Senators back limit on tarmac strandings

[July 15, 2009]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Airline passengers could be stranded on tarmacs no longer than three hours under legislation introduced Tuesday in the Senate.

The protection for stranded passengers is part of larger bill that provides a blueprint for Federal Aviation Administration programs for the next two years, including an acceleration of the agency's timetable for modernizing the nation's air traffic control system.

The bill was introduced by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate's commerce committee, and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., chairman of the aviation subcommittee.

Congress has been trying unsuccessfully for more than two years to reauthorize FAA programs and has had to pass temporary funding extensions.

The tarmac provision would require planes delayed more than three hours to return to a gate to give passengers the opportunity to get off. The proposal has been championed by passenger rights advocates but opposed by the airline industry and airports.

"A hard and fast inflexible timeframe for returning to the gate will have unintended consequences for customers, including the likelihood of more cancellations and inconvenience," said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association.

"We believe that we have made great progress in reducing lengthy tarmac delays and improving service while on board as reflected in Transportation Department statistics," Castelveter said.

But passenger rights advocate Kate Hanni called the provision "extremely positive for airline passengers."

The bill would also require airlines to provide passengers with food, potable water, comfortable cabin temperature and ventilation, and adequate restrooms while a plane is delayed on the ground, Hanni said.

The nearly $35 billion bill would require the FAA to speed up its plans to switch from a radar-based air traffic control system to a system based on GPS technology. The new system is expected to increase the number of planes that can safely take off and land at airports and allow controllers to track planes in areas where there is no radar coverage.

The bill requires FAA to have the system in operation at the nation's 35 largest airports by 2014 and the rest of the country by 2018. FAA's current plan puts full modernization more than a decade off.

FAA inspections of foreign repair stations that perform maintenance on U.S. planes would be increased from once a year to twice a year under the bill. A similar provision is included in a version of the bill that passed the House in May.

A report last year by the Transportation Department's inspector general said nine big U.S. airlines are farming out aircraft maintenance at twice the rate of four years earlier and now hire outside contractors for more than 70 percent of major work. While most of the outsourced work is still done in the U.S., often at nonunion repair shops, more than one-quarter of the repairs are done overseas.

The European Commission has threatened to pull out of an aviation safety deal over the requirement. A U.S.-European Union agreement says each will have comparable safety requirements and inspection systems.

Another provision would increase funding for a program that underwrites the cost of air service to small airports in communities where there would otherwise be no commercial air service by $48 million, for a total of $175 million. That is the same size increase President Barack Obama called for in his budget proposal earlier this year.

[Associated Press; By JOAN LOWY]

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