Airplane brakes are insanely more powerful than passenger cars’. More like race car brakes. We can go from 25 mph to zero in about 10 feet. I’ve done it when some ramp rat in a pickup truck darted in front of us. Anyone standing at that moment would have stopped rolling when they hit something solid 20 feet farther forward. Thank goodness the FAs were all sitting down.
We try to be smooth while taxiing. Doesn’t always happen. The last 20 feet of parking are normally done pretty slowly. But that’s also a place where an abrupt early stop is pretty likely. That’s *not *the place to try to shave 10 seconds off your eventual egress to the terminal.
I think shouting at someone not to run in front of a truck is perfectly professional. The FAs can’t go to the idiot and tell them to sit down quietly, so I’m fine with it.
Even without checked luggage, the deplaning procedure is relatively slow. Taking your bag down ahead of time does not speed it up at all, since you’ll be behind window seat passengers who will not be able to get their bags out until the aisle seat passengers have moved up. Unless someone has packed critical medicine in a carryon which is needed right away, I’m at a loss to understand why anyone who has flown even once before would get up early. I’ve felt plenty of bumps myself from time to time.
A friend who flies regularly reported an interesting case last fall: A passenger (already loud and close to drunk) refused to put on his seat when asked at the pre-takeoff check – repeatedly. The FA called forward, and the next minute there was the following announcement: “Pilot speaking. The passenger in seat 17D refuses to put on his seat belt. We are required by FAA regulations to ensure every passenger is securely belted in before takeoff. If that passenger does not put on his seat belt, we will have to go back to the gate to remove him, and will lose our place in the takeoff order, and be delayed for 20-30 minutes, possibly missing some connecting flights. We have less than 2 minutes to decide which choice this plane must make. Pilot out.”
He said there was an immediate & loud reaction from other passengers on the plane, including some seated nearby who stood up and confronted the passenger, threateningly. Soon the passenger did put his belt on, and the plane took off.
Using the peer pressure from fellow passengers, often grouchy & impatient, seems an appropriate tactic.
That sounds good. Until some other self-important jerk decides to go overboard vigilante. Then we have an assault on board incited by the crew. That will not play well on CNN.
It feels delicious to read about. It’s not something I’d really try.
As a general rule, you really don’t want to mess around on a commercial flight and end up with a charge of interfering with a flight crew at the very least. That is often a life altering felony that can result in both prison time and severe financial penalties.
My ex-wife was on this flight from Dallas to Boston last year in which an older female passenger attacked a flight attendant and tried to rush the cockpit. The plane had to make an emergency landing in Nashville for several hours until she was arrested and it was proven that there wasn’t a true terror threat involved. She attacked the arresting police officers too. I have no idea whether she was drunk, mentally ill or just had incredibly bad judgement she will likely see multiple years of prison for it.
Bangor, Maine has a cottage industry going because they are the first airport of any appreciable size for many planes coming into the U.S. from Europe. Any passengers that are disruptive or noncompliant for inbound transatlantic flights get dropped off there for arrest, detainment and legal prosecution. It happens with alarming (or perhaps reassuring) regularity and it is often just because someone just lost their temper and refused to comply with any basic instructions.
You can be an asshole on the street all day and not have anything happen but, when you do the same thing in an aluminium tube 35,000 feet up, it can quickly become a felony with very serious consequences.
I was on a flight last year where my seatmate (a 50ish year old woman who I had been talking to the whole flight) refused to give up her vodka drink for landing. She was nice enough but she was obviously mentally off either from drinking several martinis on an early morning flight or just in general. The flight attendant was fair but then things started to escalate with threats about what would happen if she didn’t listen so they both doubled-down. I didn’t like the way things were going so I just grabbed it out of her hand and passed it over quickly. My seatmate liked me fine and I was able to talk her down after that but I can imagine many unfortunate situations that start just that way.
There is a huge difference in those two situations. Young children do not generally fly unaccompanied on airline flights. Most of the time, their parents are with them and are responsible if their child is doing something unsafe or just not listening to instructions. It is possible to buy chaperoned tickets for fairly young children for an additional price but they are still supervised before, after and during the airplane flight to make sure they make it all the way through.
Older teenagers can fly on their own but this is one case in which they are rarely reported to be a problem over other groups. The vast majority of disruptive passengers are full fledged adults ranging from their 20’s up to their 80’s with middle-aged people representing many of the entitled rage cases.
The pros and cons of seat belts on school busses are a different topic. I have mixed feelings about it. My main concern is that while it sounds like a good idea on the surface but that may be both naive deceptive. The number of potential lives saved is very low because school busses are already extremely safe and there is both risk and expense introduced by implementing them. The risk comes from kids using the buckles as a weapon or a bullying device. You can beat someone with a convenient metal buckle easily and quickly. It is like a courtesy weapon placed there for the benefit of bored bullies. You can also use the strap to cause all kinds of mayhem including strangling someone in their seat. The cost/benefit analysis of that proposal is not as straightforward as some might think.
I sat next to a girl who must have been a ‘chaperoned’ ticket holder. Her ticket & info was in a plastic sleeve on a loop that she was actually wearing around her neck! Was surprised at first, never having seen it before, but it makes sense for her to be easily & constantly identifiable to the crew…She looked maybe 10 or 11 and thankfully was not at all ‘chatty’!
I’ve heard people proposing this since the late 70s. It just seems patently ridiculous to me. School buses are still bastions of childish social behavior. Putting seat belts on a school bus would be like giving permanent black Sharpie markers to kindergarteners!
True. USDOT statistics show that from 2003 to 2012, 174 school-age children died in school-transportation related crashes, 55 were occupants of school transportation vehicles and 119 were pedestrians. School buses provide an estimated 10 billion student trips every year, so that’s 0.00000000055 passenger deaths / student trip. It’s not likely that seatbelts would improve that statistic. Since more than twice as many children died as pedestrians, the money required to install seatbelts would be better spent on some kind of improvement to the visibility/warning systems around the busses.
When I was in school in the 1990s I only rode the bus a few times (school trips and field days basically), but I am certain they had seatbelts. I remember because they were uncomfortable so I didn’t like to use them.
“Chaperoned” tickets aren’t optional. Each carrier has their own age limits, but it works something like this: Under age 8, must travel with an adult passenger. Age 8 to 15, must travel on a “chaperone” ticket. Age 16 and above, can travel alone.
The chaperone process is actually called “unaccompanied minor” or UM. The parent / guardian / uncle / whatever checks the kid in at the ticket counter & gets the tracking paperwork started. They also tell us the identity of who’s meeting the kid at the other end. The kid is turned over to a minder who takes the kid to the departure gate & at boarding signs custody over to the lead flight attendant. The process is reversed at each plane change. Finally the end-station minder checks ID of the person trying to pick up the kid. If it matches what’s expected, they get a signature, and turn the kid over to the adult.
Wearing the paperwork package around their neck is a big deal. We really try to reinforce that this is important. Little kids are ususaly cool with it, but the teens & tweens less so. There’s always an FA at the door during deplaning. You think of him/her as the “gu-buy” person. He/She’s also the anti-theft monitor and the escaping UM detector. Woe betide the crew who lets a UM escape unnoticed into the terminal alone.
Each carrier has their own set of restrictions on acceptable itineraries. We don’t take kids on 3-plane change marathons. No planning to sit at a hub for 6 hours, nor real tight connections. Nor on international flights where customs and immigration are involved. Although I think we can take them on those Canada-to-US trips where US legalities are all completed in Canada before boarding.
As you can imagine this can turn into a real challenge if the flight is diverted or weather creates mass disruptions at a hub. If they’re trapped out overnight at some intermediate city the kid ends up going to a hotel and depending on age & maturity sharing a room with a crewmember, having their own room, or going home to sleep over with a gate agent. Naturally the airline has to keep the adults at both ends informed & deal with their legitimate needs and wants and sometimes their overweening anxiety & anger.
All in all, UM’s are a hassle. Mostly not my department, but a peripheral hassle even for me.
