Stuck on the tarmac: How long is too long?
The Star’s Tuesday editorial From January through July, more than 770 U.S. commercial airline flights have been stuck on the ground waiting to take off, with passengers confined aboard for more than three hours. A decade ago, in one of the more famous of the flight-delay cases, a winter storm in Detroit stranded hundreds of people for up to eight and a half hours. Last month, passengers aboard on a jet in Minnesota were trapped overnight. Usually, the cause for these delays is bad weather — planes fill with passengers and queue for takeoff, with the hope the weather will improve. When it doesn’t, they sit. As these cases continue to appear in the news, many are concluding that it’s time for Congress to legislate. Some observers call for a three-hour limit on how long a plane can be idled with passengers aboard, an uncomfortable delay even for healthy travelers. Industry and federal transportation officials should quickly come up with workable solutions before lawmakers resort to a one-
