Do you think the new "three-hour rule" goes far enough?

Not far enough, but it’s getting there. Most airlines don’t treat you that way anymore, though there are a few bad apples. I had a flight that was delayed on the tarmac and they told us how long we would be delayed and returned to the gate to let anyone off who didn’t want to wait. The total delay on the tarmac was probably two hours. In the bad old days I spent 5 hours on the tarmac in Dallas, fortunately I was young and healthy. I was also on a plane full of screaming babies. It was not fun, but my health wasn’t threatened. I remember the stewardess telling people they couldn’t get up and go to the lavatory. One woman responded that she was going to let her go the lavatory or she would just take off her toddlers pants and let him defecate in the aisle. I don’t understand when people in these situations lose their humanity. A small child cannot be told to hold it for five hours. Heck, even an adult can’t do that unless they’re prepared in advance.

One year I decided to fly down to Texas to visit my mother. I got on the plane okay, but then it was delayed for a while.

I was in the window seat, there was another guy in the aisle, and his girlfriend in the center seat. She was really nice and let me use her tray for stuff, but I hated her because she actually curled into a ball and slept on the seat; that’s how small she was.

Anyway, the short delay turned into an 8-hour ordeal. Eight hours of sitting on the airplane. After about five hours they let people go back into the terminal to get food. It was, I’m not exaggerating, five minutes before everything closed down. They didn’t wake people who fell asleep, either, so they were surprised when people started making noise getting back on the plane and eating.

They didn’t serve food, going to the bathroom meant arguing with the attendants, and it was generally unpleasant.

I don’t think this new rule nearly goes far enough.

I was once stuck on a plane for 6 hours.

Had a blast!

I spent seven hours in a plane on the ground once. This was after flying all the way across the Atlantic. I would have killed for a rule like this.

Nowadays, as long as there is a lavatory I can use, I’m good. I am so used to flying Southwest that I always bring both food and drink aboard with me. I am bigger than most flight attendants so there is always a lavatory I can use.

I think it is a very important rule. One that the airlines might not like, but that is important for people’s comfort and safety.

Ooo oooo ooooo. I have one. When I was stationed in Guam, there was a plane crash. A KAL flight crashed into the side of Nimitz hill. I won’t go into all the details about that, but I was already scheduled to fly to DC a week later. For some bizarre reason, they kept us on the tarmac for three hours before taking off. Something to do with the crash from the week before and UPS stuff being on or off the cargo space. Cold water was dripping onto my shoulder and when I finally said something to the steward, he said “Oh, that’s just the AC.” Like I needed to know what it was, then I’d be ok with it. We got into Honolulu something like 0100 hours. We all went through customs and then had to walk the equivalent of several blocks to the Continental counter which had ONE surly attendant. Another one came out after a while, but it was ridiculous. I couldn’t understand why they had not fixed any of our itineraries before we got there. It was a seven hour flight with a three hour delay, so they had plenty of time. Most of us ended up spending the night in Honolulu on Continentals tit, but it wasn’t a good experience. The counter attendant was a HUGE bitch, I overheard one guy tell her, “I can’t take that flight because..” and she cut him off and said “You WILL get on that flight.” All the time I was looking at the poster on the wall behind her which was a JD Powers award for service excellence.
I understand that there are delays sometimes. I don’t understand the lack of communication to the receiving airports and gates. Or lack of action taken if there is communication. What do I know? There could be a perfectly logical explanation. This is one of TWO continental nightmares I experienced. Both were overseas flights, the other was coming in from Italy and lasted for 36 hours…. Gaaaaaahhhh!

If an airline does not allow passengers to get off a plane that is not moving then they are guilty of false imprisonment be it three hours, three minutes, or three seconds.

off topic—How did the need for these rules arise? What was the airline’s rationale for abusing their customers?

I spent three hours on the ground with a nursing toddler before an overseas flight on which i was traveling alone with him. It was horrid! I would prefer it be a shoroter amount of time than three hours, but the new rules are an improvement over some of the things that have gone on in the past several years.

Here I was thinking the question was about the grace period from when you drop a Cheez Doodle on the floor and when you can eat it.

Bummer.

If I want off that plane, I can read the instructions on the emergency door just as well as anyone.

I’ve been lucky. The only major delay I’ve been in was a JAL flight at Narita. We were treated like royalty.

3 hours is still too long to expect people to sit on a plane. It’s just very inconsiderate and unrealistic.
I understand some of the rules are for our own safety, but a lot of them are just for the convenience of the airlines. You pay dearly for flights and then are treated like you have no rights and are just a “number”.
I intend to ONLY fly if I have no other choice.

@Trillian You are lucky they paid your hotel bill in Hawaii. I got delayed flying into Philly and was connecting out to Zurich. This was the flight above where the flight crew treated us very well. But the treatment at the airport in Philly was another matter entirely. They had re-booked us before we ever departed for Philly, so we thought we could make our connection. The flight crew said a gate agent would meet us, but the guy at the gate was also the guy retrieving gate checked baggage and boarding the next flight. He wouldn’t help any of us who were missing connections until he had boarded the outbound plane. We heard our flight paged and asked if he could tell them we were there and he said no. We asked how to get to our gate and he refused to answer any more questions until his flight was boarded. We ran through the airport until we found that the shuttle to our departure terminal was closed for the night. In fact, the only employees in the place were janitors. We finally got to the US airways desk and there was one person at the desk with a line in front of it. She said she was off duty, but would try to help us. Essentially US Airways had abandoned their passengers in Philadelphia entirely, and one woman voluntarily helped us out. Even so we were told our choices were to get a hotel ourselves (and everything near the airport was full) or sleep in the airport (which looked like a homeless shelter with all the passengers already asleep). We had a toddler with us, so that wasn’t an option. We ended up getting a cab to a downtown hotel that cost us a fortune. Fortunately they did find us a loaner car seat and we had travel insurance that covered our costs. It gets worse, but I’ll leave it there. Basically, they are not responsible for providing food or lodging in the case of delays that cause missed connections. Here’s another rule they should have: shuttles cannot be closed and booking agents sent home until all your passengers for the day are accounted for.

Our big delay wasn’t entirely the airlines’ fault. Our plane depressurized over the Atlantic so we made an emergency landing in Maine, at the closest open airport. However, that particular airport had no customs office. Since we were coming in from overseas federal law said we couldn’t get off the plane unless we either went through customs or could sequestered somewhere. This was a little airport with no place to lock us up, so we had to stay on the plane until they got it fixed.

Then, to add insult to injury, we were put in a holding pattern over Idlewild (as it was called then, before it was Kennedy) because we had of course lost our landing slot by showing up 7 hours late.

The airline did what it could, but several large Federal Marshalls limited their options. Although if we had all rushed them at once only a few of us would have been shot.

I read every story here. Wow. They sapped all the juice out of my horrible-airline story, now I feel fortunate :)

The reason I asked this question was that I recently flew JetBlue to and from Rochester, NY. Each time, I got stuck on the tarmac for 2.5 hours before we took off. (And on my flight back to Rochester, we sat in the terminal for 2.5 hours before that.) The 3-hour limit hasn’t taken effect yet, but it wouldn’t have kicked in even if it had been active.

I’m just glad I don’t have any medical problems. I can’t imagine feeling horribly sick and having no one do anything. I wonder what would happen if someone dialed 911 from the plane.

Yeah, you might have to ask if there’s a doctor on the plane :)

Don’t laugh. I was once on a non-stop flight from Chicago to Honolulu. It was really, really, really long and boring. So when the flight attendants asked if there was a doctor on the plane, 11 people jumped up at once!