Have you ever been to Rochester Minnesoooota? I have been. And as a result I know a couple of things about Rochester that the crew of Continental Airlines Flight 2816 should have known. Rochester’s sidewalks are rolled up at 11 pm and they are not rolled back out until 6 am. Street lights are turned off, stop lights go into flashing mode, and the airport shuts down. Not just sort of shut down, everyone, including security goes home.
But first, before we get into what happened to those poor people, let’s clarify who was who. Yes, the flight was “called” Continental 2816, but it was actually owned and operated by ExpressJet Airlines who uses the paint scheme and call sign of Continental so the customers think they are on Continental and not some little regional like ExpressJet. The agreements that result in the customer thinking that they are on a major airline when they buy the ticket, and fly on a regional in actuality, are known as “code shares.” It lets the major airlines get part of the ticket price for lending their name and the regionals get more business by fooling the passengers into thinking they are on a real airline, and the pilots get paid less. It works out for everyone.
(How can you know if you are being fooled when you buy the ticket? The flight number. Even really big airlines only use the first 1,999 flight numbers. (It use to be only the first 999.) So, when you see a flight number 2000 or larger, you know you will be on a regional and not the main airplane. For Continental, any 2,000 series flight number means you’ll be on ExpressJet, any 3,000 series number means you’ll be on Colgan Air, etc.)
But lets get back to all the players. Even though the company operating the flight was not Continental, Continental's dispatchers were providing dispatch control and decided to wait out the storms in Rochester rather than cancel the flight and bus passengers 85 miles to Minneapolis. (By the way, don’t even ask what a “Regional” carrier is doing flying 2&1/2 hours from Houston to Minneapolis. There is nothing “Regional” about flying over a thousand miles, and in the “old days” trips over an hour outside the regional area were only flown by major airlines.)
One of the players, the airport's manager, Steven Leqve said that that the passengers could have waited in a secure area until their plane was cleared to leave however somebody chose not to use that option and the finger pointing commenced. Naturally, ExpressJets wants to blame it on the airport, the airport wants to blame it on anyone else, and Mesaba is trying to stay low profile enough not to get caught in the cross-fire. Mesaba gets involved because Continental/ExpressJet does not normally operate out of Rochester so they were communicating with Mesaba Airline’s gate agent at Rochester for coordination. Mesaba is a regional (naturally) who really works under contract for Northwest, or actually Delta, but most likely hires local people under contract to man their gates and.… (And I don’t have 20 pages to unravel all this!)
The airports story is supported by Delta Airlines which says that when Rochester took a diverted Northwest plane from Phoenix, and sent it to Rochester all those passengers were placed on a bus and made it to Minneapolis by 1:30 a.m. Leqve said the Delta manager in Rochester offered space on the bus to Continental, which declined. However, The US Department of transportation report said that the local Mesaba representative "improperly refused the requests of the ExpressJet captain, telling the captain the airport was closed for security reasons.’’
Those poor passengers were stuck on that plane for over 12 hours. Even the crew were able to escape because they were over their duty day and were replaced.
So how do you avoid these situations? Easy:
1.) Never fly on regional airlines.
2.) If you do fly on regional airlines, avoid bad weather days.
3.) If you can’t avoid regionals and bad weather be sure to pack enough food and sundry items to survive at least 12 hours in a small tube with 50 of your best friends.
