Passenger lights cigarette, punches flight attendant and diverts flight to Denver

by Grant Martin on

We may have a new contender for worst passenger on an aircraft ever, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry Kyla and girls who think they’re prettier than the rest of the plane, you may have met your match.

On a Jetblue flight between San Francisco and New York this past Tuesday, Christina Szele just couldn’t wait any any longer for a smoke and decided to light up in the cabin. Obviously this has been outlawed on planes for years, so a flight attendant went back to ask her to put it out.

In response to the request, Szele instead verbally abused the flight attendant with racist remarks, provoking futher concern from the crew. After further agitation, several employees decided to restrain her and were able to secure her well enough to apply flexible handcuffs.

Untill she broke out of them. And punched the flight attendant that she was earlier harrasing in the face. Great idea.

Things got so far out of hand that the pilot had to divert the flight into Denver and have the woman removed from the aircraft and arrested. Now she faces 20 years in prison and up to 250,000 in fines.

I think that they should have just thrown her out of the plane with a parachute.

More women behaving badly at 35,000 feet:

Galley Gossip: Airline for sale!

by Heather Poole on

This is it, people, your chance to buy an airline, because Volare Airlines, an Italian low-cost carrier, is now up for sale – again!

What’s that? Not enough money you say? Why don’t we all pool our money together and buy…oh I don’t know…maybe just one of the airplanes. We can each buy a seat. And since we’d only own one airplane, we can call our small little airline MY PLANE. That means when someone asks, “what airline did you travel on,” you can then say, “My Plane,” and mean it, because it is your plane, as well as my plane.

We’ll take votes and fly the most popular route once a day. But the real beauty of owning My Plane is this…I would…I mean WE would get to design it from the bottom up. Just the way we want. And because we’d only want the best for My Plane, which is also your plane, I’d like to make a few suggestions..

After reading all 754 comments from my post Flight Attendant Pet Peeve #1, Answer Please! it’s apparent we should only hire flight attendants from one of the Asian carriers. Why? Passengers, at least the ones who commented on my post, seem to love them. Hey, what’s not to love about an airline that hires flight attendants who are all the same uniform size – small. That makes complete sense – one size uniform for the one and only airplane. Forget equal opportunity, we make the rules at this airline! And while we’re at it making those rules, how about we only allow one size of passenger onboard – small of course, which will help save fuel. As you know, saving on fuel is the name of the game these days. Which is why that small passenger can only bring onboard one small bag and place it under the small seat. The small flight attendant will then serve a small meal to the small passenger with the small bag under the small seat and…wait a minute…we’re not talking about us, are we? I think we are. We’re the ones traveling on My Plane, remember? So scratch that. But we can still steal a few of those Singapore Airline girls, but make them funny, like the good people at Southwest Airlines.

Of course we’d have to include Virgin’s beauty therapy services on My Plane. Trust me when I tell you that I’ll be the first one in line for a manicure and massage. Yes, I know, I am working the flight, but don’t forget, when the flight attendant is happy, the passenger is happy. Or is it the other way around? I can’t remember. I’m too numb from my massage to remember. But all you need to remember is that you’re getting all this for Jet Blue prices. Could it get any better?

As for the flight attendant uniforms, personally I’d like to go with the Air France uniform. Have you seen it? Hello – can you say LOVE IT! As in Love it – Love it! As in there aren’t enough “love’s” in a sentence to possibly describe how I feel. That’s how much I love it. Seriously, if the airline I currently work for now had to merge with another airline, can we please please please merge with Air France! Please. Not that I want to merge. No flight attendant wants to merge. Not when seniority is involved. Because seniority, at an airline, is everything. More than everything. But if I HAD to merge, well that uniform might be kind of nice to merge into. Since it’s My Plane, and my uniform, it’s all about me, on My Plane. Oh and you, too. I guess.

What kind of food would we serve? That’s easy. Cathay Pacific, I hear, has the best food in the industry. At least that’s what The Husband once wrote via email from a Cathay flight. Let me tell you that email was long, and dedicated strictly to food. Apparently the food on Cathay is THAT good, as in two pages of email good. And who doesn’t want good food on a flight? I know I do. Which is why I always bring my own from home. When I can remember to bring my own from home. Which isn’t often. Since I don’t cook, that much, from home. Not since the husband made me promise never to cook again. Anyway, you know it’s all about the food on a flight, right? I mean isn’t that what you look for in an airline when you’re booking a trip? Of course it is. Otherwise you wouldn’t be complaining so much about the bad food. Or lack of food.

We should really go with Virgin Atlantic’s cabin interior. Neon florescent red and blue lights glowing throughout the cabin are definitely a must. Especially on a red eye flight. They scream HAPPY! Why, because you’re happy, happy to be on My Plane! Which also includes Virgin’s in-flight seat to seat chat. I wonder if that chat extends between passengers and flight attendants? If so, that means you can leave home without your stealth secret sound amplifier, the one you bought from Skymall, the same one I mentioned in my last post, the top five skymall gifts for the frequent flier (that’s you!) and just text me your drink order. Wouldn’t that be nice? And perhaps we could chat a little. Really get to know each other. Oh wait, you see someone cute oboard? Me, too! Just send that person a little text and don’t forget to add your seat number – in case that person happens to be wearing a very sophisticated blue uniform and wants to slide you a drink on the house for umm…ya know…for being so nice and all.

So whadaya say…should we go for it?

Save $20 on your next Jetblue flight

by Grant Martin on

Summer fares can be a killer, especially in this new world of cost-cutting airlines and ultra sensitive passengers. So I suppose its worth mentioning the recent Amex/Jetblue promotion that’s running where you can save 20$ per flight over this summer.

No, not a ridiculous fare sale or wonderful revelation. But a few extra bucks in your pocket for your summertime flight never hurts. Maybe you can use it for four extra shots of tequila at JFK airport before you get on your transcontinental flight and realize that you just spent a month’s rent on the ticket. It might help soften the blow (Tip: any tequila with red plastic hat on the bottle is a good call).

To book your ticket, use your American Express card on the Myvacation page to book your ticket. Itineraries must be booked before July 31 for travel up to August 28th.

JetBlue toilet seat scandal: Gadling readers react

by Jeffrey White on

Gokhan Mutlu made headlines earlier this week after a JetBlue captain forced him to sit in the toilet for three hours on a flight from California to New York when his seat was taken by an off-duty flight attendant. Mutlu is suing JetBlue for $2 million over the incident.

On Thursday I asked who out there thought that Mutlu seeking $2 million is a little bit excessive. Some Gadling readers responded that it indeed is.

Shane said Mutlu is getting his 15 minutes of fame (which is probably over by now):

I tend to agree with you about American’s being litigation crazy and you ask a great question! But a hard one to answer – he’s certainly getting his 15 minutes of fame at the expense of JetBlue (rightly so) but $2 million is a lot of money and I agree that it’s a bit excessive. If I was the competition I just might step up and make one of the offers that you suggested just to make JetBlue look like heels for not doing it first!

Debbie, of the curiously named blog Delicious Baby, considered the fine line of what Mutlu could have sued for, and also chimed in with her own mistreatment:

Two million seems steep for 6 hours of suffering (I’d be willing to sit on that toilet from California to New York for a mere 1 million.

It would be interesting to know how his lawyers came up with this number. 10k would have barely made Jet Blue take notice of the issue, perhaps the 2 million dollar number is more about drawing attention to the way that passengers are sometimes treated on airplanes & making sure that JetBlue sets some limits on employee behavior.

I fly a lot (and often with two small children). Flight attendants often ask me to do things that I know aren’t right. I’ve had them make snarky comments about me nursing on a plane, tell me I can’t get up to stretch in my seat area during meal service (with the seatbelt light off), refuse to give me more than a few ounces of bottled water to mix formula with (a sympathetic flight attendant sneaked me some later with the warning “don’t tell anyone”.)

On one particularly unhappy British Airways flight, I even had a gate agent decide that she needed to personally inspect my carryon to make sure it had “only essential items that would pass through security” and insist that I could only bring a couple of diapers for my trip from Paris to Seattle!

BrianM got a little biblical with his reaction:

Hopefully the judge is one to think about and offer alternative solutions. Personally, I like the “eye for an eye” approach on these kinds of things. Ground the pilot without pay for a month or two and refund the ticket price. Costs Jet Blue net to nothing and punishes the PERSON (not company) who generated the situation. I sure wouldn’t mind seeing the flight attendant get in on some of that “no pay” action too, since she is the root cause of the whole issue.

The $2mil is just to make the company take notice. Chances are VERY good for a settlement, and I bet if anyone remembers this story after the next day or two, that’s what will be seen.

Some readers, like Sam, are taking the side of Mutlu, saying you need a big number like $2 million to get a corporation’s attention.

Personally I think that 2 million is just an arbitrarily high sum to ensure that he does get everything that is coming to him.

I am not a proponent of litigious activity but in this case I think it is fully justified. Not only was it a matter of discomfort and inconvenience but reckless endangerment.

The comfort of an employee WHO HAD A SEAT should not come before a customer (paying or not) having to sit in any place without a seatbelt.

It was certainly not within standard procedure to make the man sit in the bathroom so I would have thought that making him sit in the jumpseat (which isn’t standard procedure) would have been the preferred measure, as at least it has a seatbelt.

Reader WhatNext put it succinctly:

They disrespected him, humiliated him and endangered him. Now if this was your child…could any amount, leave alone $2M be enough? Why is disrespecting, humiliating and endangering worth different for different classes of people?

And what of the pilot who forced Mutlu to sit in the toilet? That’s what Rob wants to know:

The pilot should have not been able to take off because the person in the toilet did not have his seat belt on. It is the Pilot’s responsibility. Has the FAA contacted Jet Blue for the safety violations??

Keep chiming in on this issue.

In closing, one of the issues behind this whole story was that Mutlu was flying on a ‘buddy ticket’. Just what is a buddy ticket? Travel blogger Christopher Elliott makes that the subject of his latest post, in which he makes the case that a buddy ticket is a far cry from a perk.

JetBlue, citing fuel costs, nixes new LAX route

by Jeffrey White on

More than three months after announcing a new route between JFK and Los Angeles International Airport that was to begin later this month, JetBlue announced yesterday that it was suspending the route, a move driven largely by the rising cost of jet fuel.

The route was to add a second Los Angeles airport to JetBlue’s system. Instead, the airline will continue serving Long Beach Airport, to which passengers who had bought tickets to LAX are now be re-ticketed.

A spokesman for the low cost carrier told the Associated Press that while flying to Long Beach instead of LAX isn’t likely to save the company much money on fuel, starting a route to LAX had a whole host of new costs associated with it — leasing gate and check-in space, maintenance facilities — that were not prudent to undertake at a time when the entire industry is watching its bottom lines.

New routes are seldom profitable for airlines at first. The spokesman said that in order to make LAX payoff, JetBlue would have been forced to raise ticket prices beyond what customers were likely to want to pay.

The cost in fuel to operate the JFK – Long Beach route has increased to $15,000 per flight from $9,600 since 2007, JetBlue told the AP.

No word yet when the company might move forward with serving LAX.