All of these run the gamut of the concerns, from which airline WOULD I choose to when do the lawyers get more involved and the reality of the flying world as Bill Palmer and Paul Rice explained.

No one ever PLANS to make people sit in the cabin with no food, no water and no info. Things happen for sure.

While I don’t believe a law will fix this, the airlines are forced – yet again – to focus on that customer service problem that they need serious work on.

And too, it only takes a few incidents at Delta or United or American to make customers forget all the other times they flew the same carrier without a problem.

As someone said in one of the private notes however, that should be the airline’s training problem, not the customers.

As far as the other airlines go, I can tell you that Northwest, for one, has had a ramp delay policy in place for a long time that allows (requires) the captain to declare a kind of return-to-gate recovery when the ground delay has reached two hour mark going out, or 1 hour coming in (the policy has exceptions – but that’s the general idea).
This was instituted (as I recall) shortly after a freak ice storm in DTW in the early 90′s had airplanes stuck out on the ramp for up to 5-6 hours. I was one of them. We had no idea it would be that long. We kept getting milked along in 20 and 30 minute increments by ATC, airport authorities, and the deicing crews (who were not expecting this storm [nobody was] – so manpower and warm fluid were in short supply).

The policy is also clear that pilots will keep passengers informed of delays and updated on a regular basis. (actual minute values are specified, but I won’t quote them here).
So, no, Southwest is not the only airline to take a responsible approach to this.

No law would have changed a thing, unless they can write a law that we’ll always have good weather, runways will never need to be closed for plowing, crews won’t run out of duty time, equipment will always be in tip-top shape and never out of commission, adequate staff will always be available, etc.

But it could be a slippery slope. What happens when there’s a delay after take off? After how many spins in the hold can a passenger demand that the plane divert? We’ll have to go back to a minimum cockpit crew of 3… PIC, SIC, & Lawyer-In-Command. Sadly, this may be cheaper than the lawsuits to come.

And what if there is a Congressperson onboard [I hear there were only 4 military bizjets for Nancy to choose from last Memorial Day!]? Surely we can’t expect them to endure the same inconveniences we do.