Why Major Flight Delays Are Getting Worse

Last week, a little ice in the air caused a few JetBlue planes to sit on the runway without taking off. By the end of the day, at least one of them had sat on the runway at Kennedy Airport for 10 hours with, and I hesitate to describe this, "toilets overflowing."

Wait a sec. This is 2007! Are we still supposed to be having issues with airplanes sitting on runways for half a day? While you might think technology would have offered up more options for communication between airplanes and airports, the opposite is actually true: The FAA discourages planes from heading back to the jetway, which causes airlines to avoid contacting anyone for help. The Wall Street Journal (by way of AZ Central) has the story. (You'll have to offer a zip code to get to the piece, but it beats paying for the WSJ's website.)

In JetBlue's case, the story of last Wednesday reads like a Shakespearean tragedy. It starts with JetBlue, which waited until 3pm to ask for help from anyone. JetBlue had managed to sneak a few planes off the ground in bad weather in previous years, and it figured it could do the same this time. No dice. Instead, planes full of passengers piled up on the tarmac, none headed anywhere. By the time the jig was up, JetBlue waited for hours to get passengers off the planes, despite the presence of empty gates at JFK.

Why are things getting so bad? I don't want to spoil all the fun of the article (there's plenty of finger-pointing), but the bottom line is that airlines have no incentive to coordinate with ground crews, and no penalty for stranding people on jets for the better part of a day. But with most airlines in or near bankruptcy (even JetBlue is fading from its glory days), who's going to push for reforms?

Still, the best solution (in my opinion) would be to require better coordination between planes and the ground, enact some basic rules (nothing insane, just some common sense) about how long a plane can sit on the runway without taking off, and develop a response for getting people off planes even if there are no gates available. Alas, change requires a lot of incentive (usually financial), and the airlines (like most big industries) have major support from the government to keep them up and running: Perhaps the best we can hope for is an open apology, like JetBlue sent to just about everyone who'd ever flown the airline.

There's some good news. Fortunately, a few airports seem to be developing responses for airline strandings, and there's even talk of legislation to prevent such atrocities from happening again (though such rules have never gotten far in the past). JetBlue seems to be taking this incident especially seriously. What would you suggest as fair rules against stranding passengers this way?

Then again, Mother Nature is never going to be cooperative no matter what we puny humans decide to do. A friend of mine spent three days in Denver's airport when it became snowed in. And you thought having to turn off your cell phone was an inconvenience...