At last, those planes are flying where they belong. That's right, over the homes of poor people.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/03/us_dept_of_transportation_data.html

Thanks a lot government. You screwed us again. I wrote about this when it first happened. How stupid it was and how it would just lead to more cancellations. And low and behold it was stupid and it just led to more cancellations. Simple solutions, instead of paying huge fines to the government for no reason, smaller reasonable amounts should be given out to the passengers. They could give out so either 250 dollars or 500 dollars credit for every 2 hours you are on the tarmac for example. Or 250 and 500 after the first three hours, and then 250 and 500 more for every hour there after. The exact details are not important. This would have the double bonus of having an extremely smaller fine limiting the incentive for airplanes to cancel flights which probably could have taken off after all, while also rewarding passengers with money/credit in cases where they had to sit on the tarmac. Only by some government bureaucrats twisted logic could it possibly make sense that some citizens were inconvenienced by having the sit on the plane, i know the perfect solution the airline should give more money to the government. Wait what. How does that follow. Obviously the money should be paid to the injured party, the people on the plane. It's so obvious that any normal person would see it immediately, and it would win a resounding victory in any kind of referendum so of course the government couldn't possibly implant it. With 1 logical policy why people might start expecting more and then where would government officials be.