Incident Has Prompted New Calls For Federal Regulations

In an editorial published this week, USA Today calls for congress to follow through on a proposed "Passengers Bill Of Rights" that, among other things, would limit the time passengers can be held on an airliner to three hours before they must be allowed to deplane. The paper published the piece after 47 passengers on an ExpressJet flight were held on a 50 seat jet nearly 7 hours after being diverted due to  weather, In the editorial, the paper notes that a Northwest flight that was also diverted to Rochester allowed passengers to deplane, and they were eventually bused to Minneapolis, their final destination.

In a reply to the editorial, also published in USA Today, Continental President and CEO Larry Kellner said "Our processes broke down." "Continental takes responsibility for the care of our customers," he wrote, "whether they are on our regional partners' flights or our own."

Kellner said Continental is working with ExpressJet to determine exactly what happened in Rochester "as quickly as possible." He did say the crew also remained on the plane attempting to find a way to get the passenger on to Minneapolis.

Knowing the incident would be investigated, Kellner said both Continental and ExpressJet would provide a full accounting of their side of the story to DOT.

"While we believed our processes for managing these situations were effective, they clearly broke down in the handling of Continental Express Flight 2816," Kellner wrote. "We are working hard to identify the problems and will continue to work to improve service to our customers in irregular operations."

FMI: www.continental.com