Welcome to my home town.

This was NOT an airport issue, it was an airline issue. Granted, our airport is small, very small, but it is an 'international' airport and is equipped to handle anything from the smallest props to the largest of jets. Rochester is home to the Mayo Clinic, and we have jets fly directly in to our airport from all over the world.

Also, given the layout of the airport, the passengers could have easily deplaned and stayed in a secure area. There was no reason to go through security.

It would have been very easy to get a bus from RST to MSP as well. This happens often enough coming the other way when Rochester is snowed in.

Someone at ExpressJet was asleep for this to have happened...

There is no logical explanation for confining people in this situation. It's just another example of stupidity in action. Stupidity on the part of many people in an official capacity.

Not sure what I would have done as a passenger but I can tell you the 911 operator would have been very busy if I was on that airplane.

Yeah, at what point is it kidnapping?

Seems like a good time would be before the poop starts coming out the lavatory door!

Once again, does it relate to the low pay and poor management skills of pilot and crew who aren't paid shlt to begin with???? Can't these idiots have a policy for a situation where passengers are confined to the aircraft for more than XX minutes.

A couple of years ago I was on a flight from Orange county to Texas. A few minutes into the flight we were diverted to LAX due to a problem with the horizontal stabilizer.

We landed OK and rolled up to the terminal but they wouldn't let us off. They had maitnenance crews checking the plane to see if it was repairable.

After about an hour they dinally decided the plane was not going to be fixed quickly so they had to get another plane. They were planning to keep us on that plane until the other one showed up. BS.
People were demanding to be let off. It didn't get ugly but you could sense the tension and knew it was headed in that direction.

The stewardess (yes I know, that was on purpose) was asking if people wanted earphones to watch the movie.
I said yes, she told me how much they cost as if I was going to have pay for them. My exact words in a loud voice were "you have to be ***** kidding me".
The people around me started laughing and making comments to her about letting us off the freaking plane.
She gave me a pair of earphones free of charge.

Eventually they let us off the plane and hearded us into a corner of the terminal with security guards making sure we didn't wander off. I had called our corporate travel agent and she got me on a different flight. I started walking away and they acted like they were going to stop me. Uh uh.
Total time being held hostage was a couple of hours tops and people were getting seriously pissed, I can't imagine what it would be like to be stuck on the plane as long as the people in that article.
I'd have been calling congressmen and senators demanding that they do something, or lost it and taken my chances with the law.

Call 911 and say that you are being held hostage against your will.

Believe that this would have made things happen and quickly.

Having symptoms of a heart attack would also work.

I don't give a rat's ass if it's a felony, I would have started popping emergency doors and slides. This would have been preceded by several frantic calls to 911, stating that passengers were being held against their will. About the time the police/fire/rescue crews arrived, the doors would have popped and the passengers would be "rescued" from whatever "threat" was holding them onboard. The news crew that invariably follow the emergency crews would have had plenty of footage of dishevled, sweaty, smelly, upset passengers relieved to finally be released from their aluminum tube hell. Then let the airline and authorities try to explain to the public what was going on.

The whole TSA nonsense doesn't float. The people on the plane have ALREADY been checked/screened to be free of weapons.

What a load of schite. Yet one more reason to avoid the cattle cars that are commercial airliners.

Flatly illegal. Flight crew instructions must be followed. This is federal law.

I suspect the reason for scenarios like this is twofold - one, there aren't enough gates to go around and handle the demands of more, smaller jets that today's civil aviation fleet has gone to (it used to be fewer, large jets - the change in fleet composition is well documented). Secondly is simple operational considerations. If you pull the plane back in somewhere and let everyone off, what do you do when ATC calls and says, "your clearance is available, can you be ready to go in five minutes?" This happens. And if you're not ready to go in five minutes, it can be a long time until there's another window. The weather is another issue. The pilots are probably sitting there with their fingers on the trigger so to speak, ready to blast off as soon as they and operations say it's good enough to go.

Believe me, it's better to be "down here wishing you were up there than up there wishing you were down here". Thunderstorms and really bad weather is nothing to screw with.

It's possible that the company wanted that jet to get to the destination too, rather than bussing the passengers. Some maintenance services are only available at certain airports. If the plane was up for a certain type of check (required by regulations) that was only available at the destination, the company may well have had a vested interest in making sure the plane made it there and really thought "it won't be that long, we can save the cost of bussing these people and dead-heading an aircraft if we just hold out another half hour to an hour" (then this logic gets repeated a few times...)

I'd have been pretty pissed too if I were on the plane though. I don't agree with CoEx's decision at all, but I can totally see how something like this can happen. If most of you guys knew what went into planning and executing a flight, you'd be amazed any aircraft ever got off the ground at all. Between the maintenance, crew duty limits, regulatory considerations, planning, ATC considerations, traffic considerations, logistics of gate availability, etc. it's remarkable the system works as well as it does.

Those feet tasty? Continental has 2 gates at Rochester.

http://www.monroecounty.gov/airport-airlines.php

Why would they need a gate, that aircraft has stairs and they can deplane onto the tarmac. Just frickin stupid.

How can this and the "Jet Blue incident" happen? It happens because the flight crew lies to the passengers.

If they'd come out and say "we're going to make you sit here for 6 hours", there would be mutiny. Calls to the local TV station, 911, etc.

But they tell you "just 45 more minutes and we'll be on our way" again and again and again. Nobody wants to go to jail to try and save 45 minutes.

Actually the math to do this has been around since WWII, with some advances made maybe 30-40 years ago. Air travel isn't all that exciting from a scheduling/mathematical programming perspective. The FAA comes up with some new regulation limiting the number of times a stewardess can transit the aisle with a half-full coffee pot? Just add another constraint. Shrug.

It's a big problem (big as in number of decision variables and constraints) but nothing intractable.

This is what happens when you give federal power to airplane waitresses.

Ummm, Right city, wrong state. Your link is to Rochester, NY, and the plane landed in Rochester, MN.

There would have been NO other commercial flights at the airport at that time. There was NO reason not to let the passengers off the plane.

There's huge liability in allowing passengers to deplane via a stairway.

40 years ago it was common. Today it's just an excuse for someone to sue you. I'm utterly shocked that JetBlue allows this at KLGB today, although their "stairways" are very elaborate, semi-permanent constructions replete with ADA ramps and hand/guard rails and slip-resistant surfaces. I'm sure the lawyers had a field day with that one.

Do you really want the liability of saying "let's just let everyone off, roll the stairway up to the plane" and have someone take a tumble? I can see the personal injury attorneys salivating over the prospect. Not to mention it was probably wet, and dark. Perfect opportunity for someone to claim negligence.

Follow the money - it usually provides the answer, or at least good clues to where the answer lies.

And that lawsuit is worse than the one that will result from this how?

After about hour two they ceased being a flight crew and were more akin to jailer / tormentor.
That's when it takes one good leader-type to say "we're getting off of here...now...anyone else with me?"

This is why you buy your own Gulfstream...