Last weekend’s post-Christmas snow disaster at U.S. airports points up the need for more rules to protect the flying public.

A massive Christmas storm dropped as many as 20 inches of snow on some East Coast airports.

Clearly, it was not going to be business as usual. But the way airlines handled the crisis turned the situation from unfortunate to horrendous.

At the height of the storm, passengers on 25 aircraft at New York’s JFK International Airport were stuck on the tarmac for more than three hours.

In one case, passengers who had just completed a 16-hour flight from Hong Kong spent the next 11 hours gazing longingly at the terminal from their assigned seats.

Another flight from Turkey spent 10 hours in the air, only to sit another six on the tarmac.

“After they announced it would be another hour and a half after the original hour and a half, it became pandemonium,” one passenger told The New York Times. “People were walking around, moaning, yelling. Children were screaming. People were complaining at the children screaming.”

The reason passengers couldn’t get off? Customs officers had gone home and there was no secure area to hold the passengers inside the airport.

That’s absurd. If the government doesn’t have the personnel in place to screen everyone, the rules should be suspended and the passengers allowed to simply leave.

Every day, thousands of people cross U.S. borders to enter this country illegally from Mexico.

Why would we punish airline passengers who have their passports in hand and are stuck at an airport through no fault of their own?

Last year the federal government adopted a new tarmac waiting rule that requires airlines to pay a hefty per-passenger fine if a flight is stuck for more than three hours.

But it only applies to domestic flights.

From May to September of 2009, there were 535 flights stuck on the tarmac for more than three hours.

For the same period in 2010, there were only 12, showing that the new rule has worked and should be extended to overseas flights.

In the industry’s struggle to regain profitability, the airlines have also changed the way they operate.

Now they pre-emptively cancel flights before a storm to avoid having those planes and crews become stuck in snowbound airports.

The airlines also have fewer jets and crews in reserve to press into service to clear up a post-storm backlog of fliers, and are unwilling to fly partially empty flights.

So, even when the post-Christmas storm ended, thousands of fliers found themselves stranded at distant airports for four or five days, unable to find a flight home.

Sometimes the airline industry seems to be competing to become the most uncomfortable mode of transportation possible.

Again, if those are the rules, then airlines and airports should be required to provide beds, blankets, food and water for the thousands of people suddenly left in the lurch.

This year’s storm did hit at the worst possible time for the flying public, two days after Christmas.

But the aftermath shows that much more can be done to at least make a bad situation bearable.

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