tonight on "nightline" -- forgotten flyers. a 14-hour nightmare as spirit airlines passengers are stranded after an emergency landing with no way to get answers. >> i know you're upset. >> tonight, why flying cheap could mean outrageous delays. paging dr. oz. his show made himself the most famous doctor in the world. but many don't know dr. oz is a heart surgeon as we bring you to a look to save a patient with a life long illnesillness.

and "the dark knight rises." christopher nolan telling us about his vision for gotham and what to expect for batman. good evening, i'm terry mow spirit airlines is known for some of the cheapest airfares around and maybe you have to expect a little different level of service like carry-on baggage, in exchange for the bang for your buck you that get. when a flight is supposed to be an easy four hours, compared to a 14-hour flight ordeal. that's what happened to over 100 spirit passengers this weekend. and abc's jim avila told us how it went down. >> reporter: spirit airlines, almost always low fares, and

some spirit passengers learning today the high cost of the low fare. >> it was unreal. it was painful. >> reporter: a nightmare 19 hours in the making. >> but then when we landed, we were singing hallelujah, literally. >> reporter: here's what happened, spirit airlines flight 510, los angeles to ft. lauderdale, three hours into the flight or 4:00 in the morning central time, forced to land because of a partially blind passenger with what police call a mental health issue is out of control. >> he was like touching everybody. he was going to the bathroom. not letting nobody go to the bathroom. come out to their seats, you know. kicking their walls, you know, like crazy. >> reporter: houston is the closest airport, but spirit doesn't normally fly there, so the airline has no staff. no gate and no airline partners. so passengers wait for a gate on the tarmac for nearly two hours

with no air conditioning or comforts. >> and we were on that plane in the lane for what, an hour? more than an hour with nothing to drink or eat. >> reporter: finally, in the terminal, families, many returning from vacation just sit and wait until around 8:00 a.m., the pilot announce, the crew can no longer legally fly. so passengers will be bussed five hours to dallas where spirit has a plane to take them to florida. a plan met with chaos and rebellion. >> i hear you. folks, i hear you. >> reporter: new plan, a new plane, and the crew was brought in from florida. but doesn't take off until 3:15 in the afternoon, arriving in ft. lauderdale at 8:00. 14 hours late. would things have been different on bigger, traditional airlines? maybe not. american airlines stranded passengers for nine hours on the tarmac in austin% 2006, which

led to the passenger bim of rights that fines airlines for keeping flyers off the gate for more than three hours. but consider this, the nation's largest airline, delta, has 775 planes to call on for backup. spirit has 42. and look at delta's route map, versus spirit. much easier to get stranded says william mcgee, author of the new book "attention all passengers." a former flight operations staffer for pan-am. >> for some carriers, it really has to do with they run an operation. they don't have the same type of network. so when something goes wrong it can go wrong very quickly. >> reporter: even spirit today apologized to its passengers for not living up to its stranded and offs refunded and credits for future flight. when forced to divert to an airport that zpirt not serve, it

takes extra time to get a gate and it had to fly in an aircraft from farther away. >> there's a reason they offer lower fares. they also don't have the same network at their disposal. >> reporter: jetblue, another airline with a limited route map stranded passengers for ten hours in 2007. unlike the majors, spirit and jetblue fly city to city or what is called point to point in the industry. and they don't guarantee connections. if you're delayed and miss the next leg, mcgee says they're not only galted to help. >> not all airlines are created equal. and that's the bottom line. >> reporter: spirit is one of the fastest growing airlines making its mark on price. not on service. as these passengers learned in their 19-hour lesson in airline economics. i'm jim avila for "nightline" in washington, d.c. >> that's a grim ordeal. thanks to jim avila for that. next up, you know him as a

talk show host. you may not know him as a heart surgeon as he cures one woman with an illness. my cut hurt! mine hurt more! mine stopped hurting faster... [ female announcer ] neosporin® plus pain relief starts relieving pain faster and kills more types of infectious bacteria. neosporin® plus pain relief. for a two dollar coupon, visit neosporin.com.

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for a full year, abc news cameras were given unprecedented access inside some of the country's best hospitals. the real life stories a part of the new eight-part series called "new york med." documenting the miracle of heartbreak of high-stakes world of cutting-edge medicine. now, from the series, we brink you the story of one doctor no stranger to the spotlight, the famous talk show host, dr. oz,

also a world renown cardiac surgeon. >> reporter: you probably know mehmet oz as the hugely popular tv doctor and host of his own show. >> -- the wear and tear on your most vital organs. >> reporter: but this global celebrity has another job, his true passion. he is still one of the leading heart surgeons in the world. >> got a patient. it's great pleasure. >> reporter: dr. oz still sees patients. still operates almost every week. >> a lot of folks dreenlt liez that i still practice medicine. >> reporter: it's amazing he still has time for it. >> you have the heart of a mazer ratty. >> reporter: born in cleveland to turkish parents, oz felt a natural attraction to medicine. >> there's very few things in life i could have done successfully. heart surgery is probably one of the few. no matter what, to be a rational optimist, when everything's falling apart and there's no conceivable way you could

rationalize that the patient could survive, you have to be a cheerleader. >> reporter: paternal approval played a role. >> my father came from a very poor family in the koran belt of turkey. pulled himself out and became a surgeon. deep down inside of me there's that craving to show him that i'm worthy, that i'm a man. >> reporter: diana sepulveda is one of the thousandsch people he helped. up until a year ago, her daily commute could have killed her. she could not climb thosz subway stairs without getting badly wind. >> i was born with a heart disease. >> reporter: and the nearly two packs of cigarettes a day sure didn't help. >> i spoke smoked for 38 years. >> reporter: you smoked for 38 years? >> 38 years. >> reporter: how much? >> almost two packs. >> reporter: even though you knew you had a heart murmur? >> yes. >> reporter: at 53, her failing health was ruining her life more

and more every day. increasingly presence dit, diana found her way to the new york halls of columbus campus and dr. oz. >> i really didn't want anyone else. >> there is no good way. >> now, will i have to have this surgery done right away. >> you're going to have to pull the trigger on this. i would recommend within a month. >> reporter: the diagnosis, aortic sten noshgsz the main artery carrying blood out of her heart wasn't working properly. >> see, i'm scared. but i'll do what i have to do. >> reporter: and the smoking had to stop. she quit five days before meeting dr. oz. >> you know, i have never operated on a smoker. it is so disheartening to me to have someone actively hurting themselves when i'm trying to hurt them. >> reporter: doctor and patient have bonded. that's his style. >> thank you. thank you so much. >> reporter: as diana found out, this is not just a tv doctor.

he is a true superstar. >> i actually feel very welcome with him. when he gave us a hug, i'm like, wow, this is great. i love this, you know, i mean. no doctor does that, i mean, come on. >> reporter: so with her family sitting anxiously in the waiting room, diana goes under the knife. and dr. oz discovers something unexpected. >> i cut the avalve -- >> reporter: dr. oz had discovered that diana's aortic valve was deformed at birth. by the time she came to see him she could have dropped dead at any moment. they actually stopped your heart during this operation? >> during his operation. it's amazing. >> magic for me. it's hard to match any other facet of life. i think that's why medicine is so addictive. that's why it's usually dark when i leave the building. rrp the surgery was successful. and a year and a half later,

diana is today leading an active, bleddedly healthy life. >> god has me here for a reason. i'm not ready yet -- or he's not ready for me yet. >> reporter: a life-changing experience that changed her. and you carry the reminder with the scar? >> yes, absolutely. >> reporter: when you look at it, what does it mean to you? >> i got a second chance at life. dr. oz is my man. dr. oz. >> you can see more of dr. oz and the other top surgeons and staffers who take us into the world of cutting-edge medicine on "new york med" a great looking series. tomorrow night, 10:00 here on abc. just gaahead, it's the fina installment of the smash hit batman trilogy. we take you behind the scenes of the "the dark knight rises." has helped fund economic and environmental recovery. long-term, bp's made a five hundred million dollar commitment to support scientists studying the environment.

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okay. do you like batman? do you love a good old-fashioned summer blockbuster? well, here comes the third and final installment of christopher nolan's batman trilogy, soon to be taking a theater near you by storm. abc's chris connelly has the sneak peek. >> reporter: behold the beginnings of the summer's most anticipated movie "the dark knight rises." an intro of sort, the batman's baleful an take any of the bean. in action, location, shot in

scottland. it's the showcase of writer/director christopher nolan that wraps up the nine-year run that reimagines the batman franchise. >> this film is eight years off the end "the dark knight." bruce wayne is in it. in a very different place. he's older. >> how much is this giant the fact that he's in the 40s now? >> a little gray hair around the temples of bruce wayne felt very appropriate. >> reporter: now 41, raised in both london and chicago, nolan has followed in the footsteps of his idols ridley scott and steven spielberg with the multilevel saga of the caped crusader's adventure. with 2008's mega hit "the dark knight." going back to 2005 "batman

begins." >> our jumping off point was to not make an excessively dark version. >> one of the big things we spoke about, we said, you know, he seemed like an interested in a sort of messed up character. how come the villains always seem to overshadow him, can we make him competitive with them? >> reporter: in a comic-crazed era dominated by the films from "the aventioners" nolan has gone the other way, using a superhero to make entertaining with gravitas. >> we will shoot a film that looks like the pages of a comic book. i want to make a real film, a film that has tried as best it as to present an exciting realistic world. >> reporter: in "the dark knight

rises." that again gotham is transformed plucked from the image's nightmare. how much in tune are you with what's going on in the world? >> we try to be sincere about writing situations that would frighten us, would concern us. something that could really threaten the world. >> you complete me. >> reporter: the thread in" the dark knight" heath ledger as the joker, the an arc consist with deep feign of post 9/11 dread. >> i will kill you. >> strange. >> reporter: ledger would die while the film was in post production. posthumously, he would win the academy award for best supporting actor. there was no doubt that "dark knight rises" needed new challenges for batman.

anne hathaway. and tom hardy as the brutish face-masked wayne. >> mr. wayne -- >> you could trade blows with him in a way that would actually genuinely have this fear for batman. so we didn't want to do any kind of. diversion of the joker. >> reporter: even before he announced himself in hollywood with the back woods plotted memento, nolan had franchise-size visions. >> i hl always wanted to do what i considered to be kind of the pinnacle that hollywood does which is the big blockbuster which is interesting or thoughtful perhaps. but it just gives you an escape to entertainment. >> reporter: batman says, no, that he and christian bale will be stepping away from the character after this film.

i've got one jillian dollars here. any actor you want. >> it's not enough. it's not enough. no we're done. >> he's a really great story teller, and so if he says that's it, that's it. >> reporter: when you shot the last scene for this, what were those emotions like? >> i was saying good-bye to michael caine in the bat cave. it was very specific like, okay, we're never coming back here again. it was very sad. >> reporter: when the inevitable batman reboot comes, nolan will be prepared to watch, a new reincarnation of a character whose relentless drive he shares. >> i like batman because we can all be batman. the sense of position being pushed as far as he possibly can and keeps pushing farther and farther. >> reporter: i'm chris connelly for "nightline" in los angeles. >> "the dark knight rises" is in theaters july