A bit of honesty by the airlines wouldn't go amiss. This is a uniquely American problem.. this does not happen anywhere else in the world on anything like this scale. Why is that? Is it because only America has weather?
Or perhaps the US airlines cram too many flights into too few slots, which actually results in some airports (JFK for example) being physically unable to handle, on time, the number of flights it has scheduled. When the slightest problem in the system develops, the backlog quickly becomes unmanageable. The airlines solution is to make passengers suffer, on the grounds that this is the more efficient solution. If we pass regulations which prohibit this, or which required the airlines to pay prohibitively expensive compensation where they have kept passengers on the ground and onboard for over 3 hours, I think you would find that solutions would be found. One of which is to spread flights out over the day more efficiently, and stop overstuffing "peak time" take off and landing slots beyond endurance.
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