In article , Fly Guy wrote:


You would think that your constitutional rights are being violated by
being held captive in a plane like that. The PAX should have called the
police and claimed that they were being held captive inside a confined
space against their will at Bradley.

Constitutional rights only impact on governmental actions, not the
actions of a private entity. The best you might be able to do might be
kidnapping or something similar because you were held against your will,
but I wouldn't want to press it.


Every time I hear about this, I have to wonder why pilots don't have
more power or common sense during contract negotiations to have
iron-clad agreements in their contract that they can force their carrier
or the airport they land at to de-plane passengers at their request.

The contract language with the airline would have absolutely no
impact on the airport.


And why the airport refused a direct request by the pilot to tow the
plane to a gate and de-plane the passengers needs to be looked into.

My guess would be gates were overwhelmed by 23 (17 others and 6 Jet
Blue) unexpected "guests". Especially since, IIRC, they were having
operational problems of their own during the event.

Obviously all the layers of this rotting onion weren't examined and
taken into account when the gov't passed the tarmac-delay rule.
Yeah, like weather caused diversions and (at least in some cases) no
nearby customs and immigrations people.

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz