I have a question about the air pengers bill of rights.?

I hear so many people are now actively fighting against airlines leaving pengers stranded on planes for an extended amounts of time. Back in 2003, I was flying back from a Dominican Republic vacation on an American Airlines flight to Newark NJ. Just as we were decending, the pilot said that there was a "slight" disturbance with electricity. Long story short, that was the NYC 2003 Blackout. We managed to land the plane but were held stranded on the tarmac for over 7 hours. They would not even open the door for fresh air. We were told loads of stories such as the reason why they "couldnt" open the door was because we were an international flight and that there we no customs agents available because they were so busy with thousands of people on line inside the airport. Long story short, after the 7 hours, they let us off and we found the airport EMPTY with the agents standing around talking and laughing amongst themselves. Of course we were angry but tired and still had a 2 hour drive home. My question is now with all the attention to pengers rights, do I have any grounds for pursuing any kind of compensation from the airline?