Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat planning to introduce such a bill, said: “If a plane is stuck on the tarmac or at the gate for hours, a passenger should have the right to deplane. No one should be held hostage on an aircraft when clearly they can find a way to get people off safely.”
So ... another politician who completely understands airline operations and the way in which they can chuck 150 pax at a time back into a terminal that is not expecting them and may already be full.
Mr. Neeleman [of JetBlue] watched Southwest Airlines, for instance, cancel flights quickly this week up and down the East Coast, and then more effectively regroup. “They shut it down,” he said. “We should have.”
I take this as real progress. A CEO admits that they got it wrong and admits that more experienced operators got it right. The default is to rattle on about 'fine tuning' and how things 'did not go as expected' and blaming others. Basically, JB gets my vote for that alone.