In case anyone is interested, here is the link to Transportation Secretary LaHood's post about the rule on his Fast Lane blog:

http://fastlane.dot.gov/2010/04/dot-airline-passenger-protections-to-take-effect-.html

Only time will tell for sure whether the new tarmac delay rule is good for travelers, but the overwhelming odds are that it will prove to be harmful – resulting in an increase in actual gate to gate delays, enormous incidental costs for passengers who find themselves stranded at airports after flight cancellations, and higher operational expenditures for airlines during periods of congestion.

The rulemaking itself is premised an analysis of its potential costs and benefits that was faulty and incomplete. (And I’m being charitable.) In justifying both the proposal and final rule (as part of the “regulatory impact analysis” or RIA required under executive order by the Office of Management and Budget), DOT economists somehow managed to arrive at a “net present benefit” of $69 million. That is, according to the Department, when all the benefits from the new regulation to consumers and air carriers are weighed against all the predicted expenses on both, the public as a whole is better off. That’s the theory. Here's the RIA: http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#documentDetail?R=0900006480a6e353.

But to arrive at this conclusion, DOT assumed that a grand total of just 41 flights annually would be cancelled as a direct result of the rule. (RIA, p. 42). For this handful of flights DOT then applied the incremental costs associated with each cancellation ($14,818) to arrive at a total predicted cost for carriers from cancellations of just $607,538 per year; on top of this, DOT estimated that carriers would have incremental fuel costs from deplaning and reboarding passengers of $257,749, for an “all-in” cost of this component of the rule of $865,245.

Against this trivial cost DOT weighed the enormous “monetizable’ and “non-monetizable” benefits to a large segment of the a much larger group of passengers (and crew) from the better traveling environment supposedly fostered (but not required) by the rule. Looking at all the various components of the regulation, the RIA includes the following perks among what it terms “possible likely side effects to the Rule.” (p. 83) I quote:

• Reduced Stress Among Delayed Passengers And Crew. A possible decrease in passenger anxiety with improved comfort and convenience brought by contingency plans may lead to reduced stress among delayed passengers and crew. This may decrease minor conflicts and occasional altercations that arise when people are under stress for extended periods in close quarters. The result will be a more pleasant experience for passengers and crew that may not be fully taken into account in the measurements employed in this RIA.
• Decreased Anxiety With Regard To Flying. Knowing that contingency plans exist may bring relief during long on-board delays and lower overall flight anxiety for some passengers, making some passengers less uneasy about overall about traveling by air. This may lead to a significantly improved travel experience for some passengers (more so than is estimated) and may even lead to an increase in overall demand for air travel.
• Improved customer Good Will Towards Carriers. As extended on-tarmac delays without food, water and access to clean lavatories or without the ability to deplane after three hours essentially disappear, overall customer good will towards carriers should improve. Improved good will may lead to a slight increase in demand.
• Improved Overall Carrier Operations. Carriers may be able to improve general operations based on analysis of data now required to be stored on substantive delays and carrier responses. This recalls the business management maxim, “What you can measure, you can manage.” If carriers measure substantive delays, carrier responses, and audit customer service plans, the result will establish benchmarks for improvements. From these benchmarks, carriers can improve service, leading to more unquantified passenger benefits.
• Decreased Anger Toward Carriers During Resolution of Complaints. Passengers who file complaints may experience greater reassurance and less agitation while awaiting resolution of a complaint based on Component 2 of the Rule. The value of this comfort is not quantifiable because no benchmark time of waiting for a response is available. The Final Rule stipulates that passengers receive a substantive response to complaints (though not yet a resolution to the complaint), which may bring a sense of reassurance while waiting. Passengers may feel that their complaints are legitimate when carriers respond to them specifically instead of just noting that a communication has been received.
• Decreased Legal and Administrative Fees from Better Responses to Consumer Complaints. It is possible that a more substantive response to customer complaints may decrease future costs to carriers. Customers who receive a targeted response to a complaint may be less likely to file suit or contact the carrier multiple times to track resolution of their complaint.
• Improved Customer Good Will Towards Carriers. As fewer flights will be regularly arriving substantially after their scheduled arrival time, passengers will perceive an improvement the level of service provided by carriers. In turn, customer good will towards carriers should improve; improved good will may lead to a slight increase in demand.
• Improved Management Of Flights and Schedules. The threat of having a flight labeled chronically delayed may lead some carriers to seek other avenues of improving on-time performance in addition to extending schedules. Such efforts could lead to improved management of flights that are frequently delayed.

One might reasonably ask, if the entire problem that has grabbed so many headlines could have been solved by the airline industry for this amount of money, and would produce this kind of psychological uplift to the entire traveling community, why hasn’t it already been done. Did DOT just produce the silver bullet for reducing long on-the-tarmac delays and the stress of travel?

Not quite.

DOT assumes that the only cancellations that can be attributed to the regulation are those for flights that are cancelled as a “direct result” of the rule and that “would not have otherwise been cancelled. ” The RIA states: “To the greatest extent possible, carriers will undertake responses to the Final Rule that will have minimal impact on overall operations. Actions above and beyond those required by the Final Rule are not treated as a cost of the Rule.” But of course, the only thing that’s actually required by the rule is that once a flight sits on the tarmac for three hours, the passengers must be deplaned. While airlines must also have contingency plans under the regulation, nothing requires them to cancel flights that don't actually hit the three hour trigger. Apparently, that’s their own business decision.

Entirely absent from the analysis is any discussion of the interplay of DOT’s civil penalty enforcement program and the three hour trigger. As other contributors to this blog have noted, carriers could be fined $27,500 per passenger for any flight that sits on the tarmac for more than three hours. For a plane carrying 100 passengers, the result would be a fine of up to $2,750,000. No airline can take any risk of such a fine. That is why several airlines have prudently announced that they will cancel flights as early as two and a half hours after they have sat on the tarmac and perhaps even sooner in the event that irregular operations are forecast. DOT has criticized these announcements as grandstanding but it seems to me, not having a contingency plan to avoid crippling civil penalties would be irresponsible – to shareholders.

Because cancellations for weather and air traffic control related reasons generally do not require airlines to compensate passengers for their incidental expenses, such as the costs of hotel rooms and meals, the rule creates a big financial incentives for airlines to cancel many more flights than they would have otherwise planned to. True, they are not “required” to do so; thus the extra costs foisted on themselves and passengers are not a “result” of the rule. But it would be illogical for them to do otherwise as there is no other way of avoiding the unacceptable risk of huge civil penalties.

The rule doesn’t even begin to account for the increase in total travel time that will be caused by this unnecessary regulation even when carriers don’t ultimately cancel the flights in question. Offering passengers the opportunity to deplane after a lengthy tarmac delay involves much more than a quick trip back to the gate. Not all passengers will choose to continue their journey. The airlines must know who is on board at all times; thus a passenger who chooses to terminate his or her journey at an airport terminal (for example, someone who might live at the departure city) has to be removed from the passenger manifest and his or her reservation modified. For each such passenger, it involves finding and removing his checked baggage, and for the rest of the passengers, reboarding the aircraft and then lining up again for an FAA clearance to depart.

As DOT has acknowledged, it has no data on true travel delays. That is, it cannot measure how long any individual passengers actually spends from the time he or she arrives at the departure airport to the time he or she leaves the arrival airport at their final destination. Yet, this is the time period that consumers actually care about – the total travel time. Yet, despite this lack of information, DOT still concludes that “In general, the Final Rule will not result in changes in overall trip travel time. Component 1, the Development and Implementation of a Contingency Plan for Extended Tarmac Delays, may move passengers from one place to another (from a plane on the tarmac to the terminal) in a few situations, with corresponding changes in comfort or condition/type of experience, this is not expected to impact actual trip time except in limited situations where a carrier cancels a flight rather than deplaning and reboarding.” This does not account for the increase in total travel time that occurs when a flight is returned to the gate after two and a half hours on the tarmac, deplaned, and reboarded when, under pre-rule circumstances, the airline would have taken off after two hours and 45 minutes. And, more importantly, there is no way of estimating the number of connections that passengers will miss as a result of the mandatory deplaning.

For international travelers the regulation will prove to be particularly vexing, for reasons the DOT does not even discuss. In the final rule, in making one change in response to the comments received, DOT decided to give airlines operating international flights the flexibility to set a limit longer than three hours for their pilots in the case of a tarmac delay. It thus effectively acknowledges that someone embarking on an 14 hour journey (say from New York to Tokyo), may be willing to tolerate a three hour tarmac delay.

The problem is, most international passengers don't travel non-stop. They connect at intermediate airports, traveling in part on purely domestic legs. Thus, a flight to JFK from Boston, or from San Diego to San Francisco, may be carrying a significant number of passengers who are on their way to long-haul overseas flights. Despite the short flight time on the first leg of their trip, these passengers also might be willing to live with a three hour delay. But the deplaning rule may mean that when (or if) they finally arrive at the connecting airport, they will have missed the last flights to their true destinations.

According to the Department of Transportation’s T-100 data cited in the RIA, the number of flights with taxi out times of greater than 60 minutes has more than quadrupled since 1995, from approximately 18,000 in 1995 to 82,000 in 2008. In some markets, many with New York as an end point, scheduled “flight times” have been jacked up to reflect air traffic control related delays, with the predicted taxi out time on some routes (such as New York – Washington) famously exceeding the flight time. Whose fault is this? The airlines are not responsible for this situation. The regulator is.

There is no dispute that, on very rare occasion, airlines have held passengers on board for far longer than they should have as a matter of customer service. (Your chances of being delayed for three or more hours on the ground is about the same as your chances of getting a hole in one.) Some would say that these incidents are “unconscionable,” amounting to some form of imprisonment. In reality, however, mistakes and misjudgments happened, and the dispatchers and pilots in these instances were in good faith trying to get the passengers to their destinations in the face of constantly changing weather conditions. I may be wrong. But to micromanage airline operational decisions in response confuses the symptom with the problem. The fact is, tarmac delays are 'cascading' problems from outdated, inadequate infrastructure. They can ultimately be linked to the government’s failure, over the course of several decades, to modernize the air traffic control system. Therefore, it seems to me at least, imposing additional costs on the airlines, who are as much victims as their passengers are of our ATC system, amounts to blaming the victim.

Lisa -

I appreciate the additional expert information on tarmac delays. This indicates that the current systems for controlling aircraft departures are “less than perfect”.

And it suggests that it would have been better for the federal authorities to have studied the problem and recommended improved airport procedures than to impose heavy fines on the airlines, which do not seem to be the principal culprits.

Another point: All respondents assumed that passengers cannot de-plane without a gate. But we all know that movable stairways can enable able-bodied passengers to step down to the tarmac. [That is how people get on and off planes in most countries!] Inconvenient, but better for many than sitting for lengthy periods in full aircraft. Why do not US airports make arrangements to enable passengers to get on and off aircraft, and safely to (and from) a terminal, even when all gates are occupied?

There are many reasons this might happen. Here are a couple of examples:

1. There is an incoming aircraft that needs the gate to offload passengers, get cleaned and be prepared for its next flight. Even if there is a line of aircraft awaiting departure, if the aircraft does not leave the gate the incoming aircraft has nowhere to go. Assuming that takeoff is projected to occur sometime within the next 90 minute or so, it is better to get the incoming passengers into the terminal.

2. At the time of departure, all is well. After the aircraft leaves the gate, a thunderstorm appears and aircraft on the taxiway cannot leave. A conga line of aircraft is awaiting departure. If the aircraft returns to the gate, it loses its place in the takeoff priority line. Moreover, all the gates may be full, and there is no gate to which the aircraft can return.

3. Depending on the configuration of the airport, and the aircraft is on a taxiway that does not permit one airplane to pass another, there will be no physical way for it to return to the terminal without finding some way to reposition aircraft ahead of it in the takeoff line

There are many other hypotheticals that could create a problem as well.

Long-time American Airlines captain Anthony "Tony" Maurillo sent in the following response to Gabriel Roth's question about lengthy tarmac delays (updated May 15):

When we get a departure delay, it often is called a “gate hold.” Generally it’s because of traffic saturation in the air or at a certain destination, typically for weather conditions. If O'Hare, for example, is experiencing weather problems or runway closures (snow plowing, etc.), the powers at Air Traffic Control (ATC) Traffic Management in Washington DC decide to hold airliners at their origination rather than allowing them to begin a flight and possibly enter holding patterns at their destination. Fuel is saved, and fewer planes are airborne and requiring management.

My airline has always been accommodating and has allowed pilots to take the delay at the gate. That’s good news for passengers. But sometimes we run out of gates, and if the gate is needed for another inbound jet, we must load the passengers and take the delay elsewhere on the airport. Thus, the frustration begins.

We are given a "wheels up" time (a take-off time), and we must be at the runway for that slot, or we lose it. We try to plan for it, but often the time is revised by the folks in Washington, and we must further wait.

Here’s another scenario. Imagine two jets originating at the same city and going to the same destination. Airliner A takes the delay at the gate, thus waiting the entire time - and possibly more if they revise the "wheels up" time later. But Airliner B decides to load passengers and taxi, taking the delay in a holding pad near a runway. Often the delay will be rescinded, and flights will be allowed to go. So Airliner B is rewarded for being ready when the situation has turned on a dime. Airliner A is still at the gate. No one has contacted that captain and advised that he can now depart. Unless he is constantly calling ATC (and being a pest), he will arrive at the destination much later than the captain who loaded up and departed the gate.

It's a lousy system, I will agree. But this is what happens in the real world of being an airline pilot.

In the continual push-and-pull between the airlines and their passengers, it has been the airports that have stood up for the rights of air travelers. Airports have long advocated that airline passengers have the right to know when they are permitted to get off a stranded plane after an extended amount of delay on a runway, and Airports Council International-North America (ACI-NA) supported a requirement for airlines to develop these deadlines. When the airlines did not, ACI-NA endorsed the actions of the Department of Transportation when it acted.

Like stranded passengers, I find these episodes to be very frustrating. Once an airline pulls its long-delayed aircraft back to the gate, it often falls upon the airports to care for the customers. Airport have made their facilities available to help these stranded travelers to handled their needs as best as they can.

The new FAA rule offers a measure of common sense by requiring that each carrier develop a contingency plan for each of its large and medium-hub airports that it serves. The plans are to be developed in coordination with each airport. However, there is weak-link in this new rule – the airlines are not required to coordinate their plans with smaller airports that may have to handle weather diverted flights. This is exact what happened last summer in the now-infamous overnight ground-delay at the tiny Rochester, Minn., airport. The airport was open, but for a number of reasons the passengers were not let off the plane. No, instead the airlines initially threw both the airport and the TSA under the bus in the ensuing blame game before stepping up to the plate to apologize.

Airlines can control their own destiny in many of these situations. The easiest and simplest adjustment would be to use logic when crafting departure schedules during peak periods. The airlines also need to move beyond lip service regarding modernization of the nation’s air traffic control system and be prepared to invest the funds needed so their planes can function in the new satellite-guided era – as Southwest Airlines has already done.

Airports have been working for the last several years to protect the passengers’ rights. A number of airport directors and ACI-NA staff participated on the DOT Task Force that developed recommendations for airlines and airports during a tarmac stranding. Many airports implemented the guidelines well before the department issued its rule. And, in preparation of the April 29 roll-out of the new regulations, several airports have purchased equipment needed to deplane aircraft at any location on the airfield.

ACI-NA also filed comments with DOT supporting enhanced protections for passengers, such as increased compensation for delayed or cancelled flights and lost baggage and requiring airlines to provide more information to passengers on delays and cancellations. There is still more work to be done and we know DOT is working on another proposal to increase consumer protections, which may be released this summer. The airport community looks forward to continuing to do its part to protect passengers and improve their travel experience.

Could one of our aviation experts take a stab at answering Gabriel Roth's question?

Thanks so much.

I am strongly opposed to the US DOT’s draconian tarmac delay rule. I’m concerned that this blunt instrument will cause more passenger delays than it will prevent. Here’s why.

No airline will risk paying a fine of up to $27,500 per passenger. At a typical plane-load of 135 people (on a 150-seat plane), that comes to over $3.7 million per flight. At the typical domestic “yield” of 14 cents per available seat mile, that 150-seat plane on a typical (2008 average) trip of 873 miles brings the airline about $18,000—for the entire flight. And that’s gross, not net, revenue. So any flight that comes close to two or two and a half hours on the taxiway is going to turn around and go back to the terminal rather than risk that outrageous fine.

When it does, a long list of problems will ensue. First, there may be no gate for it to return to. Second, it may have to replace some or all of its crew, due to FAA duty-time limits, meaning further delays. If it eventually departs the gate after all that, it goes to the end of the taxi line; it can’t go back to its “original” place in line, because taxiways don’t have passing lanes. And if it finally takes off and reaches its destination, all of its passengers that needed to connect will miss their connections and may be stranded somewhere else.

In many cases it will be simpler for the airline to cancel the flight, rather than reschedule it to run much later. That’s when its passengers’ problems really start. At today’s typical 90% load factors, only 10% of the seats on other flights to the plane’s original destination will be available. So to accommodate all 135 passengers from our original flight in batches of 15 (10% of 150) will take nine planes. But if there are only three flights a day to the destination in question, it will take three days to get everybody to that destination. And this is just from one flight that was cancelled in response to DOT Secretary LaHood’s rule.

And by the way, if this DOT rule is supposed to be for the passengers’ protection, how much of that $3.7 million fine would go to compensate the passengers? Zero.

The tarmac delay problem that led to this rule has been grossly exaggerated. During the first eight months of 2009, taxi-out delays greater than two hours averaged 0.02% of all flights. That’s not two percent; it’s two/one-hundredths of one percent. In the worst month, June, it was 0.03%. So we’re talking about a miniscule problem—though certainly one that’s horrible for the scores or hundreds of those involved in such an incident.

The good news is that airlines that put passengers through such ordeals suffer big reputational penalties; JetBlue went to huge lengths after its fiasco several years ago. And for the past several years, airports and airlines have been working out contingency plans to accommodate stranded passengers, to make it more feasible for planes to return to the terminal in the event taxi-out delays become lengthy.

There are also policy changes that would help. One would be for more U.S. airports to shift to the kinds of common-use gates that are commonplace in Canada and most of Europe, especially with privatized airports. I’ve sat on taxiways many times after arriving early (or late at night) and waited half an hour because “my” airline had no gate available—yet we could see empty gates sitting there unused.

And since a huge fraction of these delays occur at a handful of the most congested airports during bad weather, market pricing of runway access would allow the most time-sensitive travelers to book trips on “premium” flights that pay extra for take-off priority when weather imposes serious constraints.

Lisa -

To help answer this question, could an aviation expert please explain why passengers have to be left on tarmacs for three hours or more?

On the face of it, it seems ridiculous. If departures have to be delayed, why cannot boarding be delayed or have the aircraft pull back and require the passengers (and crews) to wait in the terminals?

I know little about aviation but consider even a fifteen-minute delay on the tarmac unacceptable. It just does not make sense for traffic controllers and airlines to treat passengers in this barbaric way. Why does this happen, and so often?

It is very hard to support the notion that keeping passengers involuntarily on an aircraft for extended periods is defensible. On the other hand, the way in which this rule was implemented will doubtless create lots of unintended consequences, and is a wonderful example of how dysfunctional our government has become.

Soon after the debate began, following several extraordinary events, it became obvious that the public is not prepared to tolerate long periods of involuntary confinement, often under unpleasant conditions, and that the industry would be well served to develop and implement solutions to the unique operating challenges that cause such things to happen. Unhappily, too many in the business chose to take the position that long tarmac delays are the consequence of circumstances beyond the control of the many companies and agencies involved in one or another aspect of airline operations -- the airlines themselves, airports, the FAA, the TSA, the Immigration Service and others.

The fact is that while procedural changes of many kinds will be required by everyone involved, and particularly the airlines, the problem is not insoluble. It is, however, challenging and the Department of Transportation should have required all the involved parties to participate in a collaborative effort to find the best available solutions while simultaneously setting a realistic date for the implementation of new rules. In meetings with members of Congress, and in various letters and speeches, I advocated that the Department begin by establishing a four hour deadline to be effective January 1, 2011 with a further adjustment to a three hour deadline one year later.

I did so because I know that airlines, which publish schedules 12 months in advance, cannot radically alter those schedules on short notice. Nor can the airlines, the airports, the FAA and the other agencies involved modify the many complex procedures that govern aircraft departures and arrivals without thoughtful collaboration, careful consultation and considerable thought. I continue to think that adopting my suggestion – or something approximating it -- would have satisfied the public’s desire for action while allowing time for the many changes of process and procedure that must be made to alleviate the number and length of tarmac delays without compromising the high standard of aviation safety we all expect.

Instead, the DOT imposed a three hour limitation effective 120 days after its publication in the Federal Register. In doing so, it ignored the advice of knowledgeable observers and industry participants, instead pandering to the political popularity of forbidding what the public seems to believe is a deliberate act of airline venality. The facts are that while the many organizations and agencies involved can amend their deeply interactive processes and procedures in many positive ways, and the airlines can modify their schedules, neither can be accomplished in a four month time span. Additionally, by adopting an effective date in the Spring of 2010, the DOT ignored the serious operating problems – and inevitable delays -- that will be caused by runway repairs being undertaken at JFK this summer.

Moreover, by adopting these rules, the Department has ignored its own role in creating the problem. As every observer of the airline industry knows, a large percentage of all delays, occur at New York’s airports, and particularly at LaGuardia. Nonetheless, the Department has refused to set realistic scheduling limits on that airport, and the airlines continue to schedule more flights than can be accommodated in adverse weather conditions. It is nonsense to contend – as some do – that the airlines themselves can solve the over scheduling problem; competitive imperatives preclude any airline from withdrawing a flight that will simply be replaced by a competitor, to the detriment of whichever carrier is seeking to behave responsibly.

It seems likely that as summer – and hopefully, the economic recovery --- progresses, there will be much grumbling about prematurely cancelled flights and passengers inconvenienced as a consequence of the new rule. I imagine the airline industry will be blamed, as it should be for not having stepped up to solving this problem long ago. However, blame for whatever occurs this summer lies partially with the DOT, which failed to serve as an honest and informed broker between a public demanding action and an industry needing guidance.

Our government cannot function well if it consistently ignores the advice of its citizens. To function properly, those in government with the power of decision must learn to differentiate between those who lobby for a particular course of action and those who understand the mechanics of an industry. In this particular case, having decided that it would make and enforce a rule, the DOT should have turned to the industry’s operating executives for advice on how to do so.

Whether or not the U.S. DOT 3-hour tarmac-delay rule represents useful or harmful government intervention in the marketplace is a mostly irrelevant discussion-point now. The important questions at hand include the rule’s impact on airline passengers and how to move forward as an airline industry. Passengers will likely be negatively impacted by the rule, largely emanating from flight cancellations, at least during a transition period of a year or more from April 29, 2010.

Airlines were strongly encouraged since the infamous 1999 snow-blizzard debacle at Detroit, where thousands of passengers were stranded for up to eleven hours, to prioritize extended ground delays as a problem warranting senior management attention. Most airlines did not do so, and as such, they lost control of this issue in recent years as extraordinary delay-events made for sensational headlines in the U.S. and around the world.

Naturally, elected officials gravitated to a headline-making consumer issue. DOT likewise responded aggressively on behalf of consumers with its new rule but did so, in BTC’s view, in a way that did not provide sufficient time for internal airline planning or coordination with federal and local governmental bodies such as TSA, FAA, Border Control, airport authorities and law enforcement.

Such a tarmac-delay rule was not the outcome sought or desired by most travel industry organizations. For example, since 1999 BTC has testified four times in the U.S. House and Senate against government intervention in the marketplace regarding extended ground delays. Indeed, the Customer Service Plans announced by airlines in 1999 was a solution that BTC advanced to ward off Congressional legislation. The principle in play was that airlines, at the firm and industry levels, should be able to solve for these kinds of problems without new laws.

The issue all along has not been the cause of these extraordinary irregular operations but rather how airlines respond to them. Were there coordinated plans in place for such events? Were communications systems adequate? Were staffs trained? Did senior executives care enough to engage? Were their spokespersons indifferent? Too often since 1999 the answers were the wrong ones; airlines did not sufficiently heed the many warning signs.

Passengers realize that we live in a country compassionate enough to send a fire truck to extract a cat from a tree or a Coast Guard helicopter and crew to rescue a dog from a swollen river, and without a second thought. Yet, we allow elderly and health-compromised citizens to be kept on a parked plane in freezing cold or sweltering heat at risk for 8, 10 or 12 hours in poor and deteriorating conditions while some airline industry leaders disingenuously dismiss passenger concerns on the rationale that such circumstances are rare.

Despite the disruption and hardship that is likely to be rained-down on passengers in coming months, the 3-hour rule has in fact forced airline senior managements to finally categorize extended ground delays as a problem to be thoughtfully, if not urgently addressed. Airline hyperbole regarding mass cancellations is really just part continued denial of a legitimate problem and part advance blame-game antics to set DOT up as the cause of all 3-hour rule-related problems.

The fact of the matter is airlines are now forced to fix this problem, and they will. Canceling flight-loads of business travelers will dampen demand just as these high-yield travelers are returning to the market, or drive these customers into the open arms of more able competitors. Mass cancellations represent an unworkable proposition, and well-managed airlines will endeavor day and night to emplace new systems and processes to avoid this highly undesirable outcome.

Airlines should consider immediately working with Congress in a sincere manner to modify existing passenger rights legislative proposals to correct for the problems caused by their own obstructionism over the past ten years and DOT’s flawed approach to designing and implementing its rule. I am confident that industry groups such as BTC would be willing to join airlines in advocating a more sensible and sustainable approach to executing on new extended delay rules. The alternative could be problems so visible at New York City airports this summer that some Members of Congress are incentivized to demand additional passenger protection measures that may not be particularly well vetted.

Our view of the new rule is, first and foremost, that nobody should have to suffer lengthy delays on an airplane, so we support the Secretary’s efforts to protect air travelers.

As air traffic controllers, our main concern is getting you safely from the gate to the runway and safely into the sky. But we also want to get you to your destinations just as quickly as possible as well. As some of us, like myself, are also frequent travelers, we certainly understand the frustrations that travelers have when their flights are delayed for any reason.

The rule may create new challenges for air traffic controllers, but we pride ourselves in making things work and keeping things safe. We expect some increase in our workload and more complexity of the air traffic operation. There are ways around these challenges but it will take a very collaborative approach by controllers, the FAA and the airlines. One possible solution: Keep planes at the gate longer. But busy airports at busy times often have a shortage of open gates so we’ll have to watch that.

Bottom line: We will do everything we can to continue to move travelers safely, and as efficiently as possible.