The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) enacted a tarmac delay limit of 3 hours for domestic flights in April, 2010. Though extended tarmac delays have been greatly reduced, they still occur. Now, 18 months after the rule went into effect, the first bite has been taken out of an airline's coffers. Some flyers think it's about time.

The first-ever fine for violating the DOT tarmac delay rule has been issued to American Eagle totaling US$900,000 (€660,000). The fines are imposed on any airline that keeps passengers stranded in an airplane for 3 hours or more. At that point, the airline must execute a contingency plan to return to the gate or allow the passengers to disembark away from a gate if it is deemed safe and non-disruptive to other airport operations. The DOT imposes a fine of up to US$27,500 per passenger (€20,000) for each violation – an amount that can reach millions of dollars depending on the size of an aircraft. The fine against American Eagle goes back to incidents in May, 2011 when 15 flights arriving at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport had tarmac delays of more than 3 hours. According to the DOT, American Eagle had procedures in place to deal with such delays but they were late in implementing them. Roughly 25 percent of the fine is to be used for refunds, vouchers and frequent flyer miles for passengers on the 15 flights mentioned by the DOT.

After the tarmac delay rule went into effect in April 2010, the next 12 months saw only 20 reported lengthy tarmac delays of more than 3 hours compared to 693 incidents in the year before the rule took effect, according to the DOT. In August, additional rules went into effect that extended the tarmac delay rule to carriers operating international flights. These flights are subject to a delay limit of 4 hours instead of 3.

Airline passengers had been expressing frustration over the lack of fines imposed on airlines since the rules went into effect. Though the incidents of stranded passengers have been greatly reduced, those that have occurred have not yielded any punitive measures from the DOT – until now. For its part, the DOT states that it treats incidents on a case-by-case basis, so the airlines that recently stranded passengers in Hartford-Bradley International Airport in Connecticut are probably not resting easily. With the busy U.S. Thanksgiving and Christmas travel seasons upon us, this could be seen as a shot across the bow to the airlines -- a message that says: "you might want to behave this holiday season."

Note: In 2008, IAPA completed its participation in a government-appointed task force on tarmac delays. The result was a list of recommendations for airlines and airports to draft contingency plans for mitigating passenger inconvenience during lengthy tarmac delays. The DOT now requires just about all airlines (based on aircraft size) to have such plans in place.