Here’s the problem, Kyomara. It was 26 people on an orange crate commuter plane, not 300. Here’s the other problem – when incidents like this have happened in the past, the same course of action was not followed.
Less than one week after the very well publicized incident this past summer with the two extraordinarily drunken America West pilots, a woman on another of the airline’s flights made a similar joking inquiry as to the sobriety of her plane’s cockpit crew. (She motioned to the cockpit upon boarding and asked the flight attendant “Are they sober up there?”)
She was yanked off of the plane, but ended up not being ticketed or charged. Her original flight left with all passengers onboard, and she ended up on another flight on another airline later that day. Shortly thereafter, America West puckered up and kissed her butt with an apology made live on the Today Show stating that it was unnecessary and overreactive for them to have yanked her off the plane.
There is NO uniform standard as to how to treat a passenger who makes an inquiry as to the ability of the pilots. It is determined on a case by case, airline by airline, airport by airport, flight crew by flight crew basis. If someone at Sea Harbor says “Hey, he’d better not be drunk!” as a joke and ends up being threatened with a felony charge, then that’s the same consequence which ought to apply to someone who says something similar at SeaTac or Lambert or JFK or Dulles. But it isn’t. There’s no consistency.
The only thing that does happen with some consistency is the way that the airlines and airports spin these events, always painting the passenger in question as “unruly” or having “caused a disruption” with their comment, which automagically makes them a security risk. Reality and common sense says that this is completely false: intoxicated flight crews are a security risk, a passenger who asks – jokingly or seriously – about the flight crews’ sobriety may cause a disruption, but they haven’t threatened security even if they do trigger a chain of (over)reactionary events which scuttle the scheduled flight plan or timing.
The frightening thing now is that simply asking a question – whether that question is a joke, a request for clarification of an issue or order, or an inquiry into flight safety – immediately puts airport and airline personnel into a very frightening, defensive mode. Trying to understand anything beyond the small bit of information that you’re given or to illicit data about anything that we the flying public are just supposed to take on faith and keep our mouths shut about when we’re human airline freight, brands a person as suspicious and potentially dangerous. From the moment we drive onto airport property we are expected to be devoid of intellectual curiosity, individuality and most horrifically, autonomy. Any deviation from that can (and far too often does) completely destroy our travel plans and lead to ticketing, criminal charges and even jail time or threats thereof all in the name of this ever-trumpeted but completely hollow security which is not now, has never been and seemingly never will be able to truly secure anyone from the acts of zealots or madmen with death wishes.
It doesn’t seem to matter to the airlines or the TSA or FAA how many people are yanked off of airplanes because of non-threatening comments or their ethnicity, how many women are manhandled or pregnant women reduced to tears. They’re in “Security World” they have their orders and that’s that. But they’re not machines, we’re not machines and therefore, that isn’t that. These incidents do not occur in a vacuum, and when dealing with applying regulations to human behaviour, a little bit of human intellect ought to be engaged. In far too many cases, like this one, that step never happens. People act, they don’t think. They parrot line and verse from procedural manuals without ever stopping to determine whether or not the act to which they are responding actually corresponds with the line and verse at all.
One day someone with a brain will realize something. No one with a plan is going to do anything – complain, ask questions, act in any way “confrontational” – which might bring any added attention to them or derail their intentions. If someone wants to go and hijack another plane and fly it into another building or a nuclear plant or whatever, they’re not going to get upset when their shoes are x-rayed or hoot out a dumb question before the flight takes off. They’re going to be head down, follow orders, go with the flow. This whole “oh, you’re disruptive, you’re a danger” thing is patently ridiculous from the standpoint of assuring security from terrorism or dangerous on-board incidents.
My sister works for a major airline. I first flew when I was three years old. I’ve been around the world. I love Europe and I want to go back to Asia and Africa and I want to get to Australia one of these days. But I won’t fly in these circumstances, and I know that I’m not alone. The atmosphere of pervading fear and lack of integrity in the entire process is just more than my nerves can take. United and USAirways are bankrupt, American, America West, Delta and Continental are all precariously positioned to say the very least. The air industry as a whole has failed to properly manage assets (a problem which started long before 9/11) and has always had to rely upon two things to make it: government financial assistance (in the form of handouts, forbearances, loans and favorable regulations) and customer goodwill. They haven’t been getting the former and they are rapidly throwing away the latter.
The question remains: how much more are we supposed to take? Some of us simply cannot not fly. So what are we supposed to do?
The sheeple response of “lay down and take it, it’s for your own good” just isn’t good enough anymore. The FAA does not take complaints seriously. The TSA hides many of its actions and procedures behind a veil of secrecy and an all-powerful firt of authority. When complaints escalate to any official level, there are serious and significant signs pointing to collusion and destruction of evidence by airports and airlines in order to turn every incident into a “he said/we said” situation with limited ability for either side to corrobate their claims, leading to stalemate and stasis.
Something has to give – more people have to get fed up. More people have to speak up. But leaving things as they are cannot be an option.
His right to ask is not and was not protected. He piped up with his comment, he says as a joke, but what if he’d bubbled up out of his seaat and exclaimed something about the drunk pilot out of shock or surprise because he saw the pilot stumble when no one else did? Do you think that he would’ve been permitted to stay on the flight? Clearly not. He was pulled from the plane and detained for questioning, they would’ve done the same if his comment had been a legit complaint. And that in and of itself is a punishment. That’s to say nothing of the inconvenience and the re-routing, rescheduling and so on which automatically follows being yanked offboard. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing was protected.
