Why we loathe flying, sometimes .....

The NY Times:

The department has sent Continental Airlines a letter asking for details on Continental Express Flight 2816, which left Houston at 9:23 p.m. Friday but didn't arrive at its destination in Minneapolis until after 11 a.m. Saturday.

In between, the small airliner spent nearly seven hours sitting on the tarmac in Rochester, where it had been diverted because of thunderstorms, before passengers were allowed to go inside an airport terminal. Two and a half hours after disembarking, passengers reboarded the same plane and were flown to Minneapolis.

''Reasonable people are outraged at the idea of being stuck on a small plane for seven hours,'' LaHood wrote in a column posted online. ''Flyers and those who are considering flying want to know that should a delay occur, they will be treated respectfully.''

Well, this is not the first time something like this has happened. A few months ago, in January, a planeload of passengers from Mexico, on their way to Seattle, suffered equally--or more:

Dozens of angry passengers were cooped up for 16 hours in an AeroMexico plane, after their flight was diverted from Seattle to Portland International Airport.

Flight 670 arrived at PDX about 7:40 p.m. on Tuesday and then sat at a gate for more than four hours after being turned away from Sea-Tac Airport because of heavy fog, said Kama Simonds, spokeswoman for the Port of Portland, which runs PDX.

Yes, fog at SeaTac is understandable. But, after the plane and passengers staying put for hours in the plane, guess what happened?

paramedics who boarded to assist two ailing passengers — one with a heart problem — found a cabinful of hungry people.

"There was no food left," she said.

The paramedics went to a local McDonald's and bought enough Big Mac meals for everyone onboard.

So, whatever happened to the passengers?

passengers weren't allowed off the plane in Portland, officials said, because no customs agents were available to process the passengers.

Eventually, the plane went back to Mexico, and then it returned to the United States to complete the flight to Seattle.

I might have taken the option of getting arrested, because of the little bit of claustrophobia that I have!