Fed up Fliers Ready For Rights

(CNN) -- Claustrophobia was not a condition Bill Johnson understood. That changed on August 8 when he and his new bride, while returning from their honeymoon, found themselves among the 47 airplane passengers left trapped overnight on a tarmac in Rochester, Minnesota.

{Passengers on a Continental flight operated by ExpressJet sat on the tarmac for nearly six hours on August 8}

As the hours -- going on six of them -- passed, he said the air in the ExpressJet for Continental Airlines cabin grew rank. The two babies on board cried. The toilet filled and stopped flushing. No food was served and the puddle-jumper seats made sleep, for him, impossible. All the while, the airport was visible from the plane.
"I wanted to freak out and kick the windows out," said Johnson, 35, of Minneapolis, Minnesota. "I was just trying to keep my cool."
The much-publicized story of Flight 2816, diverted to Rochester because of bad weather while en route to Minneapolis from Houston, Texas, has brought to the forefront a growing demand to institute passenger rights.
Advocacy groups are fielding calls, gathering momentum and preparing for a September 22 hearing in Washington. One organization recently bought cable television ad time hoping to reach President Obama on his vacation and earn his support, just as a bill to protect fliers from such incidents heads to the Senate floor.
Since the Rochester incident, there have been other tarmac strandings. Passengers on a Sun Country Airlines flight were trapped for about six hours on August 21 while at JFK International Airport in New York. That prompted the airline's CEO to announce last week a four-hour maximum deadline for tarmac sittings, Minnesota's Star Tribune reported. Full Story