Good news on the passenger-rights front: Starting Thursday, U.S. airlines will no longer be allowed to hold you hostage for endless hours on an airport tarmac.

Bad news on the passenger-rights front: So many European carriers shelled out so many millions of dollars to keep so many volcano-ash-stranded travelers temporarily housed and fed this month that the European Community's stringent flyer-protection regulations are bound to be diluted.

And, finally, befuddling news on the passenger-rights front: Airlines are changing how they package and price their core product, and doing it so quickly that long-standing government rules about full-and-fair fare disclosure suddenly look about as relevant as the Glass-Steagall Act.

Before we get too depressed about what's going wrong with passenger's rights, though, let's at least revel in the good news for a paragraph or two. After all, it took 11 years to get to our happy place—which is anywhere that is not inside a metal tube on a runway waiting on an airline bureaucrat's whim. Thursday's regulatory change is real and represents substantial progress for business travelers.

The new Department of Transportation protocols require airlines to allow passengers to disembark a domestic flight if it has been stuck on the ground for three hours. Airlines are also required to have ample supplies of water and food available and to ensure passengers have access to functioning restrooms and medical attention. There are commonsense exceptions that can be triggered either by the flight's captain or by air-traffic controllers.

These apparently incontestable passenger's rights were nevertheless contested by the airlines. First they raised the specter of massive cancellations rather then risk fines of as much as $27,000 a passenger should a flight be stuck on a tarmac longer than three hours. Then several petitioned the DOT for exemptions based on the fact a major runway is closed at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport. Within days, airlines that didn't even serve Kennedy began demanding waivers for their airports too.

The Transportation Department last week slapped down all of the requests. The airlines argued "that it would better serve the public interest to hobble the very protections that the tarmac delay rule affords," the DOT wryly noted. "We strongly disagree. We cannot lose sight of the fact that passengers have a right to know that they will not be 'held hostage' for an unreasonable length of time."

But just as U.S. flyers were winning on the tarmac, the European Community's more comprehensive passenger-rights rules were attacked because they were working too well. As upwards of 80 percent of flights to and from European airports were grounded due to the eruption of Iceland's volcano, European carriers were forced to pay to feed and house its displaced passengers. That's because the EC's "duty of care" rules require airlines to offer reasonable reimbursement of a passenger's costs for as long as the carrier cannot fly them home. The total tab hasn't been calculated, partly because all of the estimated 9 million grounded passengers aren't home yet.

Needless to say, the bosses of Europe's most aggressive low-fare carriers, led by Michael O'Leary, the pugnacious chief executive of Ryanair, are livid. Airlines didn't cause the cancellations, so why should they pay, O'Leary bitched. He wasn't alone. While they weren't as publicly obstreperous, traditional full-service carriers such as British Airways, Lufthansa, and Air France also carped about the cost and the unfairness of forcing airlines to pay for flights canceled by government edict.

The EC rules were "never designed for a situation like a massive shutdown of airspace," the commercial director of a large European airline told me. "They were aimed at protecting flyers if an airline created a long delay or cancellation. But if governments shut down the airports and won't let us fly, shouldn't governments pay for the cost of caring for the passengers who have been hurt?"