What does assault or intimidation have to do with it? I’m talking about simply getting off of the plane. No threats, no intimidation, no assault.
Suppose I was ordered to remain seated, and the guy beside me tries to poke my eye out with a pencil. Am I allowed to get up? Of course I am, yet I have disobeyed the order of a flight attendant. Obviously, sometimes it is allowed.
Well of course not. Plane waits to get de-iced. And waits. And waits. And waits. I raise a big stink. Plane rolls back to jetway. Cops come and take me off. Will the other passengers just sit there or will others also make their escape?
One of these days there will be an incident of “runway rage”. (Can’t call it air rage because you’re not in the air.) I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.
ETA: My defense at the trial will temporary insanity. Plus a counter-suit.
Well that would be a case of you defending yourself against a guy trying to poke you in the eye with the pencil. Still probably wouldn’t justify you trying to leave the plane, unless the other 200 or so people on the plane failed to restrain him as he chased you up and down the aisle.
Have there been cases of passengers not being allowed to leave the plane once it was at the gate? From what I understand, all of these cases were when the plane for whatever reason couldn’t get TO a gate (ie: Gates were all full, plane frozen to the tarmac, etc.) Presumably, plane rolls back to gate, you are arrested, and everyone else goes to the airport bar for a drink.
Right. But it would be a case of disobeying a flight attendant, which was my sole point. Sometimes it is OK to do so.
It might still be against the rules, but then it becomes a case of if the airline really feels like pressing the issue, sort of a judgement call. Like, if there are snakes on the plane, would they get mad at you for using the cell phone to call Samuel L. Jackson for help?
I’m pretty sure the flight crew can’t (legally) order you to do anything illegal.
In the case of the pencil-stabber could the flight crew actually order you to help restrain him? What happens if you refuse?
Since this borders on kidnapping to me, what would be the result (after >5 hrs) of calmly dialing 911 and explaining to the authorities that you are being held against your will and require police assistance?
First you have to establish that an order that compels me to put myself in harm’s way is legal, I suppose.
Look, even in the military it is OK to refuse an illegal order. Unless someone can show me that flight attendants have more power over civilians than military personnel have over their inferiors, I am going to assume that I do not have to obey every single order that a flight attendant gives me. So we are left to determine whether I can be held against my will. I don’t know, but I have yet to be shown chapter and verse on point.
As a sub topic, what would the penalty be for ‘escaping’ from a grounded plane? I might be willing to take my punishment.
Well, I suppose it’s entirely possible that if you refuse to help restrain the pencil-stabber, you get poked in the eye with a pencil. 
They could probably get you for trespassing, at the very least. And then there are probably various homeland security type problems with having an unauthorized person running around where all the grounded planes full of people are.
That’s an interesting concept. If I’m inside a vehicle I am not trespassing, but if I am outside it, I am. Nowhere else would that be the case.
Well, it all depends on what’s outside of the vehicle, in this case, the tarmac of an airport. You’re allowed to be inside of the airplane, through a mutual arrangement with the airline and the airport. Once you leave the plane and are on the tarmac, assuming you did this without permission, you’re trespassing, just as you would be if you went from the passenger terminal into the baggage handling area.
The “obey the flight crew’s orders” thing seems a bit vague. What about a legal orders that do not effect the safe operation of the plane? Would you violate the law if you refused an order to: 1. Wear your pants as a hat? 2. Sing 100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall until the plane lands? 3. Change seat assignments so that only people with blue carry-on bags are in 1st class? While I’m sure that bad publicity would keep this sort of thing to a minimum, one wonders.
Another point: Assuming a passenger with checked luggage insists on and succeeds in getting off the plane, wouldn’t the airline need to unload and reload most of the luggage compartment in order to remove his luggage, for obvious security reasons?
If you’re sitting on a plane that’s pulled away from the gate, the doors are almost certainly armed. So if you unilaterally decide to open the door of a plane that’s stuck on the tarmac, you’ll trigger the mechanism that inflates the slide. Even if you can somehow beat any criminal charges, I think the airline will expect you to reimburse the cost of repacking the slide and you might get injured on the way down.
My WAG is that the US Attorney would say something along the lines of “Get the hell out of my office!” to anyone who wanted to press charges against someone for disobeying orders like that.
It’s not kidnapping–you chose to be there when you bought a ticket.
You booked passage, and agreed to abide by the policies of the airline and the laws and regulations of the FAA. You could try for ‘wrongful’ or ‘“extremely long” imprisonment’, but since you bought a ticket, I don’t think kidnapping’s gonna stand.
Tripler
I’m not a lawyer, but I play one on TV.
This is a really interesting question to me. I’ve searched the civil-administrative side of things and best I can tell, there has never been a case of a passenger trying to exit the plane on the tarmac. I did find a case of a man demanding to disembark. The crew eventually complied by returning to the gate and then charged the man with violating 121.317(k) (see below). I haven’t yet checked criminal law.
The “disobey the command of a crewmember” regulation is 14 C.F.R. 121.317(k). It is limited to instructions pertaining to 1) sitting in your seat and wearing your seatbelt when required, 2) not smoking, 3) not tampering with smoke detectors.
The other relevant regulation is 14 C.F.R. § 121.580 which states that “No person may assault, threaten, intimidate, or interfere with a crewmember in the performance of the crewmember’s duties aboard an aircraft being operated.” Crewmember duties include, among other things, keeping people out of off-limit zones. This one has been applied to things as simple as people standing up when they’ve been ordered to sit (even if the seatbelt light is off), refusing to stow a portable electronic devise, etc. Often these people are caught both on the interference prong and the disobeying prong.
IANAL, but I think it’s pretty much down the discretion of the Administrative Law Judge whether to find you guilty of a violation of 121.580. Given the safety and liability issues present in letting you leave the aircraft, I think you’d probably lose this fight.
Well, if you don’t mind being on the (secret no fly list) the rest of your life. I hope you like to drive…
YMMV
Look, when you board a plane, an extensive body of federal laws and regulation makes it perfectly clear that some of your normally held rights to travel freely, etc. are curtailed. Like it or not, in no way is it safe to permit people onto a tarmac, and on top of that, most planes don’t have a stairway to let you out safely (unless you want to drop 30 feet) anyway. So, you willingly put yourself at the mercy to some extent of the flight-crew and have to trust in their ability to make prudent decisions about your safety in the operation of that airplane. Do you have a right to be let out of the plane at your whim when it’s airborne? What if you’ve packed a parachute? And do they have to land just because you insist on getting off the ride right now?
Now, I’ve been in a few situations of dicey-weather, boarded a plane knowing I might be in for one of those multi-hour unfortunate episodes, and I did it anyway because I really wanted to get to where I was going. Presumably everyone else that willingly boards a plane in snowy weather makes the same decision. Airlines and pilots are doing their best to get everyone where they want to go in a reasonably timely and safe fashion; sometimes they err towards pushing the envelope for flying in crappy weather, and sometimes they cancel too many flights. But to claim that you’re being “kidnapped” by the airline? Ridiculous.
Also, if the weather’s bad enough to where the airliner is gonna get stuck on the tarmac like that, consider this: You could be driving. Then you’d be stuck in a car for 9 and a half hours on the interstate. At least you might get free peanuts on the plane.