Galley Gossip: Flight attendant fights with a passenger, escapes down the emergency slide and then drives home

by Heather Poole on

When dealing with unruly passengers, flight attendants are taught a few different techniques to diffuse a situation, one of which is to separate yourself from the passenger and let another coworker step in and try to handle it. A new face is new energy. This alone can calm passengers down. While most flight attendants will simply escape to the galley, one flight attendant actually opened an emergency door, popped the slide, grabbed two beers, and slid down the chute. Once on the tarmac he ran into the terminal and eventually made his way to his car. He drove home to his residence in Queens where I imagine he left his crew bags beside the front door, loosened his tie, and popped open one of the beers and chugged it down. (Burp!) All this after a JetBlue passenger refused to apologize after accidentally striking him with luggage.

I have to admit that if a passenger had hit me with luggage I would have liked an apology, too. Though I don’t think I would have demanded one. That said, if that same passenger had told me to F-Off! I, too, might have been tempted to pick up the PA and direct the same obscenity to the dude with the potty mouth over the intercom system for all to hear. But never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought to pop a slide and make a run for it. Probably because I’d have no idea which way to go! Flight attendants don’t spend a lot of time walking around on the tarmac.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “Authorities picked the flight attendant up at his home Monday afternoon and brought him to the Port Authority Police station at JFK airport for questioning. The official said that Slater (the flight attendant) was calm when arrested and remained calm throughout his interrogation and the booking process. He was charged with reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. He was awaiting arraignment Monday night.”

This is the kind of thing a flight attendant can only do once in their career. That’s because they would no longer have a job to go back to. Certainly this JetBlue flight attendant knew that before making his dramatic escape. Which got me thinking, is there a better way to go?

When I mentioned this to Shannon, an ex flight attendant friend, she said she wishes she had thought of it first. “Seriously, why didn’t I do that on my last flight! Blow the slide, throw out my bags, a few bottles of wine from first class, leave my badge behind and walk across the tarmac waving goodbye on my way to the parking shuttle. Oh well.”

After a long pause, Shannon added, “It would be extra classy and fun to pop open some champagne and drink it straight from the bottle as you wave to the plane.”

That’s a flight attendant fantasy if I ever heard one. My friend Jane agreed. She’s not a flight attendant but she now wishes her job had an emergency chute at work.

As much as we’d all might like to go out in a blaze of glory, the reality is this flight attendant cost the airline a lot of money. Not just because it costs $25,000 to repack a slide, but because now the airplane has to be taken out of service and who knows how many flights will now have to be canceled. After drinking those two beers, I wonder if the flight attendant will realize he will now go down in aviation history as the guy who abandoned ship because he got hit in the head with a handbag? Now it’s buh-bye job, buh-bye 401K, hello criminal record. Where the heck does one go from there?

Photo courtesy of WexDub

Delta set to expand at JFK, tear down Pan Am terminal

by Grant Martin on

The battle for New York’s John F. Kennedy airport continued in earnest this week, as Delta Airlines announced plans to remodel and expand it’s currently leased footprint.

With current operations now taking place in both terminal 4 and the former Pan Am Worldport (aka, terminal 3), the airline plans to expand all of their operations to terminal 3 with a full remodel, all set to be complete by 2013. The somewhat legendary yet sorely outdated Worldport will be demolished and used for taxiway and aircraft positioning.

Delta’s remodel at T4 will play a key role in expanding their presence at JFK, both in integration of passengers, gates and operations and in increased capacity for a stronger flight network out of the largest city in the nation. For New Yorkers, the good news is that you’ll have better access to Delta’s cities around the globe. In turn, competition from other carriers may also mean lower prices across the board.

For everyone else, more flights from the delay-prone New York corridor means that we may experience more trickle-down delays from the east coast.

Expect operations at terminal 3 to wind down as the year comes to a close. Fans of the nostalgic Worldport best book your tickets and bring your cameras while there’s still time.

New York airport police turning theft complaints into lost property complaints

by Scott Carmichael on

Something fishy is taking place at New York area airports. According to the New York Post, New York Port Authority cops regularly downgrade theft at the airport to “lost property” cases, artificially lowering the crime rates at the airports they protect.

By changing the statistics, crimes are no longer being accurately reported. According to the Post, Port Authority police captains regularly tell officers to rewrite reports. When filing reports, victims would report the events, and upon receiving the final report, things like grand-larceny turned in a basic lost property report.

Of course, with actual theft being reported as lost property, crime statistics are skewed and there will be no follow-up actions at the airport, allowing crooks to continue stealing from passengers without the true scale of their crimes becoming apparent.

When asked about the story, a Port Authority spokesman denies all the claims, saying “Every criminal complaint made to the PAPD receives a careful investigation.” Bottom line is simple – keep a close eye on all your belongings, and if something is stolen, be sure to verify that the police report stays accurate.

[Image: Flickr/Pheezy]

Airline law ends long Tarmac delays, fine threat improves performance

by Tom Johansmeyer on

The world didn’t end. No logistical disasters emerged. In fact, everything got a hell of a lot better.

Several months ago, the prospect of a maximum three-hour tarmac delay had the airline industry proclaiming the arrival of the four horsemen. They claimed that it would severely disrupt the industry to have to give passengers the option of getting off the plane would lead to chaos. People would be furious by a lone passenger wanting to bring the plane back to the gate, and crews would be forced to operate within the constraints of customer demands (you know … like other businesses).

Well, the airline industry doesn’t appear to be any worse off than it was. In fact, it looks like the new three-hour rule is having a positive effect. Three-hour tarmac delays have effectively disappeared, and on-time arrivals have improved overall. Everything seems to be running better than it was before the airlines faced fines of up to $27,500 per passenger.

How big a different did it make?Well, only four planes sat on the tarmac for more than three hours in April. In March, 25 hit that mark, and April 2009 had an astounding 81 planes on the tarmac for that long.

So, you’re probably wondering if the airlines stacked the deck, canceling flights to protect their stats and mitigate the risk of having to yank planes back to the gate or shell out big bucks fines. Year over year, the DOT reports that cancelations fell approximately 50 percent, with only 3,637 of 529,330 flights getting chopped.

Overall, on-time performance for the 18 airlines that report to the U.S. Department of Transportation climbed to 85.3 percent in April – up from 79.1 percent in April 2009 (and better than March’s 80 percent. Most of the late arrivals were caused by aviation system delays (e.g., bad weather or heavy traffic).

Efficient use of New York airspace and generally calm weather contributed to the improvement. LaGuardia‘s on-time rate surged to 87.4 percent from 67.4 percent. JFK showed a similar improvement – from 67.3 percent to 83.5 percent.

U.S. Airways led the pack in on-time performance among major airlines and followed Hawaiian and Alaska Airlines in the total market. American Airlines was the bottom of the barrel for the large carriers, with its sister carrier, American Eagle, sucking most among all airlines.

Let’s do the math on this. Holding airlines accountable and offering up the threat of hefty fines for mistreating passengers didn’t jeopardize their ability to operate. If anything, it led to improved results. For once, it seems, the government got it right. If that sounds weird, think of an airline that takes off and lands on time. Weird, right?

Forgot your passport? Here’s a way out!

by Tom Johansmeyer on

En route to the Dominican Republic last week, I did something I’ve never done before: I forgot my passport. I was already out of Manhattan, deep into Queens, and turning back simply wasn’t an option. I panicked.

There was no reason for me to forget my passport, something I haven’t done in a dozen years of travel as a professional. As I do for every trip, I put my wallet, keys and passport on top of my laptop the night before … so I wouldn’t forget them. I noticed the pile of stuff not to forget the next morning and immediately recognized it as such.

Nonetheless, seated in the backseat of the town car, I realize I’d done what should have been impossible given my insane system. The driver turned his head shortly after I yelled, “Crap!” as one would expect him to do. I repeated the expletive a few times before telling him why. I must not be the first person to have made this mistake in his car, because the driver, from Tel Aviv Limo quickly came up with the perfect solution.He instructed me to call for a new car and explain the situation. They would send a vehicle to my apartment, where my friend would meet them with my passport. Then, the driver would head out to JFK airport, where I’d be waiting in the departure area with the fare for the trip and an incredibly generous tip (I wound up paying close to 100 percent for this service).

Even before I could raise the suggestion, the driver shot down the notion of turning around and going back to my apartment. It would take too much time, he noted, as we’d have to go out and back. With his proposal, a car already in Manhattan could just shoot straight out to JFK. As if I needed another reason, I saw the Queens traffic heading into the city and knew that turning around would mean fighting rush hour. If I made my flight, I’d do it as a bundle of nerves.

Less than an hour from the moment I hurled obscenities at myself, my bag and my passport, I had my documents in hand and was ready to check in. The driver was in touch with me before reaching my apartment (to make sure someone would be there), when he left (to let me know he was en route) and at the departures area (to tell me he had arrived).

The situation unfolded perfectly, but it isn’t universally applicable. I wouldn’t try this with a taxi, for example. I wouldn’t even have someone hail a cab and drop my stuff in the backseat to be delivered to me. The taxi option is just too fluid. To make it work, it helps to have just taken a town car to the airport, though I suspect you could have a car service deliver your passport even if you drove, took public transportation or hailed a cab.

Stupidity may be problematic, but it doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker. If you forget something important for your trip – so important that you’re willing to shell out some serious cash to fix the situation – you now have a solution at your fingertips. Of course the smarter move is to get it right the first time …