The US Transportation Department is investigating policies at JetBlue and American Airlines that left passengers stranded aboard planes for several hours during winter storms, the agency said.
“I have serious concerns about airlines’ contingency planning that allows passengers to sit on the tarmac for hours on end,” Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said in a statement. She added:
“It is imperative that airlines do everything possible to ensure that situations like these do not occur again.”
Ms Peters asked Calvin Scovel, the Department of Transporation’s inspector general, to examine why JetBlue passengers were stranded aboard a plane at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport during the recent Valentine’s Day storm.
That incident caused the airline to cancel about 1,000 flights and sparked a massive and repeated corporate apology.
Mr Peters also asked Mr Scovel to examine a December incident when American Airlines passengers were forced to stay on a plane for more than six hours.
Ms Peters said the investigation would look into airlines’ polices on extended delays and make recommendations for how to prevent such events.
“Passengers have a right to know what to expect when it comes to ground delays,” she said.
Mr Scovel said in a statement that his investigation would provide “a thorough and objective assessment so that corrective actions can be taken by the appropriate parties to prevent such situations from happening again.”
JetBlue has been on the defensive after stranding passengers in planes at Kennedy for up to 11 hours earlier last month. The airline adopted a customer bill of rights after the disruptions, and has been scrambling to restore its reputation with passengers.
Last week, the Air Transport Association, which represents most major passenger and cargo carriers, said the Federal Aviation Administration should allow delayed flights to come back to terminals so passengers can exit planes without forcing those planes to lose their place in line for takeoff.
Report by David Wilkening
