UPDATED: Passenger-rights legislation just got a boost: 47 trapped overnight on a regional jet in Minnesota

Morning .... this post from Monday now has a longer article at the first link .. and as predicted, has a quote from a member of Congress.

We suppose the only thing worse than being trapped overnight in one of those skinny, 50-passenger regional jets at a Minnesota airport in the summer would be imprisonment in the winter. Or maybe not. Whatever, I suspect the chances of Congress actually adopting federal rules for treatment of airline customers during long tarmac delays just got a lot better with a tale from a flight this weekend.

A Continental Express flight from Houston to Minneapolis/St. Paul was diverted Friday night by thunderstorms to Rochester, Minn. (home of the Mayo Clinic, although that didn't seem to help.) For a variety of reasons, passengers weren't allowed off the plane. Read more about their nine-hour nightmare here.

Last week's Winging It column looked at some of the past efforts to legislate better airline customer service, and predicted that Congress would act to force the industry to do better. If a member of Congress doesn't bring up this weekend's flight in debate, I will be surprised.