Pilot Pleaded to Get Passengers Off Tarmac Stricken Plane
USA Todayreports that the pilot was pleading to help get passengers off the plane in the recent Continental Express Flight 2816 incident where the plane was stuck on the tarmac for at least six hours.
The pilot of an airliner stranded overnight on an airport tarmac in Minnesota pleaded unsuccessfully for her 47 passengers to be allowed to get off and go inside a terminal. "We just need to work out some way to get them off ... We can't keep them here any longer," she said.
The Transportation Department on Friday released recordings of the repeated appeals by the pilot and her airline's dispatchers earlier this month while passengers were kept waiting for about six hours in the cramped plane amid crying babies and a smelly toilet before they were allowed to deplane.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says his department's investigation found that Express Jet - a regional airline owned by Continential - is not at fault. Instead blame is being placed on Mesaba airlines which incorrectly told Express Jet that the passengers were not allowed off the plane. LaHood says the correct procedure is to deplane passengers to a separate "sterile" area inside the terminal.
Instead, blame for the incident, which has revived calls for greater consumer protections for airline passengers, belongs with Mesaba Airlines, whose representative incorrectly told ExpressJet that the passengers couldn't be allowed inside the terminal because Transportation Security Administration personnel had left for the day, LaHood said.
Actually, security regulations allow for deplaning passengers to be kept in a separate "sterile" area until they are ready to board, he said.
"We have determined that the Express Jet crew was not at fault. In fact, the flight crew repeatedly tried to get permission to deplane the passengers at the airport or obtain a bus for them," LaHood said Friday in a statement.
We are glad to know the proper procedure is to deplane passengers because that it the safest procedure. Hopefully, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's comments and lessons learned from the incident will help clueless airlines like Mesaba Airlines understand that passengers need to be let off the plane before they become overheated and sick.
