Passenger Bill of Rights

Yesterday, I had my first encounter with the Passenger Bill of Rights, otherwise known as the Tarmac Rule. It was in no way a positive experience. Bottom line? The law of unintended consequences strikes again. I genuinely do not think those who drafted this law intended these results.

First, let me give you my basic interpretation of the law. It is generally accepted practice to start the clock at the "out" time, which is the time that the aircraft begins movement away from the gate for the purpose of flight. The fact that you may have been in your seat for some time before the "out" time is not relevant to the law. For a domestic flight, an airline is required to offer food and water to passengers at or before the 2 hour point and allow passengers the opportunity to exit the aircraft at or before 3 hours. If adequate food and water is not available, the aircraft must be back to the gate within 2 hours. The fines for violating this law are astronomical at $27,500 per passenger. This flight, with 124 passengers, would incur a fine of $3,410,000 for exceeding the limits of the law by even one minute.

Our flight was scheduled from DFW to a city in the northeast. The weather at departure time was actually pretty good. Partly cloudy skies, light winds...no big deal right? Not when ATC and a large airline get involved. There was a serious line of weather east of the airport that was spawning severe thunderstorms and even a reported tornado. The storms were all at least 15 miles east of the airport and moving away, but they were disrupting all the departure routes to the east. Our flight was departing out one of the north departure corridors, but many of the east-bounders were re-cleared out to the north, so our departure would be affected.

With the weather to the east, we convinced our dispatcher to add 2000 pounds to our fuel load due to the possibility of increased taxi times. But since the weather along our route and at our destination was good, we decided not to load any significant extra fuel. 2000 pounds may or may not sound like a lot, but everything is relative. On this aircraft, 2000 pounds would last about 2 hours on the ground, but only about 20 minutes in the air. As it turned out, the Tarmac Rule, not our fuel, would dictate the outcome of the day.

I won't bore you with all the details, but we were cleared to one runway, then another, and then back to the original. I'm sure the ground controllers at DFW were trying to do their very best, but every time they changed our runway, our delay got longer and our position in line for takeoff got worse. As it became obvious that we would not be able to takeoff within the limits of the law, we began discussions with our flight's dispatcher to coordinate our return to the gate.

Just getting back to the gate took over 30 minutes due to all the taxiway congestion. We finally arrived back at our starting point and parked with two minutes to spare. By this time, the Captain and I had been on duty for 13 hours and would be illegal to continue. This is where the "Law of Unintended Consequences" comes into play. Since there were no reserve crews available, the flight was cancelled. All 124 people aboard this flight were put in hotels for the night and re-booked on flights the next day that were already full.

I believe that if we had remained in line for takeoff, that we would have exceeded the limits of the law by no more than 10 minutes. But due to the inflexible nature of the law, we were required to return to the gate. 124 passengers inconvenienced.

Are the outcomes of this flight and hundreds like it acceptable casualties in the effort to protect passengers from excessive ground delays? I don’t think so, and I know 124 people who would agree.