Yup, they can use them for upgrades to a window cell, gruel served on china instead of paper plates, exercise yard membership, etc.

Good one!

So that's what happens when you are caught with a hidden city ticket?

well done ^-in true f/t spirit, it only took 3 replies for someone to ask. gotta love it

I am going to move this to TravelBuzz! since this is not only a UA topic.

iluv2fly
Moderator, UA

Regardless of which airline, thanks to the TSA, I always feel like a prisoner when I fly.

I was sat in the gate area at BOS the other day trying to standby for an earlier flight down to LGA. This young guy, with two much older guys either side of him stand at the end of my bench and start talking. They are all sharply dressed and it looks like they are heading down to NYC for a meeting or something similar.

Next thing I know one of the older guys handcuffs the younger guy to the bench and carries on talking to him while they have lunch.

It was kinda hard not to stare!

Anyway, they turned out to be on the flight that I successfully got onto, taking up all of row 1 between the three of them (ERJ flight).

It was all very surreal!

Earlier this year I was flying SEA-DFW and waited by the gate as 2 uniformed MPs came up to the gate desk with 3 young men. The young guys were dressed in street clothes and actually carried their own little backpacks. No handcuffs. The 3 and 1 MP stood to the side as the other MP talked to the GA. He showed her some official looking paperwork. They were allowed to board first and were escorted by the GA. Few minutes later the GA came back and as the rest of us were getting to board one of the passengers asked the GA about this. She said that the 3 kids changed their minds and decided not to report after signing up. She said that she has seen this happen more and more lately.

I always wondered what the punishment for something like this would be. The kids did not look very happy.

i was thinking either what you said or that they were already in but had gone awol and had been caught.

The last seat in coach!
They can�t do that.
That is cruel and unusual punishment.

My late father in law was a homocide detective for LAPD and transported a number of murder suspects back to LA. There were some great stories - like the guy from an Alabama prison who was relieved to be extradited because he was looking forward to real meat in the LA area prisons (as opposed to what they could catch and kill and cook) or the time they got fogged in at LAS and had to take the suspect to LAS jail for the night until the flight out the next morning and they got to have some fun for the night.

I've been on a few flights where they are transporting someone and they typically take the back row. I recall being on an RJ and having to use the LAV and having the handcuffed pax leer at me but I knew I was safe

Never heard of officers transporting prisoners not having their guns with them but have heard of officers from Idaho not having their guns with them and being denied boarding. They took the prisoner back to jail, went home and came back later. Prisoners are usually handcuffed in front and have a some clothing covering the cuffs, but it is pretty obvious if you look close.

I've seen it a couple of times. Often the prisoner will have a shirt or some other item draped over the cuffs so it could appear is if he is just holding his hands in front of him.

I saw this many years ago on a flight from ORD-DFW. There were 4-5 "men in black" suits and probably 1/2 a dozen handcuffed men all carrying shoe boxes in front of them. I got pretty freaked out. They put them all in the last several rows of the plane. You could plainly see the suits all had guns on them. I avoided the back galley/bathrooms on that flight.

AA actually has a couple of PIL (Passenger Information List, usually posted in or near the F galley) codes for this, along with the common ones for elites and so on. HAND means a prisoner in handcuffs. ESCT is for an officer escort. Other related codes are ARMD, armed; DEPA, deportee/accompanied, and DEPU, deportee/unaccompanied.

The whole list is on the back of the forms the FAs use to record meal orders in F/J. However, many of the meal order forms used on a day-to-day basis are photocopies where they might not have bothered to reproduce both sides.