Honorable Mary Peters
Secretary of Transportation
U.S. Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Avenue, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20590

Re:  Docket No.: DOT-OST-2007-0180 - National Task Force to Develop Model Contingency        Plans to Deal with Lengthy Airline On-Board Delays

            -- CAPBOR Concerns With Draft Final Task Force Report

“Although the Task Force Report includes information that could be useful to local airport committees developing contingency plans to respond to long on-board tarmac delays, CAPBOR is opposed to your release of the Report as drafted, for three reasons.  First, the Report does not recognize the right of passengers to be deplaned after a tarmac delay of any number of hours, assuming the option of being deplaned can be achieved safely.  In our view, tarmac strandings after a certain amount of time constitute involuntary passenger imprisonment, and we ask you specifically to override the Task Force majority view in this regard.  

“Second, the FAA will not agree to consider tasking its Air Traffic Control staff with minimizing the queuing on tarmacs for excessive periods of time of departing airline aircraft by imposing  “gate holds” when a substantial delay is certain or highly probable.  FAA regulations defer all such decisions to the airline, no matter how long the pre-departure delay will be.  FAA’s mindset continues to be centered on the movement of “aluminum tubes,” without any apparent regulatory interest in the passengers trapped on board.  We ask that you ask the FAA Acting Administrator to reconsider various FAA positions in Chapter 5.

“Third, airline passengers are concerned that you will not require the industry to implement contingency plans when the final Task Force Report is issued.   As one commenter noted, “By allowing airlines to provide lip service to guidelines [in the Task Force Report] that they ‘should’ but are not ‘required’ to adhere to makes this entire document useless to the traveling public….” (DOT-OST-2007-0108-0114)”