We have all heard the travel horror stories of planes being stranded on the tarmac for hours and hours. You can imagine just how terrible it would be to get stuck in such a situation, cramped into an airplane on the runway with no way out.
Today the government has taken action in attempt to prevent these situations from happening anymore. The Obama administration had imposed a three hour limit for airplane tarmac delays.
Under the new regulations, airlines operating domestic flights will be able only to keep passengers on board for three hours before they must be allowed to disembark a delayed flight. The regulation provides exceptions only for safety or security or if air traffic control advises the pilot in command that returning to the terminal would disrupt airport operations.
In addition to the disembarking regulations, airlines must also provide food and water to any passengers stranded for two hours or longer, and working lavatories must also be available.
The regulations will go into effect in 120 days.
Read the full AP article here.
1 Response to New Limit on Tarmac Delays
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December 22nd, 2009 at 4:10 pm
why do we travel? Or like the song goes “does anybody know what we are looking for”?? Why do we consider travel a basic desire nowadays? I especially like how George Santayana puts it in The Philosophy of Travel: “We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.” Do we travel to lose ourselves or to find ourselves? In order to find the WHERE, WHEN or HOW to travel, we need to rediscover the pure pleasure of travels and the meaning of our own inner journey and rediscovery.