A US carrier must give you the chance to leave the aircraft before a tarmac delay passes three hours on a domestic flight and four hours on an international one, and must serve food and water no later than two hours in. None of that is a payment to you. The letter below claims what the delay actually cost.
[Your full name]
[Your address]
[Email]
[Phone]
[Today's date]
[Airline name] — Customer Relations
[Airline claims address or online claim form]
Re: Tarmac delay, 14 CFR 259.4
Flight [Flight number]
Route [Departure airport] to [Final destination airport]
Date of flight [Flight date]
Booking reference [Booking reference]
Dear Sir or Madam,
I was a passenger on flight [Flight number] on [Flight date]. The
aircraft was held on the tarmac at [Departure airport] for
[Time on the tarmac] with the doors closed. During that time the
crew did not provide
[food and water / working lavatories / status updates], and I was not
offered the opportunity to leave the aircraft.
Section 259.4(c) of title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations requires
your tarmac delay contingency plan to provide an opportunity to deplane
before three hours on a domestic flight and four hours on an
international flight, adequate food and potable water no later than two
hours after the start of the delay, operable lavatory facilities and
adequate medical attention, and notification of the status and reason
for the delay once the delay passes thirty minutes.
I paid separately for [Paid service not provided], which I did not
receive. Section 260.4 requires a prompt and automatic refund of a fee
collected for an ancillary service that was not provided through no
fault of the consumer, and section 260.10 requires that refund to be
issued promptly in the original form of payment.
I claim the following, receipts and card statement enclosed:
Fee for the service not provided [Currency] [Amount]
Costs caused by the delay [Currency] [Amount]
Total [Currency] [Total]
Please pay [Currency] [Total] to the card ending
[Last 4 digits of card], transaction dated [Transaction date], within
14 days. I am also filing a complaint with the United States Department
of Transportation about the handling of this tarmac delay.
Yours faithfully,
[Signature]
[Your full name]
How to use it
- Write down the gate-departure time, the take-off time and the time the doors reopened. Your boarding pass and phone photos date them.
- Say plainly what was missing: no water, a blocked lavatory, no updates. Name times, not feelings.
- List every fee you paid for something you did not get, with the card and the transaction date.
- Keep expenses to what the delay forced on you — a rebooked connection, a hotel night, a missed transfer.
- Send it, then file the DOT complaint. The two are separate and the second is free.
The tarmac rule does not pay you. Section 259.4 tells the airline how to behave and gives the Department of Transportation something to fine it for. It creates no fixed sum for a passenger, so a letter that demands one gets refused on sight. What you can recover is money: fees for services you paid for and did not receive under 14 CFR 260.4, and the ticket rules in the US refund letter.
Does a tarmac delay pay compensation?
No. There is no US equivalent of the EU261 fixed sum, on the tarmac or anywhere else. Section 259.4 requires a contingency plan, the chance to deplane at three or four hours, food and water at two hours, working lavatories, medical attention and status updates. The enforcement is a federal penalty against the airline, not a cheque to you.
Can the airline keep us on board past three hours?
Sometimes, and lawfully. The pilot-in-command may keep the doors shut where deplaning would jeopardise safety or security, or where there is a safety-related or security-related reason the aircraft cannot leave its position. Air traffic control can also advise that returning to a gate would significantly disrupt airport operations. Those exceptions are narrow and the airline has to be able to point to one.
What if my connection died while we sat there?
Then you are into the refund rules rather than the tarmac rule. A cancelled flight, or a change beyond the significant-change thresholds, gives a refund of the unused portion — and if you took the trip anyway, the ancillary fees for services never delivered are still refundable. The US passenger rights guide sets out which rule catches which situation.
If the airline goes quiet, chase it once with the follow-up letter and then escalate. For a US carrier the regulator is the Department of Transportation rather than a European enforcement body, and the route is described in escalate to the regulator. If the same trip also involved a bag that never arrived, the fee for that bag is separately refundable and the delayed baggage letter covers the rest.