Here's one I have never seen before:

I was on a US flight PHL-LAX yesterday. While preparing the cabin, the lady 2 rows ahead of me, 1A, was asked nicely to place her hand bag in the overhead or under the seat behind the rail. She refused, telling the Flight Attendant she wanted to keep the bag by her feet. The F/A politely explained that this would be in violation of FAA regulations. The lady still refused, after being asked nicely about 5 more times. She told the F/A she was keeping the bag at her feet. At this point the purser got involved. As we hadn't pushed off the gate yet, the jetway was moved back, and a supervisory agent and a security person boarded and spoke with the woman. She accused the F/A of being rude and of discrimination (the passenger was Chinese, the F/A African American). She ranted and raved a bit, and refused to get up--at this point the decision was made to have her get off the flight.

Another few minutes pass and a policeman comes. She now agrees to stow her bag. Too late. She was taken off the flight and now likely faces federal charges!!

I can't believe that this one person with a chip on her shoulder caused an entire flight to be delayed about 35 minutes! And as rude as the passenger got the flight attendant remained polite but firm--no yelling at all!
I even offered to back up the F/A's story to corporate.

Here's the kicker--before the incident, they announced they were short 1 first class meal. A passenger volunteered to have a coach meal and they offered some kind of voucher in LAX.
After this rude woman was taken off, we looked around the first class cabin, and a couple of us said out loud "Well the meal problem is solved".

Has anyone had a similar experience? My hat is off to the US crew--not only were they calm and handled the situation well, we arrived in LAX on time!!



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Regards,

Art from ISP

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

What a great way to solve the FC meal problems. Just throw the jerks off the flights until you have the right numbers of Cold Chicken Plates. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

I wish I could have seen that lady's face when the policeman came to get here...

Roundtrip tickets to Los Angeles .. $300
Upgrade to first class .. 6 NAU Upgrades
Watching a b~tch get what's coming to her .. priceless

On the other hand, I just watched an FA on a PIT to LGA full flight tell a man (not very nicely) not to close an overhead compartment that was a little full. He said something like, "hold on" as he was trying to close the door. It closed. But the FA freaked and told him it could pop open and endanger everyone. She told him to remove it. He started to complain. She freaked and told him to collect his bags and leave the plane. She called for the pilot. He then began collecting this things and she told him, in a loud voice, to leave. He told her that he was collecting his personal belongings. He left the packed plane with all of his bags.
Now, mind you, there were no FAs monitoring the packing of the overhead bins in coach and the flight was full. Many people had just done the exact same thing. He just happened to be in the front and she could see him.
He did eventually return to his seat.
I always give FAs the benefit of the doubt, but this one was out of control and on a power trip. Not only did she effectively delay takeoff, she also humiliated this guy who I am fairly sure was a US status flyer. He wasn't doing anything most people do all of the time. The pax around me agreed that she was way out of line.

Although I sympathize with most FA's plight that there has to be better protection against air rages as evidenced by recent events, it concerns me that the few "bad apples" will abuse this protection and misuse it as a power trip. Somewhere there has to be a happy medium point. Has it come to the point that we can no longer question a FA for fear of being labeled a "prospective irate passenger"?

Had an experience about 3 yrs ago...Flying from San Diego - Chicago we were diverted due to weather. Landed in St. Louis and sat on the tarmac ( about 100 yds from an AA gate)for about 3 hours. Sitting in FC one gentleman ( loosely defined) starting talking, then demanding to get off the airplane. There were group dynamics at work as others in FC were actually urging him on with comments like "yes, they can't do that to us". FA spoke to him first several times, the the Pilot came back, spoke to him. Didn't help that the FA literally disappeared except to talk to him. The pilot had to come back and warned him to be quiet. No luck...15 minutes later the front door opens, several gentlemen come on board..right to the man in 3C...say they are Federal marshalls, then escort him off. In a ironic moment, as soon as they close the door, we get clearance, start the engines and are off in 15 minutes.

It continues....we arrive in ORD, they tell everyone to stay in their seats. Door opens, gentlemen come aboard go to the woman in 2A and escort her off. Talking to the FA upon leaving during the time on the ground she had called someone (not sure if AA) and told them she was being held hostage on the flight.

Never saw anything about it in the news. I think they have very little patience with this nowadays.

While it's hard to know who started it, what it clearly underscores is how "wrapped tight" the whole air transport system is. The bag lady gets tossed, and the famous pig rides on the floorin the front row. A few weeks ago, I'm in row 1, with no underseat storage, and the F/A dumps my stuff out of the overhead because he apparently has some of his own things in there that are fragile. Never a word...just moves it back about 3 rows, so I will have to go upstream against traffic to get it after we land. Everybody has a story. There are a lot of jerks disguised as passengers out there, and a few cabin staff with unique ideas about their job descriptions. It's all getting too bizarre for me. Some days it's more like going through the looking glass than flying.

The fact that one does not read about the incident in the newspaper could (I think more probably) imply that the law enforcement agency and the airline quietly dropped all charges against the pax. If such a thing goes to court, it tends to be a media circus.

We had an incident on a MIA BOS AA flight where a pax and a FA got in an argument, pax was actually arrested, and large prominent article in Boston Globe with pictures from East Boston district court.

In the two above referenced anecdotes, we (at least I) am still unclear if the passengers were simply extracated from the airplane by the law enforcement, or di the officers actually affect an arrest, read pax the rights, hand cuff, etc?

There is a big difference between affecting an arrest and simply escortting a pax off the plane voluntarily. Again the latter can easily be kept hush hush as to not get too much attention drawn to it.

In the case of the anecdote of being stuck on the ground, I think an astute criminal defense attorney could use that to his/her clients defense in some way. I'm not saying what they did was justifiable, I'm just saying that the apparent "confinement" would be brought up at trial. Look at the verdict in the EWR case, I'm just saying, what you think will happen per common sense doesn't always play out that way at trial.

The airlines probably consider this to be bad publicity, e.g. in cases in the press where a nonviolent pax is asked to leave a plane. E.g. see Kick Off Delta, in the DL forum. These two cases really don't fit that exact type of description. All I'm saying is that big business likes to keep things quiet. A couple of case/point. Many organizations do not report either to law enforcement or in the press that computer systems have been jeopardized. They fail to report this because they don't want to appear to have sloppy or inadequate secuirty in place. Further, I've read that sometimes when bank tellers rob money from banks, they are quietly fired, but no charges are brought....again in the corporate interest of saving face.

It should be easy enough to run a news search on the two pax flight numbers above, and I think at least the wire services would have covered it if these folks were actually charged with crimes. But I'd almost bet they were both taken to the police station, essentially "yelled at", some report was written, and maybe they were held for a few hours, and then released. I agree though that such a thing would be priceless to observe in real life.

As for what's covered and what isn't...just go to www.ntsb.gov (http://www.ntsb.gov) and look at any given month of aviation incidents and accidents. You'll see just how selective, or just out of the loop, that the media is when it comes to deciding whether or not to cover something.