09/02/12, 20:26:26 EST

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U.S. Federal Report Recommends Measures To Improve Airline Passenger Relations

allheadlinenews.com

Sparked by a 42 percent increase in U.S. flight delays since 2006, including at least two notorious incidents of passengers being stranded on the runway for 10 or more hours at a time, U.S. Transportation Inspector General Calvin L. Scovell III recommended the federal government require airlines to take certain measures to improve passenger relations.

After studying on-board delays and other airline flight reroutes and cancellations, including the infamous Feb. 14 JetBlue Airways incident which stranded hundreds of passengers on its planes on the tarmac at New York's Kennedy International for up to 10 1/2 hours, Scovell recommended airlines be required to monitor such delays and forced to take action if a loaded plan has spent two hours or more on the tarmac.

Scovell, who examined contingency plans for 13 airlines and 13 airports, blamed much of the problem on poor planning by air carriers and airports.

"Both airline and airport contingency plans are limited in addressing long, on-board delays. In fact, we found there has been little improvement from what we reported in 2001 - that only a few airlines' contingency plans specified in any detail the efforts planned to get passengers off the aircraft when delayed for extended periods," Scovell wrote in his report.

While Scovell determined that only two of the 13 airports "have a process for monitoring and mitigating long, on-board delays that involves contacting the airline to request a plan of action after an aircraft has remained for two hours on the tarmac," the Transportation IG also discovered inaction on behalf of the actual flight carriers.

Scovell also found that even after the notorious weather related delays of Jet Blue and American airlines, only five put time limits on delays before letting passengers off, while five others still have no procedures in place for preventing such incidents.

According to the report, Scovell said the number of times passengers were confined to airplanes on the ground for more than 5 hours rose from 27 in the first seven months of 2006 to 44 in the same period this year. One to two-hour delays also climbed substantially, from 33,438 to 47,558.

 Printable Version  | published Sep 26, 2007