Tarmac fines cause passengers delays in terminals
Airlines prefer to cancel more flights than to risk multi-million dollar fines because they kept the passengers stuck on the tarmac for more than three hours. Passengers will not be trapped anymore in the jets, but they will be stuck waiting in terminals a lot longer and will get to their destination ours or days later than they were supposed to. The Department of Transportation says that in May only five flights waited on the tarmac for more than three hours compared to the 34 flights from last May. Airlines chose to cancel more flights rather than pay the fines: there were 6,716 flight cancellations in May versus 4,792 cancellations in the same month last year.Airlines protested against the new Department of Transportation rule, which says that the fine for keeping the passengers more then three hours on the tarmac is 27,500 dollars per passenger. The fines could pile up to millions of dollars just for one flight. For example, the United Airlines flight 714 from San Francisco to Denver which was scheduled on the 26th of May had a 4 hours and 41 minutes delay because of a lightening storm and a tornado warning for the Denver area.
Although the Federal Aviation Administration had prohibited the landings on the Denver Airport and the plane had to wait in Colorado Springs for Denver to open, the airline was fined about 6.7 million dollars for the delay. The result is that there is a larger number of flight cancellations than the previous period of time.11
