Originally Posted by
oktane
Today, myself and some work colleagues were catching an internal connecting flight after flying in from lhr on a BA codeshare (s7) from DME to LED in Russia. We were all in the front of the economy section and the 6 biz seats were clearly visible. We were about 20m from the runway and the pilot had just started to open the throttles when a male passenger in his mid thirties in the biz class stood up and walked up to the galley much to the horror of the 2 staff. He turned and faced the passengers and frankly looked completely blottoed. My fellow passengers did not understand my running commentary as 'this aint looks good' does not translate well into Russian.
The man was confronted by the head purser and asked to sit down, in a fit of panic he threw himself at the door and attempted to open the exit. The pursurer jumped on the passenger with what in hindsight sounded like an 18yr old girls screetch at a one direction concert. At this point in time 2 other passengers ran up and jumped on the 2 as they scuffled on the floor of the galley. By this time the pilots had realised something was going on and once the unruly and possibly drunk passenger was under control the plane was back to a gate. We then waited about 30 mins for the local constabulary to arrive, during which timethe passenger started sobbing, before being summarily escorted away and about 50 pages of noted taken. It took a further 30 minutes for the flight staff to complete required documentation before we then continued on our journey. Whilst a little frightening, I'm assuming this is not the first or last time this has occurred. What's everyone's expectations in these circumstances? Should we have jumped to assist?
Certainly not the first and not the last time,wheter in Russia or not,although I never experience anything simmilar on any of my flights and I am a regular on this route,so I hope you don't get the impression that it is something normal.
As to whether should you have assited? It's hard to say,really hard. We can talk theoretically here for ages,but one migh have a different opinion/reaction on the day. Being in the aisle seat in the first row of economy (or close to the front) I would probably intervene,but this is theory,who knows how I would feel on the day? So again, it's really hard to say.
I understand it was yesterday's S7/Globus flight 43? Landed 56 minutes late,which is somewhat impressive since they had to taxi again to/from the runway,do all the paperwork,including "weight and balance",manifests,as well as police paperwork and a mandatory security check after the pax has been offloaded. I don't want to appear as an S7 appologist but I must say that they really try hard and mostly are sucessful in keeping operations efficient and on-time,so I am impressed they managed to "turnaround" in under an hour.