If your stuck on the runway, can you get off the plane?

According to the article from the link I had provided, the answer is no. The article is in response to the people who were delayed on the run way for six hours and couldn't get off the plane. Normally I wouldn't think much of this because any of us who have been delayed at the airport more than a few times know that delays happen, and waiting is the worst thing in the world at that moment because all you want to do is either get home, or get to your destination. But at least in the airport you can do something while the delay occurs. But when you're stuck on a plane, stuck inside with a bunch of other passengers in a cramped space, grumpy flight attendants, that is something else.

According to the article, the pilot has complete control and decides when passengers can get off or not, and can choose whether or not to return to the gate, let the passengers off until the delay is over. I can understand this if it's going to be at the very most an hour, but when you are sitting there for the duration that would resemble a shift at work, then it's ridiculous to be just sitting there. There is actually no rule for the airlines that states a time a plane is delayed enough to return to the gate. They can sit there as long as they want. You can ask permission to get off, but you can't just leave, or you will get arrested. Also, I can understand the pilot not letting people off because if their in the runway, and they are away enough from the gate to where people run the risk of getting struck by other aircrafts, or things of extreme nature like this, then ok. But when people are just sitting there waiting for several hours, they should be able to leave the plane that they paid so much for the ticket to get on. The reason they don't return to the gate after a long period of time is because they don't want to go through the trouble of unloading the plane and reloading it again. Oh boo hoo I say to this. Customers should not be treated like temporary prisoners.

Now let's think about this a little bit. Look at how our rights dissolve in this situation. You try to leave, you get arrested for interferring with the crew. You complain to much, you'll get arrested. The article doesn't mention this, but I've witnessed the TSA agents, and if you raise your voice to those people, they will detain you for questioning. Same thing if a flight attendant feels a passenger is being unruley (which lot of times it's just simple complaining) and has a bug up his/her butt and gets them detained. Now I'm not saying that something like this is a test to see how people react in this kind of situation, but you can't really rule it out. If people really wanted to get out, they could easily over power the crew and the pilot and let themselves out, but then again maybe not. Perhaps there isn't an actual conspiracy going on, but this kind of situation still at least makes me think. I, a paying customer, bought an overpriced seat for a flight have to go through the embarassing and in my honest opinion unnecessary search in the airport, have to be treated like this? "This isn't a democracy" as quoted from a airline consultant from the article. Unfortunately, quite true that statement is.

news.yahoo.com...

reply to post by Darth Lumina


This has happened to me twice and more times to my mom. Hers was the worst, she was stuck on the plane for over an hour and a half with no electricity or air.

It happened to me because we landed and there was no gate open. The first time it was over 45 minutes, the second time around 20. No, you can't get up to go to the bathroom, get off the plane, or get a drink or food. Awesome stuff.

Here is the reason. Once a flighttime is set, the airline has a limited window to pull the plane back from the gate or they are assessed a fee by the airport. Once you have taxi'ed away from a gate, the airline will be charge a fee of (used to be around 10k) to redock with the gate. This is why they only re-gate if they KNOW the flight will not be making its scheduled route at all. So in essence it is because the airline will get socked a hefty little fee.

reply to post by Darth Lumina


Isn't that called kidnapping?

second line

This happens to my husband almost every time he leaves for a business trip out of Philadelphia Int. airport. Last Friday he was stuck on the plane for 3 1/2 HRS! He was furious. He kept texting me from his cell phone asking what the weather conditions were, when the storms were going to end....., He said his plane was 19th in line to take off. Crazy, just crazy.

I worked at an airport as a lineman for a few years and everytime we had diversions land do to weather we always had a few people who got off the plane and drove the rest of their destination.

The only ones who were not allowed to get off the plane was people coming from overseas.

But once you were off, you couldn't get back on.
What I could never find out is if these passengers are given this choice.

And no pilots cannot return to the gate if they feel the need. They have to get permission for every move they make with their aircraft while on the ramp.