NEWS RELEASE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22, 2007 – The Air Transport Association of America (ATA) Board of Directors, at its regular quarterly meeting, discussed procedures for dealing with extreme weather delays and announced the following course of action:
- Each airline will continue to review and update its policies to assure the safety, security and comfort of customers.
- Calls on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to work with airlines to allow long-delayed flights to return to terminals in order to offload passengers who choose to disembark – without losing that flight’s position in the departure sequence.
- Asks the Department of Transportation (DOT) to review airline and airport emergency contingency plans to make sure that the plans will effectively address weather emergencies in a coordinated manner and provide passengers with essential needs (food, water, lavatory facilities and medical services).
- We ask DOT to promptly convene a meeting of air carriers, airport representatives and the FAA to discuss procedures to better respond to weather emergencies resulting in lengthy flight delays.
ATA President and CEO James C. May said, “We believe these steps offer the best course of action. A rigid, national regulation would be counterproductive, and could easily result in greater passenger inconvenience.”
The board noted that recent delay events should serve to emphasize the emerging crisis of capacity in our nation’s air traffic control system, and also called for aggressive steps to modernize that system.
ATA airline members transport more than 90 percent of all U.S. airline passenger and cargo traffic. For more information regarding ATA and its member airlines, visit www.airlines.org.
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