Yes you can be held hostage.

It took my wife and I just over 24.5 hours to get back to Cali from Paris, France. We never had to stay on the runway for an extended period of time but we did have to stand in line for about 2.5 hours in Paris.

Wildkow

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jmann @ Feb 20 2007, 08:05 PM) [snapback]393706[/snapback]</div>

Chicago airport is too small for the traffic it carries. It normally operates right at its absolute limit, so that any blip will have a cascading effect. Also, it may have more severe storms than Cleveland. I don't know. I do know that in a northern prairie blizzard, nothing moves.

The southern airports may have a different issue: When you seldom have snow, it does not pay to keep snow-removal equipment on hand, so a small amount of snow takes a long time to clear. When you have snowstorms all winter long, you need to keep equipment on hand, and you are able to clear the snow quickly.

But if you really want to see a bad airport, it's Madrid. It is so over-used that delays are outrageous. And the national airline, Iberia, is the worst. But before you use that to draw conclusions about government-operated companies, the Spanish rail system, also government operated, has about a 99.99% on-time record. And their high-speed train, the AVE (which stands for alta velocidad, or high-speed, but is also a pun on ave, which is the word for bird) has a guarantee: If it's 5 minutes late, it's free. And it never happens!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Feb 20 2007, 07:08 PM) [snapback]393657[/snapback]</div>

The real problem with your logic is that additional government regularion or laws will be any better than the stupid $200 liability limit. At least of there was NO government regulation I could sue the airlines under general tort law and likely recover vastlymore than the government mandated limit.