Just chute me

Everybody out: I’m wondering why planes detained on the tarmac don’t use those emergency chutes to get everyone off and into the airport. It beats sitting in a seat for 11 hours. Why wouldn’t they do that?

-- ERIN SCARLETT

Oceanside, Calif.

Answer: The mental picture of newly freed hostages, uh, I mean passengers, zipping down an emergency slide may bring a smile to your face, but such an exit is no laughing matter.

“Essentially, using the emergency slides to deplane an aircraft moves customers from what is a well-controlled environment inside the aircraft to an uncontrolled airport environment outside,” Sebastian White, manager of corporate communications for JetBlue, said in an e-mail. “If customers are deplaned via slides, they typically would end up on active taxiways where they would probably encounter moving airplanes, jet blast, inclement weather conditions and security issues.”

That’s assuming they didn’t break a leg or worse on the slides, which aren’t exactly a pleasure cruise.

So, yes, there is something worse than being detained on the tarmac for half a day -- and it’s being run over by an airplane, although those long-suffering passengers left without food, water or sanitary facilities may think it more a six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other dilemma.

The recent flight fiascoes, including JetBlue’s Valentine’s Day mess (weather, miscues by the carrier), US Airway’s two March meltdowns (weather, computers, miscues by the carrier), highlight a bigger problem: the domino effect of delays and cancellations.

Consider this: Including domestic and foreign flights, U.S. carriers served 744 million passengers in 2006, and planes flew nearly 80% full, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

When the weather starts misbehaving, airlines have two choices: bad and worse. They can leave the plane sitting on the runway and hope there’s an opening to take off, thus not completely messing up their schedules for the next few days, or they can take the plane back to the terminal, lose their place in the takeoff queue and wreak havoc on thousands of lives -- passengers, crew and airport and airline personnel among them.

It’s pretty much a lose-lose for everyone.

Going back to the gate may be the norm in the future, though, if legislation that’s roaming around Congress (one bill in the House and one in the Senate) becomes law. Those bills mandate a three-hour max of tarmac time and require airlines to have ample food, water and working toilets.

Interesting concept, but can you really legislate decency? Congress must think it needs to try because, apparently, there is no law against treating powerless people badly.

But there is a name for it. In the U.S., we call it “flying.”

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