HEBRON — It's a travel nightmare: getting stuck on the runway in severe weather with no chance of either taking off or getting back to the terminal.

        It's happened as recently as January, when passengers trying to get out of Atlanta were stranded on the tarmac for as long as 10 hours.

        The issue has been on the minds of Cincinnati-area travelers as well, because of a dose of winter weather and the seesaw temperatures and conditions forecast for this week.

        But local airport and airline officials make as close to a promise as anyone can that passengers flying out of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport won't be put in that situation.

        In fact, the airport was one of the first in the nation to create a foul-weather/stranded passenger plan four years ago. The plan tries to ensure that planes won't spend more than two hours on the ramp or runway before taking off or coming back to the terminal to unload passengers.

        “We never say never, but we're doing our best to make sure that events such as Detroit never happen here,” airport operations director Dale Keith said. “Our whole goal is to make sure people are not trapped on an airplane. If it gets to that, we won't let it leave the gate until it's assured of being de-iced properly and allowed to take off.”

        When Mr. Keith refers to Detroit, he touches upon an event that shook the industry.

        A heavier-than-expected snowstorm paralyzed the Detroit airport — a major hub for Northwest Airlines — in January 1999 and stranded some planes on the tarmac for 8 to 10 hours. Passengers complained that airplane bathrooms became unusable and that they weren't allowed back to the gate, with many of the passengers traveling with infants or small children.

        The event spurred many in Congress to call for a “passenger bill of rights,” something that the airline industry still resists.

        A similar situation played out Jan. 2 in Atlanta, when a sudden snow and ice storm caused a major backup for flights trying to get de-iced, or sprayed with chemicals that keep ice from building up on wings.

        That can cause major problems, because bigger planes can take up to 10 minutes to spray off, and then those planes need to take off almost immediately, or ice will form again.

        If there is a backup of planes trying to take off, that can create a vicious cycle, not to mention problems if runways aren't cleared properly.

        In response to the problems highlighted by the January backups, Atlanta airport officials late last month announced that they had created a plan in conjunction with Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines and AirTran.

        But things are different here for Delta, which operates its second-largest hub locally.

        Cincinnati has one of the most forward-thinking plans in the nation, said Michael Boyd, an airport/airline consultant based in Evergreen, Colo.

        “There's no guarantee you won't get stuck on an airplane in winter, but the fact that they've thought out what could happen and done what we call process mapping is a big step ahead from most airports,” Mr. Boyd said.

        Mr. Keith said the Detroit debacle and another local incident helped spur the plan. A plane that was headed to Mexico Jan. 4, 1998, wound up spending more than 10 hours on the tarmac because of weather and customs issues.

        “That was just a bad situation and didn't represent the kind of facility we try to operate here,” Mr. Keith said. “Now, it's a priority for us, and we make sure international passengers can at least get off in the international concourse.”

        Following those two events, Mr. Keith got together with Delta and Erlanger-based regional carrier Comair to create the plan — which covers myriad subjects, including:

        • Use of the airport's 11 de-icing pads. Airlines are responsible for spraying off their own planes: Delta has 21 such trucks and uses four trucks at each de-icing pad.

        • How many flights the airlines will cancel ahead of time, since de-icing will automatically cause delays. This is a step Mr. Boyd says airlines must take to avoid stranding passengers and fouling their system for as long as a week. In anticipation of the snow last week, Delta canceled as many as 25 percent of its flights locally ahead of time to keep runways clear.

        • Alerting the airport's restaurant operators that there may be stranded passengers, and asking them to stay open late and stock up with extra food.

        • Bringing out cots for passengers who can't get a hotel room.

        • Having airlines and air traffic controllers closely monitor how long planes have been out on the tarmac or at the gate. If it gets to be more than two hours, airline officials say they make every effort to get passengers off that plane.

        “We really try to get people away from the gate and into the air in less than an hour in a full-blown de-icing situation,” said Greg Kennedy, Cincinnati station director for Delta.

        Mr. Kennedy and Steve Ellis, Comair's general manager of ramp and tower operations, both admit that the weather has been cooperating in the past few years, but both say they can't think of a flight that was delayed more than 90 minutes over the past three winters.

        “It's really a rarity when you see a flight out there for longer than an hour,” Mr. Ellis said.

        And given the experience of other airports, that puts Cincinnati in some rare company.

        “We think we're as good as any airport when it comes to this,” Mr. Keith said.

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