captain would call when he had problems.

my dream was to be a commercial pilot...Gay dream I know but thats what I wanted to do. thinking about getting my pilots license one day tho.

[shinner]

Have working in the airlines for awhile I will tell you now. This will result in so many cancelled flights it will be turnovered in 5 years. I can agree with making sure passengers have enough food and water and medical equipment. But a 3 hour rule will result in chaos for taxiing airplanes. Enjoy!

That's 2 hours too generous. If you can't get my ass in the air in under an hour, then don't even pull the plane away from the jetway.

Who could have known that extending someone's "flight" by 3 hours in a cramped seat huffing jet fuel fumes wouldn't be pleasurable? Let's see...get to the airport 2hrs early to make sure you get through security, sit in the plane on the ground for 3 more hours, then fly whatever the scheduled duration of the flight is, wait a good 30-45 mins (at best) for your luggage to come out, wait for the rental car shuttle (which more and more seems to be to satellite locations) and hopefully you belong to one of those "grab any car" clubs or you'll be waiting longer on the rental car person to assign you a car. Yeah, boy....air travel is so convenient!

[cookinwithgas]

I can see airports opening up an airplane parking area where they bring out ladders to the planes and charge waiting people for coffee and internet access....