Passenger Bill of Rights: End of Trapped on the Tarmac?

Sept. 30, 2009 — -- Question: What's worse than being on a flight next to a screaming baby, whose diaper should have been changed hours ago?

Answer: Being seated on a plane next to that baby -- for nine hours -- and your plane isn't going anywhere!

The airlines will tell you that such "trapped on the tarmac" scenarios are rare and that's absolutely true. But it has happened to more than 200,000 passengers in the last three years, according to USA Today -- 200,000 people stuck on "Planes to Nowhere" for three hours or more.

And it keeps happening: just last month, 50 people were stuck overnight on a plane in Rochester, Minn. with a single lavatory. Do the math and you get one smelly, frustrating mess.

Ah, but finally, there's light at the end of the jetway: Thanks to efforts to add "passenger rights" to the FAA reauthorization bill that is now working its way through Congress, we will likely see big changes by the end of the year.

But it won't completely end the agony.

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At least, that's what Kate Hanni says, and she should know. The Executive Director of Flyersrights.org, who endured her own dreadful experience during an eight-hour tarmac delay has made it her mission to get passenger rights enacted into law. "People were going into diabetic shock, women were making diapers out of t-shirts, people were getting in fist fights," Hanni says.

And what a battle it's been: all to allow people the right to get off a plane.

The airlines have fought the "passenger rights" provisions with arguments like, what if people get off a plane after three hours, and the pilot suddenly gets permission to fly? The empty aircraft will then lose its place in line for take-off, and the delay will just get worse.