Fines for Funds

On fines imposed against Airlines for leaving passengers stranded on the tarmac aboard a plane...

"Continental Airlines and its regional airline partner ExpressJet, which operated the flight for Continental, were each fined $50,000. ExpressJet spokeswoman Kristy Nicholas said the airline can avoid paying half the fines if it spends the same amount of money on additional training for their employees on how to handle extended tarmac delays.
The department imposed the largest penalty — $75,000 — on Mesaba Airlines, a subsidiary of Northwest Airlines, which was acquired by Delta Air Lines last year."

Okay, so hundreds of people were unable to disembark for hours, and the government collects money from airlines for causing such inconvenience? Now, I can understand if the government ordered such an amount of money to be disbursed among those that were on board, but why should the government pocket this money? I don't understand what justifies this; were government officials in discomfort as they slept through the night not knowing this was happening somewhere hundreds of miles away?

"Besides the fine, Continental also provided a full refund to each passenger and 'offered each passenger additional compensation to tangibly acknowledge their time and discomfort,' the department said."

This is fair enough. If the government is going to pocket $175,000 then they had better put it to good use. I mean, are they doing this to make our lives better, or to gather some extra department funding?