Passengers held 6 hours on plane get an apology

Passengers trapped for six hours in a grounded plane could have taken refuge in the Rochester International Airport, despite claims to the contrary by an airline in hot water for its actions last weekend, said the airport manager.

Continental Airlines apologized Monday afternoon for keeping 47 passengers on a flight grounded in Rochester after the incident drew intense local and national news media attention.

Continental Flight 2816 was redirected to the Rochester airport because of severe weather at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport late Friday. It arrived from Houston, Texas, about midnight, and passengers weren't allowed off the plane until 6 a.m. Saturday.

Assigning responsibility in the incident has proven slippery. The Continental flight was being operated by the smaller ExpressJet Airlines, which maintains that passengers couldn't disembark because security screeners at the airport had left for the day. Passengers could have entered the terminal only "if we had resources to allow the customers to deplane safely and were able to comply with federal regulations," said ExpressJet spokeswoman Kristy Nicholas.

Airport manager Steven Leqve refutes the claim, noting that a Delta flight was also redirected to Rochester because of weather, but it deplaned passengers at 3:30 a.m. Saturday.

While screeners had gone home for the night, passengers could have come into a secure area of the building, Leqve said.

"If it were my decision, I would have deplaned the passengers and let them mill about the building," he said.

But decisions about what to do with passengers ultimately lie with the airline, he said.

Dueling accounts of the night

Leqve gave this account of the night's events:

After the plane landed, a station manager in Rochester made contact with a Continental dispatcher at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport about how to handle the delay. Continental decided to keep the plane on the Rochester runway in hopes the weather would clear up. A brief window opened up about 2 a.m., but conditions quickly deteriorated.

Leqve said he wasn't notified by the airline that there was a problem, and that he found out about it when a passenger on the plane called him about 4 a.m.

In another point of contention, Leqve said airport screeners start work at 4:30 a.m., but passengers weren't allowed off the plane until 6 a.m. Leqve said he doesn't know why they weren't allowed off earlier.

Nicholas said passengers were allowed to deplane at 6 a.m. when security personnel with the Transportation Safety Administration arrived.

Passenger Link Christin described the experience as a "nightmare," saying that passengers weren't given any food during the wait, and that the toilet and babies on board began to smell. The nearly full 50-seat Continental aircraft offers less room to move about than typical commercial airliners. The Embraer 145 regional jet has a single seat on one side of the aisle and two seats on the other side.

One alternative that night, chartering a bus, couldn't be worked out, Nicholas said. However, a Delta Airlines Airbus had landed in Rochester just minutes before the ExpressJet flight and also waited for the weather to clear, Leqve said. When that didn't happen, the Airbus taxied to the gate at 3:30 a.m. and about 50 passengers disembarked. They were bused to the Twin Cities, arriving about 6 a.m. The decision was made on a corporate level, Leqve said.

"We are working closely with ExpressJet to resolve the issues surrounding this extended delay as service provided to customers on this flight was completely unacceptable," said a statement released by Continental on Monday. "We are apologizing to our customers and will be offering them a full ticket refund and a certificate good for future travel."

Continuing the flight was complicated when the crew's shift ended, and a new crew had to be flown in to take over Flight 2816. Massachusetts resident Kathy Shugrue was on the Continental flight that dropped off the new crew en route from the Twin Cities to Newark, N.J. The plane ended up staying longer than expected in Rochester, a little over an hour, and many passengers missed their connecting flights in Newark, said another passenger on the flight.

Shugrue missed her connection and arrived in Boston 1 1/2 hours late.

"The customer service was so bad," she said.

Flyers rights group weighs in

A greedy industry that is cozy with its appointed overseers is to fault for the decision to keep the passengers on board, said Kate Hanni, executive director of FlyersRights.org, an organization representing airline passengers.

"Ultimately, it's an entire culture, because every airline is doing this," Hanni said. "Every airline has figured ... that it is far less expensive to hold passengers on the tarmac instead of taking the risk of letting them off and having them migrate elsewhere. You may want a different airline. You may want a rental car."

In the Rochester case, the airline could have been concerned about passenger demands for motel, food and travel vouchers, she said. Beyond that, most airlines stop paying their crew once passengers disembark, even if only momentarily, she said.

Passengers are often helpless, because interfering with flights and crew is a federal offense, Hanni said.

Hanni is pushing the Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, which is part of a larger Federal Aviation Administration bill. Last month, the bill of rights was unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, which includes Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. The bill of rights would mandate that airlines give passengers the option to disembark after being grounded three hours. This June, 278 planes were delayed on the tarmac for three or more hours, according to the latest information available from the FAA.

Chao Xiong • 612-673-4391 Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482