The rule, which will take effect in late April and applies only to domestic flights, prohibits airlines from letting an aircraft remain on an airport tarmac for more than three hours without deplaning passengers.
Exceptions are allowed for safety or security, or when air-traffic controllers notify a pilot in command that returning to a passenger terminal would disrupt airport operations.
The rule came as a pleasant surprise to consumer advocates who had grown frustrated that a bill in Congress to help stuck passengers was stalled.
"We have achieved our near-term goals of a mandatory three-hour rule, and it's akin to a Christmas miracle," says Kate Hanni, executive director of FlyersRights.org.
The DOT rule is a setback for airlines. They have strongly opposed a government-ordered time limit on how long they could keep passengers on planes stranded on tarmacs.
The Air Transport Association, which represents major U.S. airlines, says the rule will be detrimental to passengers.
"We will comply with the new rule even though we believe it will lead to unintended consequences — more canceled flights and greater passenger inconvenience," says James May, the association's president and CEO. "The requirement of having planes return to the gates within a three-hour window or face significant fines is inconsistent with our goal of completing as many flights as possible."
Last month, the Transportation Department for the first time fined airlines for leaving passengers stuck on a tarmac.
Continental Airlines and its regional airline partner, ExpressJet, were fined $100,000 for keeping passengers on a plane overnight at the Rochester, Minn., airport in August. Mesaba Airlines, which handled ground operations for the flight, was fined $75,000.
The incident, as well as other stranding incidents, a "high incidence of flight delays and other consumer problems," caused the DOT to establish the new three-hour rule, according to an agency news release.
The rule will apply to all U.S. passenger airlines operating flights with more than 30 seats, department spokeswoman Olivia Alair says. Commuter airlines flying planes with fewer seats must comply with the rule for all their flights if they operate any planes with more than 30 seats.
The rule requires U.S. airlines to adopt policies for tarmac delays on international flights. An airline with a policy allowing passengers off a plane after a certain number of hours during a delay might be subject to a fine if it doesn't adhere to its policy, Alair says.
Other provisions of the rule:
•It requires airlines to provide adequate food and water and operating restrooms for passengers delayed for two hours, as well as any necessary medical attention.
• It prohibits airlines from scheduling chronically delayed flights.
•It requires that airlines designate an employee to monitor the effects of flight delays and cancellations, give consumers information on where to file complaints and respond "in a timely and substantive fashion" to complaints.
•It requires airlines to display flight delay information on their websites for all domestic flights.
•It prohibits airlines from retroactively applying changes to their contracts of carriage — the conditions passengers agree to when buying tickets — that "could have a significant negative impact" on consumers who have already bought tickets.
"Airline passengers have rights, and these new rules will require airlines to live up to their obligation to treat their customers fairly," says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
The new rules are supported by business-travel groups and passengers who have experienced lengthy tarmac delays.
Passengers will "finally have hope and realistic expectations that there is an exit strategy if a flight is destined to remain excessively delayed," says Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, which represents about 300 corporate travel departments.
The Department of Transportation "showed great leadership in issuing landmark regulations to protect passengers," says Mike McCormick, executive director of the National Business Travel Association, which represents about 4,000 corporate travel managers and suppliers.
Link Christin, a college professor in St. Paul, who was stranded on the flight in Rochester, says he couldn't be more satisfied.
"It's a groundbreaking rule that will give some level of protection for the health and safety of millions of passengers in the future," Christin says.
Brad Dwin, president of a marketing and public relations company in Silver Spring, Md., spent about six hours on a United Airlines plane waiting to take off from metro Washington's Dulles International Airport in June. He says the new rule is "a major victory" for any passenger who has had to endure such a delay.
"It delivers a strong message to the airlines that they need to rethink how they handle passengers when there are delays," he says.
Airports Council International-North America, which represents North American airports handling nearly all airline passenger flights, commended the DOT for its actions and urged the agency to finalize other passenger-protection regulations under consideration.
The DOT plans to begin formulating other rules to "further strengthen protections for air travelers," the news release says. The agency is considering requiring airlines to submit plans for addressing lengthy tarmac delays to the DOT for review and approval; report additional tarmac delay data; provide more disclosure of baggage fees; and disclose the full fare for tickets in advertisements.
Hanni says she didn't envision the passage of so many passenger-rights rules when she founded Flyersrights.org after spending more than nine hours stuck on an American Airlines plane in Austin in December 2006.
"Dec. 29th will be three years since my family was stuck on the tarmac," she says. "We have since built a 27,000-person organization and worked from the wee hours of the morning until late at night to get legislation to protect the flying public."
Though she and her organization lobbied hard in Congress for the three-hour rule, they weren't optimistic.
"In our wildest dreams, we did not think we would get the three-hour rule," Hanni says. "This shows that the Obama administration took seriously its commitment to the flying public and the American people."
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