WHO study revealing health risks adds impetus to US tarmac-delay legislation

As study conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has added impetus to the need to pass the airline passenger Bill (or, the tarmac delay Bill) in the United States Congress.

The WHO study, conducted in 2007 and which was cited during an unofficial hearing recently in US Congress on airline passengers’ rights, showed that the risk for developing conditions such as a pulmonary embolism doubles after 4 hours of “seated immobility.”

With this study by the World Health Organisation coming to light, tarmac delays are seen not only as an exasperating inconvenience but also as a serious risk to a passenger’s health.

This health factor in the tarmac delay is likely to help get the airline passenger legislation cleared in Congress notwithstanding the objections raised by the airline industry, Senator Barbara Boxer (Democrat-California, who is pushing for the Bill, has said.

The proposed law requires airlines to let passengers disembark from a plane if delays extend to over 3 hours.

However, the legislation makes an exception in cases where the pilot believes that the plane can take off in the next half an hour or that it might be risky for the passengers to leave the aircraft.

Senator Barbara Boxer asserted at the Congress hearing that the 3-hour time limit as well as the requirements that carriers provide the stranded passengers with basic services such as food and water during prolonged flight delays will soon become law thanks to growing support in Congress as also among consumer groups and business groups.

These requirements – which are almost similar to the requirements contained in a legislation already passed in the House of Representatives – are contained in a re-authorisation Bill for the US the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that is at present before the Senate.

Tarmac delays are common and take place on several hundreds of flights a year, but the passenger-aviation industry insists that such delays represent only “a minute percentage of all the flights.”

David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association – the group representing the largest airlines in the United States – was quoted by the media as remarking that the proposed law could have “unintended consequences.” He went on to say:  “I think of the unaccompanied child who will be stranded in a strange city just because some people want to get off the plane.”

According to Castelveter, the many reports that have cropped up over the years of air passengers having been denied food and drink or been told to pay for food and water were just “rare missteps.”

Robert Crandall, former chief executive of the United States-based American Airlines, responded to the airline passenger legislation by saying that setting a 3-hour limit for tarmac delay would result in a large number of passengers cancelling flights.

To buttress his view, Crandall cited statistics form American Airlines, and said that, without a proper “phase-in,” the proposed 3-hour time limit would lead to over 6,000 passengers being compelled to look for alternative plans during a period of about 6 months.

While supporting the legislation in general, Crandall said that he favoured starting a 4-hour limit and then reducing the tarmac-delay limit to 3 hours by 2011.

All the same, Senator Barbara Boxer and fellow Senator Amy Klobuchar (Democrat-Minnesota) have pledged to thwart any amendment that would cancel the consumer-protection clauses in the Federal Aviation Administration’s legislation.