14 CFR Part 259: Enhanced protections for airline passengers

This is the part with the clearest hard deadlines in the whole set, and the only one that obliges an airline to answer you in writing.

This summary is ours. The regulation’s own words are quoted below and linked in full.

“each covered U.S. air carrier shall provide a passenger on a flight experiencing a tarmac delay at a U.S. airport the opportunity to deplane before the tarmac delay exceeds three hours … each covered carrier must provide adequate food and potable water no later than two hours after the start of the tarmac delay”

Of the 8sections in this part, these are the ones that bear on what a passenger gets. Which sections belong on this list is our judgement, not the regulation’s.

• § 259.4Contingency plan for lengthy tarmac delays
• § 259.5Customer service plan
• § 259.6Public disclosure of customer service plan
• § 259.7Response to consumer problems
• § 259.8Notifying consumers of known delays, cancellations, and diversions

The remaining 3 are definitional or administrative

• § 259.1Purpose
• § 259.2Applicability
• § 259.3Definitions

1. May 3, 2021 86 FR 23270The tarmac-delay contingency plan requirements as they stand today.

Dates and citations are taken from the source note printed with the regulation. Entries with no description are ones the source note records without explaining, and we do not guess at what changed. All six parts side by side are on the rights timeline.

• When the rules changed