COURAGE IS A RARE COMMODITY...

The government fines an airline for keeping people in a plane for too long during a storm. The government fines the airline almost $1 million dollars. Now the airline has $1 million dollars less for raises, fuel purchases, airplane maintenance, etc. The airline will simply transfer this expense back to the consumer in the form of higher ticket prices.

Picture this plane, safety is first, therefore in trying to avoid a storm they get sent to a new landing field. When the plane gets there its storming. The weather forecast says it will clear in an hour. The airport tells the unexpected planes, "hey guys, clearing in an hour", but the weather forecast changes and the storm continues. So many planes have unexpectedly overloaded the airport that all the gates are filled. Its tough to move the planes out of the gates because there is nowhere to put them. The storm makes its dangerous to move the planes in the first place. There aren't any extra employees at the airport and certainly no highly trained ones. Several more planes arrive because all the other airports are closed. The pilot has rightfully upset passengers on the plane. These passengers have connections to make to get to where they were going in the first place. They are held up by the storm and throughout the whole country planes are waiting for passengers that never show up. Who was responsible to move a plane from the gate during the storm? Who would be responsible if a gate was cleared and a serious accident occurred by moving planes under hazardous conditions?

Some people think it was the airport that should have paid the fine. The airports are concrete and wires. The fact of the matter is that there is no system in place where the staff is large enough and trained enough to accommodate our airline system during unexpected hazardous weather conditions.

Fining the airlines, which is a paper entity, is another example of political expediency before honesty. There will always be a set of conditions where we can't get people off planes which might be a greater risk than leaving them on them.

So again instead of telling people the truth that no matter how hard we try, individual people, usually with limited authority and responsibility, will generally not take the risk of some extraordinary action plan that could jeopardize their jobs.