Airline cops $900,000 fine over leaving passengers on tarmac

American Eagle Airlines will pay a $US900,000 ($882,000) fine for tarmac delays, the first such penalty and the largest of its kind in US history, the government said yesterday.

American Eagle violated rules that impose a three-hour limit on tarmac delays on domestic flights, on 15 flights on one day in May at the Chicago O’Hare International Airport, the Department of Transportation (DOT) said.

“This is the first fine for a violation of the department’s rule, which took effect in April 2010, setting a three-hour limit for tarmac delays on domestic flights,” the department said in a statement.

“It also represents the largest penalty to be paid by an airline in a consumer protection case not involving civil rights violations.”

American Eagle is a regional carrier of AMR Corporation, parent of American Airlines.

On May 29, a Sunday in the middle of the long Memorial Day holiday weekend, American Eagle had tarmac delays of more than three hours on 15 flights arriving at O’Hare, the department said.

The delays at one of the nation’s busiest air hubs ranged up to 225 minutes, 45 minutes beyond the limit, it said, with a total of 608 passengers trapped aboard the affected flights, unable to disembark.

Under the DOT rule, US airlines operating aircraft with 30 or more passengers aboard cannot remain on the tarmac at airports without giving passengers a chance to deplane.

Exceptions are allowed only for safety, security or air traffic control-related reasons.

“We put the tarmac rule in place to protect passengers, and we take any violation very seriously,” US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in the statement.

The department highlighted that its new rules have substantially reduced the number of instances in which passengers have been stuck inside aircraft for long hours on the ground.

In the first 12 months after the three-hour limit was in effect, the larger US airlines required to file tarmac delays reported 20 tarmac delays of more than three hours — none of which was more than four hours long.

During the 12 months before the rule took effect, those airlines had 693 tarmac delays of more than three hours, with 105 of the delays longer than four hours, it said.

The tarmac delay rule was expanded on August 23 to include international flights, setting the delay limit at four hours.