Very bad press for Continental. This will cost them in compensation, but also much more in bad publicity. First the Colgan crash and now this? I guess Continental uses several third party airlines?
Whatever -- there can't be a good excuse for passengers trapped on a small plane for this amount of time. Someone has to take responsibility that this doesn't happen, but they didn't. Now the "passenger bill of rights" will pass for sure. These guys seem to be a lot better at shooting themselves in the foot than running an airline.