AA holds passengers hostage in airplane for 9 hours

something awful in the air wrote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16565583/

It's interesting that the media is printing this almost two weeks after
the event. There were a couple of articles with more detail when it
happened, such as:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07009/752402-84.stm
http://tinyurl.com/ycfrfe
http://tinyurl.com/yf669f

One international flight, from Europe, was diverted to Tulsa, OK, where
there are no Immigration or Customs facilities, plus the crew could not
continue in service because they were over their allowed hours. The
passengers had to wait on the aircraft for ten hours, until it could fly
to Dallas, which meant they were on the aircraft for a total of 22 hours
by they time they got to Dallas.

After Northwest's episode in Detroit a couple of years ago, that airline
put a voluntary limit of 3 hours on keeping passengers on grounded
aircraft. You'd think that American would have learned something from
that, and reviewed their own policies before now.

A friend was on one of the affected flights that day, and had an amusing
story to tell. They were diverted from DFW to Abilene, TX, and after a
few hours, the pilot took it unto himself to call a couple of local pizza
places to order food and drink for the passengers, using his debit card
for payment. The company that issued the card became suspicious about a
large order for pizzas from two restaurants in Abilene, enough to feed a
full 737, and called the pilot's wife at home to check if the charges
were legitimate. She said of course not, that her husband was in San
Jose, so the payment approval was rejected. Things were eventually
sorted out, but only with one of the restaurants. At least the
passengers got something to eat.