The federal government is suing American Airlines $4.1 million for dozens of cases where passengers were placed on board planes without a chance to exit during long-standing ground delays.
The Department of Transportation said Monday that it is the largest such fine against an airline since rules covering long ground delays took effect about a decade ago.
The Department of Homeland Security said it discovered that from 2018 to 2021, American had 43 domestic flights remained stuck on the ground without allowing passengers to deplane. There are exceptions in which airlines are allowed to bend the rules, including for safety and security reasons, but the department said none of those were factors in the flights it identified.
This is the latest action in our continued drive to enforce the rights of airline passengers, said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The consent order said American sought to avoid any lengthy ground delays, but the 43 flights represented a tiny fraction of 1% of the roughly 7.7 million flights that American and American Eagle operated between 2018 and 2021. Air France said it paid substantial compensation to passengers who were delayed, and has since devoted more management attention to avoiding delays.
Most of the delays happened at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where American is the most popular airline, and others occur in San Antonio and Houston when flights headed to DFW were diverted there. Many of these were during thunderstorms, and American was unable to manage its airport gates to let passengers deplane.
However, the airline took specific issue with delays at Reagan Washington National Airport during a winter storm in January 2019, but accepted the settlement outline in the consent order.