From the Associated Press story – Senate passes broad aviation bill:

(One of the list of laws passed was the one below) –

Make it a federal law that airlines can’t keep passengers trapped in planes on airport tarmacs for longer than three hours without giving them the opportunity to get off. Airlines also would have to provide passengers with water.

The provision is nearly identical to rules already adopted last year by the Transportation Department. But the provision’s sponsors said putting the passenger protections into law makes it more difficult to roll them back in the future.

“We don’t know what the next president will do,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

Airlines oppose the three-hour limit, which they say has led to more flight cancellations and more inconvenience.

Airlines do what? They oppose a three hour limit on trapping passengers in a plane on the ground?

Let me get this straight – Airlines are so hopelessly incompetent that unless we let them hold Americans in captivity in the belly of an airliner for hours at a time, they are going to take it out on all the rest of us by cancelling flights and imposing “more inconvenience?”

What would “more inconvenience” look like? Are they going to hire a mime and an accordion player to entertain during the hours of entrapment?

It takes a lot of chutzpah to admit in public that keeping your clients trapped for more than three hours at at time is sometimes necessary for your business to function at its best.

James Pilant