Sat, Aug 15, 2009
Incident Has Prompted New Calls For Federal Regulations
In an editorial published this
week, USA Today calls for congress to follow through on a proposed
"Passengers Bill Of Rights" that, among other things, would limit
the time passengers can be held on an airliner to three hours
before they must be allowed to deplane. The paper published the
piece after 47 passengers on an ExpressJet flight were held on a 50
seat jet nearly 7 hours after being diverted due to weather,
In the editorial, the paper notes that a Northwest flight that was
also diverted to Rochester allowed passengers to deplane, and they
were eventually bused to Minneapolis, their final destination.
In a reply to the editorial, also published in USA Today,
Continental President and CEO Larry Kellner said "Our processes
broke down." "Continental takes responsibility for the care of our
customers," he wrote, "whether they are on our regional partners'
flights or our own."
Kellner said Continental is working with ExpressJet to determine
exactly what happened in Rochester "as quickly as possible." He did
say the crew also remained on the plane attempting to find a way to
get the passenger on to Minneapolis.
Knowing the incident would be investigated, Kellner said both
Continental and ExpressJet would provide a full accounting of their
side of the story to DOT.
"While we believed our processes for managing these situations
were effective, they clearly broke down in the handling of
Continental Express Flight 2816," Kellner wrote. "We are working
hard to identify the problems and will continue to work to improve
service to our customers in irregular operations."
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