Passengers File Criminal Charges Against Airline Captain...

[jetfo]

What a goof, but this raises an interesting issue. Remember the Northwest episode a few years ago in Detroit? Was it 12 hours on the ground in a snowstorm? At some point, a "reasonable" delay becomes unreasonable. Obviously, a Captain cannot hold an airplane full of people on the ground indefinitely. So where do you draw the line? 7 hours? 12?

Maybe it's just me, but if I'm sitting there for 7 or 10 hours, and every reasonable request for a gate has been denied, I'd issue the company an ultimatum. Either get me a gate, or airstairs plus a bus or two, or I'm going to declare an emergency, probably a medical, and get those people off the airplane.

I remember the incident at DTW, and you're right, some of those NWA pilots should have had enough guts to say enough is enough. Even if you don't have enough gates for all aircraft, you can always sequentially deplane the passengers and park the empty aircraft away from the gates. I wonder if the manager of the NWA DTW operation who allowed this to happen was fired?

There should be a self imposed limit either by the carrier or the FAA, perhaps delays of over 2 hours warrant a return to the gate. Otherwise, more pax are going to litigate this, as they did in the NWA incident, and rightly so! It is nonsense to waste the fuel burn of at least one engine and the APU for any longer than that.