Passengers Stranded For Eight Hours At BWI

A little fill-in-the-blank exercise.

A(n) [name of airline]  jet with [number] passengers on board spent [number] hours stranded on the ground at [name of airport] on [day]. The failure to remove the passengers was blamed on [whatever].

The correct answers are: Air Jamaica, 148, eight, Baltimore, Saturday, snow.

More details from WBAL-TV.

This does seem to have been an extraordinarily difficult case. The plane was stuck on the edge of a runway in a heavy snowstorm and crews apparently tried for hours to move it. It’s not immediately clear why the passengers could not be evacuated.

But at least it appears not to have been as egregious as the stranding at the Rochester, Minn., airport in August, when nobody could be bothered when an ExpressJet pilot tried to get help for her passengers.

In every case, regardless of the weather, airports and airlines need to do their absolute best to put passengers first. Maybe that’s what happened Saturday in Baltimore and maybe it isn’t. Either way, we need an air passenger bill of rights so there are consequences when these things are handled badly.

Airline Strike Updates

It looks as if Hawaiian Airlines has averted a strike. After nearly three years of negotiations, the airline has reached a tentative contract with its pilots union, which had authorized a strike in a preliminary vote, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports.

Not so much with British Airways. The airline won a court injunction to stop a strike by cabin crew over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. But that victory was based on a technicality. The union is expected to vote again and authorize a strike for January, the Associated Press reports.

In fact, transportation in Britain has been a bit janky of late. More than 2,000 people were stranded aboard trains that were stuck in the Channel Tunnel for up to six hours in freezing conditions on Friday, the Daily Mail reports. And the budget airline Flyglobespan suddenly collapsed earlier in the week, stranding thousands of passengers, as the BBC reports.