A solution to sitting on the runway for half a day

Even with all the recent attention on Jet Blue for keeping its passengers in planes on the tarmac for up to eleven hours, airlines still can't figure out how to fix the problem. A recent storm at JFK (the same airport that gave Jet Blue fits - memo to self, avoid JFK in the winter), kept passengers stranded again, this time merely pushing the 10 hour mark.

So what's the fix? Everyone knows that once planes leave the gate, another plane is lined up for that spot, so you just can't go back to the terminal. Or can you? Why can't they use buses or other shuttles to take people off the planes and get them back to the terminal. Sure, when things get going those passengers may have to wait a little longer to get the plane back, reboard, etc, but this passengers perspective is that I'd much rather tack an extra 45 minutes on my nine hour wait if I can wait that nine hours in the terminal. Nine hours sitting on a runway is death, but nine hours forty-five minutes is livable; I can stretch my legs, get some food, lay down, and if you have a kid, you know the difference between containment in a large area and eleven hours in a chair.

The airlines have to figure out a way to get passengers off the plane. It's the one area in a basket of bad news that they can control. As it is, this stream of bad news is just killing an already fragile industry. Airlines find themselves in a business that has rising costs, increased inconvenience even getting on, and now more and more bad news and irate customers. Not exactly the best environment.