My own experiences here.
Last November, I was stuck inside an Air New Zealand flight for 3 hours, somewhere in the middle of LAX (and nowhere in sight of the terminal buildings), while they attempted to fix a cargo door.
I can understand when a sudden change of weather traps your plane out in the tarmac, and you can't go anywhere. That happened to me at BWI when a sudden (and I mean sudden -- it was sunny 30 minutes earlier) violent thunderstorm rolled in. I looked out the windows and saw several planes parked side-by-side, waiting for the storm to end. I could also feel the plane being buffeted side-to-side by the winds. If I were the pilot, I wouldn't move either.
BUT, there's a big difference between that and what happened to me that November. From what an ANZ representative told me, the mechanics had been working on the cargo door for quite some time, and was the reason for the delay. They THOUGHT they would have it fixed by the time the 9 PM scheduled departure time. So they parked the plane at a remote stand (for those who don't know what it is, it's little more than a jetway with an elevator down to ground level, plus a small enclosed waiting area) to conduct the repairs, and bussed us over there, hedging their bets that the repairs would be done by the time the last passenger fastens his/her seatbelt and the last piece of luggage is stuck in the cargo hold.
Unfortunately they lost that bet. But it was the passengers who paid the price.
Once on board, we waited. For 3 hours. No that's not as bad as the 11 hours those JetBlue passengers endured, and no the toilets didn't overflow. But I'll tell you, being squashed in the middle seat between two large guys for an additional 3 hours, on top of the usual 14 hour flight to Auckland, was not fun.
On top of that, even though it was a cool November evening, the interior of that 747 got uncomfortably hot with the heat and C02 being emitted by myself and 391 of my fellow passengers, plus the crew, for that 3 hour period. I guess ANZ wanted to teach us Americans a thing or two about Global Warming. I hate to think what it would have been like had that been a typical August day in Los Angeles.
The flight attendants did the best they could by serving non-alcoholic beverages and some light snacks, but no they didn't turn on the entertainment system.
Why I feel it's truly an avoidable situation on the part of ANZ is that they boarded us BEFORE the problem was fixed, hoping not to screw up their "on-time" record. Then, when they realized that leaving on-time was a hopeless cause, rather than return us back to the terminal, they simply left us there, because it was far more convenient than bussing us back and offloading our luggage. Convenience, not overwhelming circumstances, was the reason. It was a decision made by someone in a climate-controlled environment whose chair isn't attached permanently with a mere 32 inches of leg space and who wasn't squashed between two large guys.
No, I won't fly ANZ any more, for this and for other things that happened on the same trip with this airline (I mentioned my woes in another thread). But, someone mentioned that if you were stuck in a long line in say Wal-Mart or something, you'd simply drop your items and go elsewhere. But, once on board an aircraft, you are now obligated to follow the rules and directions of the cabin crew, or face Federal charges. It's not just a matter of walking away.
I don't know if a new law is the answer to this. But IMHO, the airlines simply aren't listening to their customers. They're hoping that in six months, we'll forget what happened to those people on that JetBlue flight.
