The Hits Keep Coming

Suppose for a moment that a random customer of yours has just saved your company from a disaster that would have meant the loss of an asset worth at least $100 million, plus at least a few hundred wrongful death lawsuits, each of which can easily run into the millions of dollars all by itself. Let us further suppose that the employees to whom they initially reported the impending disaster did not believe their report, and only reluctantly verified the story while being particularly rude to those customers. And while we are at it, let’s suppose that the signs of impending doom that they discovered could have been noticed by any ordinary school child, and that enough witnesses exist that trying to cover up the details of the story would be asinine. Where would you expect to find those customers when the dust clears?

Well, unless you said “Sleeping on the floor in the Baggage Claim area because no one gave them a hotel voucher” you have, again, over-estimated the customer service and public relations skills of our old friends over at United Airlines. According to a story from the New York Post a United flight was departing from Newark for Italy when two of the passengers noticed fuel leaking from the airplane’s main tanks in the wing. Not just a dribble, either; they described it as looking like the stream from a fire hose. The flight attendants reacted to the report of this information by yelling at the passengers to get back in their seats, and only reluctantly looked out the window – whereupon they immediately called the cockpit and told the flight crew…

After aborting the takeoff and returning to the gate the flight crew were nice enough to the heroes of our story, personally thanking them for saving the plane and everyone aboard from the fiery (and idiotic) death the airline had unknowingly been courting. United’s ground personnel were less effusive, however, proceeding to attempt to cover up the incident, issuing a statement downplaying the leak, and trying to get everyone on the flight rebooked and overseas before they could start talking to the press. They managed to get meal vouchers to all of the passengers, but somehow failed to supply hotel vouchers to all of the customers they had just massively inconvenienced (and nearly killed), including the couple who had noticed the leak in the first place…

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that these two people, a couple on their honeymoon, were the only thing standing between United and total disaster. We can probably assume that the flight crew would have noticed the rapidly dropping fuel levels, either on a routine check or when the flight computer’s alarms went off, and returned to the airport. I’m also not suggesting that the airline go to any special lengths to thank them, although one would imagine that customer retention concerns alone would make that worth the effort. I’m just pointing out that I’ve gotten better care than that when a flight I was supposed to be on was canceled at the last moment, and all I have ever done for that particular airline was buy a ticket…

Okay, so this wasn’t really an atrocity. The worst thing that seems to have happened is that a group of passengers was moderately to severely inconvenienced (if the worst thing that ever happens to you while traveling is having to sleep in an airport, you’re an extremely fortunate traveler), and any of that could have happened on any ordinary day, even without mechanical failures and employees who appear to be thick as a brick. But it does make you wonder how many close calls a single company can survive, even leaving potential air disasters out of it for the moment. Sooner or later people are going to get fed up with the various United shenanigans and start voting with their feet. You might expect that the company would want to put off that day for as long as possible, or at least avoid any billion-dollar disasters in the meantime…

But unless this story turns out to be a hoax, you’d be wrong about that, too…

Present But Not Accounted For

In yet another installment in our seemingly endless saga of airlines behaving badly, a local television station here in Michigan is reporting that a passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight was mistakenly notified that he had failed to show up for his flight that morning, and all of the other flights on his itinerary were being cancelled. This would be upsetting if he had received the message hours or even days before his flight; it would be somewhat amusing if he had received the message weeks after his return home. What makes the story noteworthy is that the passenger received this notice while he was actually aboard the airplane, during the flight…

You can pick up the original story here, if you want to, but the gist is simple enough. When the hero of our story arrived at the gate and attempted to board the aircraft, the ramp agent attempted to scan the bar codes on his boarding pass – a method of tracking passengers that is becoming increasingly common at US airports. Unfortunately, the scanner failed to read the codes on the first and second try. Since the line was long and the time to departure was short, the agent gave up and just let the passenger board, no doubt planning to manually enter the boarding information later. In the event, however, the agent either forgot about the manual update or was too busy to take care of it before the company’s computer system noted the “no-show” and cancelled the man’s non-refundable ticket…

I’ve written in this space before about the somewhat questionable ethics of non-refundable tickets, but apparently I missed the single most corrosive aspect of such products: the fact that people with non-refundable tickets miss their flights just as often as anyone else, and will then make up whatever preposterous story they can think of in order to convince the airline to refund their money or replace their ticket. After a few years (or possibly less, in some cases) of listening to stories that are filled with whining, vitriol, or outright insults to their intelligence, the airline’s customer service personnel have gotten fed up with the entire situation and are apparently refusing to listen anymore – it’s hard evidence or nothing, and the passenger in our story didn’t keep a receipt from either airport, let alone retain his boarding pass…

Now, I don’t want to rag on Southwest Airlines in particular; I know that all of the major airlines have regulations like this, and I imagine that all of them are having the same issues with their customer service personnel, at least to the extent that they weren’t already. What I think is getting lost in this story is just how lightly the airline is getting off, given the potential disaster they were courting. The linked story is mainly focused on the airline cancelling their customer’s non-refundable ticket and refusing to refund the replacement ticket he had to buy to get home following their screw-up, but imagine if they had given away his seat before the airplane left the ground. Southwest generally doesn’t have assigned seating, which means they would have been left with an airplane with 180 passenger seats and 181 people aboard - and no way to tell who the imposter really was…

Even worse, though, would be the case in which the passenger really didn’t board, but his luggage already had. This would violate any number of Federal safety regulations, possibly resulting in massive fines or other sanctions against the company – which would still be less of a fiasco than if the passenger had placed a bomb in his checked luggage and then failed to check in. In this case, the airline didn’t get around to cancelling the passenger’s ticket until he and his luggage were already in the air, which means that no one had the chance to take note of his absence and pull his suitcase out of the cargo hold, either. And while it’s true that the odds of a random murderous psychopath attempting to bring down any specific airplane are very small, they aren’t quite zero – and I wouldn’t want to be the one who tried to use that as a legal defense in either civil or criminal proceedings…

Flying: Then and Now

Ask anyone who has had to travel by air in the last dozen years what they thought of the experience, and you’re probably going to hear language that you can’t use on television. Between the annoying and insulting security measures (that are mostly futile), passenger discomfort (which gets worse every year) and flight delays most people already hate the entire process before you even get to issues like endless new fees or the time you waste getting to the airport two hours early. But if you ask anybody who has been traveling by air for a while, they’ll probably tell you that things didn’t used to be like this; that air travel used to be a more formal, dignified and enjoyable experience. They usually won’t mention that it was also far more expensive, or that you were more than five times more likely to die in a plane crash…

An article that ran this week on the Huffington Post UK site compares a number of factors between the 1950s – when the advent of jet airliners and international carriers began making the airlines over – to the current state of the industry. And while I wouldn’t say there were a lot of surprises in the article, it was a bit odd to realize just how much cheaper and safer air travel has become just in my lifetime. For example, in 1952 the industry average was listed as 5.2 deaths per 100,000 hours of flying – about five times the current average. This isn’t really that surprising, when you consider advancements in navigation, automation, radar, electronics, and power systems (especially engine reliability), but even for an admitted airplane wonk like me a 500% difference is kind of amazing. Then there’s price – everyone knows that airfare had dropped since the U.S. deregulated our airline industry in 1978, but according to the Huffington people we’re talking about an 83% drop in fares on the New York to London run. And while it is true that the food, drink and service were all better, there really wasn’t much to do – in-flight movies did not appear until the late 1960s, and even into the 1970s the picture and sound were nothing to write home about…

This week also brought with it news about a potentially brighter future for all of us who get stuck in the Economy section of the aircraft; at least in terms of on-board comfort. An article off the Daily Mail website details several new changes in cabin and seating design that have the potential to create a more comfortable passenger environment without adding weight or taking up extra space (both of which would lower the profitability of the flight). None of this is exactly surprising either; the inclusion of cup holders that are separate from the meal tray, footrests usable in the Economy cabin, or seats that can recline without getting any closer to the passenger sitting behind you are all common-sense upgrades that people have been asking for almost from the beginning of modern air travel. The amazing part, at least to me, is that no one has made any particular effort to upgrade this aspect of the experience before now…

Airline seats are theoretically safer now – thanks to advanced construction materials and the like – but they haven’t really changed in design over the past two generations. And while air travel is essentially a commodity product these day (in that competition is mainly based on price) on a route with heavy traffic and significant competition any material advantage that makes one company’s service more attractive than the alternatives could major implications for the success of that firm. It’s early days as yet, but it might just be possible that we could start seeing change for the better in the airline industry…

Unless the new developments in rail transportation render the whole question moot, of course…

Humanity versus Safety

There was a story that hit the news last week about a family being removed from a Jet Blue flight to Boston when they were unable to get their 2-year-old daughter to stop having a tantrum and sit down for takeoff. The parents insist that their toddler is a good kid who was just having a bad day – and a particularly bad meltdown –and claim that the airline should have showed them “a little bit of humanity” in letting them continue on board. Instead, the pilot decided to return to the gate and have the family taken off the plane, citing safety reasons. There’s no question that the airline was within its legal rights – FAA regulations leave safety decisions to the pilot, and if he or she feels that a given passenger needs to be taken off the aircraft, that’s what happens. But from a business standpoint, it does raise the question of what to do about these confrontations…

First off, it seems obvious that no one goes around trying to get their toddlers to misbehave in public. Even those delusional parents who apparently believe that everyone in the world finds their shrieking offspring as delightful as they do will, in general, want to avoid attracting attention and making a scene when they’re stuck in a small aluminum tube at 30,000 feet with a bunch of increasingly irritable strangers. By the same token, we should probably acknowledge that even the best behaved children in the world will occasionally perform less than perfectly, especially when under stress or outside of their comfort zone. However, none of that changes the fact that air travel is stressful for adults, too, and having to do it while someone else’s child is screaming his or her head off and running around the aircraft like a maniac is not going to help…

Second, however little the parents in our story might want to admit it, the pilot’s safety concerns are quite real. If the aircraft encounters any serious turbulence there’s a definite chance of a passenger being thrown into a wall or bulkhead and seriously injured, and if that passenger is a two-year-old who won’t sit down those injuries could be fatal. For that matter, if the plane loses cabin pressure and the parents can’t get an oxygen mask on the toddler because he or she is running around the cabin, the child and whichever parent tries to go and get her could both die of asphyxia before the flight crew can get the aircraft down under 15,000 feet, and if there’s an emergency landing a toddler running loose could easily be trampled to death by other passengers trying to flee from the wreck. And none of that even considers the risks inherent in the parents (and/or their offspring) being beaten to death by irate passengers who can’t stand another minute of having someone else’s child screaming his or her head off…

I kid, of course, but I’d be willing to bet you cash that at least some of the other passengers were applauding (or wanted to, at least) when the family in our story was taken off the airplane. It’s possible that the parents are correct, and the airline has a responsibility to them, in terms of humanity or sympathy. But we should remember that the company is also responsible for the safety and comfort of the other 150 or so people aboard that flight, not to mention their employees, stockholders, vendors, and other stakeholders, all of whom will be harmed in various ways if the airline is sued, grounded, or forced out of business. In the long run, if a customer has been asked to get their children to sit down and hold still for takeoff, and after a significant delay they’re still having to “hold them down” to keep one of the children from exploding off across the cabin (while still shrieking his or her head off), it’s probably unreasonable to expect the airline to put everyone else at risk…

Public Safety Announcement 2011

Every year around this time I try to post a warning – purely as a public service – to all of the men and the occasional woman who have lost track of the date, and fail to realize that Valentine’s Day is four weeks off. Four weeks from today, the whole world turns red (or in some cases bright pink) and all of us who have significant others are expected to conform to social custom by exchanging gifts in commemoration of how much we love each other. Meanwhile, all of the single, divorced, widowed, or otherwise alone individuals are expected to be desperately seeking new dates, reviewing platonic relationships that could be converted into romantic ones with sufficient quantities of alcohol, forming groups with which to sit around and loudly complain about a holiday specifically intended to make their lifestyle seem worse than it really is, or making plans to spend the night of the 14th softly weeping into their beer…

I kid, of course, but it often seemed to me (even when I was single) that people were making this whole occasion harder than it needs to be. Consider, for example, people who can’t remember the date. V-day is the same date every year, and has been for all of your life; it doesn’t change dates the way the Super Bowl, the World Series, March Madness, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup or even the Olympics do. And unlike your significant other’s birthday or your anniversary, V-day is marked by every retail store in the world putting up pink decorations, plus articles and ads in the newspaper, banner ads on the Internet, special television programming, and decorations around your office. Even if you happen to be really absent-minded, the harbingers of the day are hard to miss…

Then there’s the issue of cards and gifts. Most people will be perfectly alright with a card you made yourself, assuming you exerted some effort on it, but if you don’t have the time there are retailers all over most cities which will happily sell you one. You might even consider keeping a few extras in the back of your file cabinet, in case you forget. I’ve written extensively in this space about gifts, but I will reiterate that they’re not that complicated either, provided you remember a few simple rules . I’ve also posted a set of counterpoint rules for women shopping for men on these occasions, and while I won’t bother repeating those lists here (you can hit the links if you want to) it’s probably worth repeating Rule 2 on the original list (“Never purchase anything that is actually for you”) and Rule Three on the counterpoint list (“Never purchase lifestyle or wardrobe accessories that he doesn’t use but you think he ought to. For example, if doesn’t already carry a ‘man-purse’ you probably shouldn’t get him his first one”). It’s probably also worth pointing out that lingerie is usually more of a gift for you than it is for the recipient, and that a man who habitually despises fine dining is already making a special lifestyle change if he takes you out for a fancy dinner…

Over the years it has occurred to me that the people who use Valentine’s Day as a test of their significant other are going about things the wrong way. Let me suggest to all of my readers (assuming I have readers) that if your significant other thinks this holiday is a bigger deal that you do, your best strategy is to try to take it a little more seriously (or at least try and do something that they would like), and if your significant other regards the day as much less important that you do, ask yourself if it is worth destroying the entire relationship over that disdain for a minor holiday. I write about business, not relationships, but I’ve rarely gone wrong keeping in mind that things aren’t always about me – and I don’t expect you will, either…

Killer PR Challenge

In case you missed it on your local news, there has been quite a flap for the last few days over what Sea World should do regarding its killer whales and their public image. While the company has made a very good living showcasing these majestic marine predators over the past few decades, there’s no getting away from the fact that an Orca, no matter how intelligent, fun-loving and vaguely anthropomorphic it might be, is also a six-ton (or larger) apex predator that eats smaller mammals in addition to fish. In fact, there have been some reported cases of Orcas harassing dolphins and porpoises for no apparent reason, and they are quite willing to eat adorable little marine mammals like seals, sea lions and sea otters. However, this isn’t usually much of a problem in marine parks – where the Orcas are seen frolicking with humans and eating small fish out of buckets – until one of them kills somebody, the way one did in Florida this week…

You can check out the story from the Associated Press by way of the Washington Post Online if you want to, but the basic upshot is that at the end of the lunchtime show last Wednesday, a large male killer whale named Tilikum attacked and fatally mauled one of his trainers in front of a large and horrified audience, including a fair number of families with small children. This has sent a lot of people into panic states, and the company into spin control, but no one is trying to deny that the event happened or that it would have been horrific to watch. The real question now is how can Sea World deal with the inevitable firestorm of negative comments, both from people who are against the idea of aquaria and marine parks in the first place, and also from people who are against the idea of anything unpleasant ever happening where children can see it. Or, for that matter, those against placing employees into dangerous working conditions where, for example, they might get mauled or killed by giant apex predators…

Now, I don’t want to suggest that the company has done anything wrong in this case. The trainers who work with the killer whales are all adults who have been briefed on the risks, signed all manner of legal forms, and given extensive training on how to work safely around animals that can kill you anytime they feel like it, and all of them chose to take the job. By the same token, anytime you watch a human “trainer” go into an enclosure with a wild animal (and Orcas can’t really be domesticated, after all), be it a circus lion tamer or a marine park employee, there’s a non-zero chance that he or she will be killed and/or eaten by the animal. In the case of a lion tamer’s act, that sense of danger is what makes it exciting, and in the case of a killer whale show, it’s the fact that these animals could squash the human participants like a grape – but don’t! – that makes the exhibit so fascinating and wonderful. Unfortunately, that also means that sometimes the animals will go ahead and behave like animals – in which case, you usually need to hire a new trainer…

So, if it was your company, and your trademarked tourist attraction had just killed someone in front of hundreds of horrified tourists, what would you tell the media? For that matter, what would you do with the Orca? Before you retire tonight, you might consider saying a brief word of thanks to whoever (or whatever) you believe in that you don’t have to figure out this particular PR nightmare. And, perhaps, that your job does not entail a non-zero chance of being eaten – unless it does, of course…

254 Pounds of Awesome

If you’ve ever lived in a major city – not just Los Angeles, but anywhere traffic is a problem – you’ve probably had wistful dreams about personal aircraft at least once while sitting in a massive traffic jam, but unless you’re a complete geek you’ve probably never really considered what it would mean to own one. Most people will just point out that even with electronic beacons, full-time ground control, radar, ex-military pilots in charge, and the threat of being blasted out of the sky by trigger-happy F-16 pilots, we still can’t get people to stop flying airplanes into places they’re not supposed to be; and despite billions of dollars and thousands of deaths every year, we can’t seem to get people to stop driving drunk, either. Putting the two together has just never seemed like that good an idea to most people in the United States. But apparently, the New Zealanders have a different take on this issue…

According to a story on the Daily Telegraph website, a company based in Christchurch, New Zealand is planning to start selling about 500 personal aircraft per year at about $76,000 each; these “jetpack” units (which actually use ducted propellers, not jets) will have about 30 minutes endurance and a top speed of about 60 miles per hour. If the company can work out the fuel efficiency and payload issues, there’s reason to believe that the range could be increased to about 60 minutes in the air; certainly long enough for most commutes. With a ceiling of only about 8,000 feet there’d be no need to worry about life support, and with built-in landing gear, there’s no real issue about not being to land this craft without breaking your legs, detonating the gas tank, or destroying your $76,000 new toy. There’s even a parachute attachment, which means that it you are actually stupid enough to ignore the gas gage and plummet out of the sky when your engine fails, you still shouldn’t die. Flying while drunk is another story, however…

Now, in point of fact this isn’t really a new idea; people have been experimenting with ducted-fan and rotary-wing ultra-light aircraft (which is all this thing actually is) for decades now; there was a very similar design that was actually considered for use in the Second World War before they realized that the control systems of the day made the thing a deathtrap. Most places in the United States already have ordinances against flying ultra-light aircraft within city limits, and those that don’t would probably enact them as soon as these aircraft become available on the open market, which means you still couldn’t use one to commute from (for example) our place in Redondo Beach, California to UCLA in 16 minutes of flight time instead of the 60 to 110 minutes of ground travel we used to endure. You might be able to use one in a place like East Lansing, where most of the surrounding area is pastoral rather than urban, but my current commute is only about 8 minutes as it stands…

Which does nothing to change the fact that, assuming I’ve got the money (and can get clearance to fly one) I’m going to buy one of these things as soon as they become available in North America – and so will thousands (if not millions) of tech geeks just like me. Because while these things are probably rubbish for reducing commute times, they’re still 254 pounds of awesome by any other standard…

Automotive Black Box

There are a lot of old jokes about programs to put a cockpit recorder and flight data recorder system (the notorious “black box”) similar to the ones used in commercial airliners into cars – usually with a punch line on the order of “Hold my beer and watch this!” There’s never been a serious attempt to legislate such a system, however, because there would be a huge cost to the consumer and a huge invasion of privacy to anyone who rode in such vehicles – thus, everyone, liberal and conservative, can find something to hate about the idea. Even more to the point, perhaps, is the issue of what (other than gathering empirical data) would be the purpose of such devices. Most people are convinced that they are excellent drivers (regardless of the facts of the matter), and they’re not going to listen to a box that tells them they’re not. So, while the technology has been around for some time, there’s never been a practical application for it. At least, until now…

A story being reported in an Detroit Free Press details how a “black box” system, which monitors the vehicle’s location as well as operations, is being tested on teen drivers by the an The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety . The basic idea is that parents can use the system to monitor where their teenager is driving, how fast they were going, rapid accelerations/decelerations, violent turns, and even if they were wearing their seatbelts. Initial tests indicate that teenage drivers are more cautious when they know the car they’re driving will be finking on them to their parents in real time, and as a result, they’re having fewer accidents. It’s a good idea, as far as it goes, but I think the people behind the program may be a bit naïve if they think these systems are ever going to be more than a means for parents to check up on their children…

Granted that some percentage of new drivers are going to appreciate the opportunity to learn how to become more proficient behind the wheel (the “mentoring” aspect mentioned in the Free Press article), it’s hard to imagine the average teenager actually liking this idea. In fact, a lot of them are going to see it as nothing more than a way for their parents to keep tabs on them, monitor their every move, and so on. Unless the systems are very well hidden and extremely hard to tamper with, I would expect jamming, spoofing and hacking to become vastly popular new teenage hobbies; I also expect that a number of particularly contrarian teens will start looking for ways to mess with the system – and with the parents attempting to look over their shoulders…

More to the point, perhaps, parental control methods are problematic once a child turns 18, and if they are self-supporting (and own their own cars) there’s not going to be much their parents can do to require safe driving, black box or no black box – and traffic accidents remain the number one cause of death in White males until the age of 29 (with other demographics not far behind). Nor will these systems do anything about rebellious teens who are going to drive the way the please, parental informants or no, who then do something aggressive and stupid and die anyway…

For all that the idea has some merits, in the long run it’s going to end up being just another attempt to legislate good behavior, and it’s going to fail in the same ways that these measures always do. The cost of these “black box” systems will make them an option on new cars, serious-minded and responsible people will buy then while everybody else passes to save a few bucks, and the serious-minded and responsible teenage drivers will use them as intended – and have a much better change of living to have young drivers of their own. Meanwhile, the remaining 97% of the population will either not have the recorders installed, or else use them to watch their sullen, rebellious teens defy their authority by driving straight into a stationary object…

Yes, They Are

From time to time I will get comments on this blog that I’m being too negative about our fellow people; that the common folk out there aren’t nearly as stupid as I tend to portray them, and I should have more faith in people. In response I will often quote P.T. Barnum’s famous quip “No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” to which Mark Twain is reputed to have replied “My dear sir, there is no underestimating the intelligence of the American people!” A contention which is supported by a story that came out of Phoenix yesterday…

People will tell you that I’ve been a cynic since early adulthood, but this is not true. I’ve been a cynic since early childhood, and all of that time I have rarely encountered something as randomly bone-headed as this. According to a story in the Arizona Republic a man who was waiting to exit a Delta flight at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix got tired of waiting for the people in front of him to leave, and instead opened one of the window exits and climbed out onto the wing…

He was quite fortunate not to have tried this stunt while the airplane was in the air. There isn’t the least chance that he could have gotten the window hatch opened; while the cabin is pressurized the air pressure holding those hatches in place is heavier than any known person would be able to pry lose. The much more likely possibility is that one or more of his fellow passengers might have gotten the idea that he was a terrorist trying to kill all of them and beaten him senseless – unless, of course, there was a Federal Air Marshall aboard, in which case he’d probably just have been shot…

What, exactly, this fellow expected to accomplish by ignoring every warning sign, posted regulation and iota of common sense may never be known; certainly there was no imaginable scenario in which he would have been able to safely climb down from the wing, force his way into the terminal, and leave the airport without being arrested. In fact, the odds were actually against his being able to exit the plane and the airport this way without sustaining serious injury, such as being run over by a ground vehicle, sucked into a jet engine, or simply breaking his leg trying to jump down off the wing. The subsequent arrest, trial and incarceration would have to be considered merely a bonus after that…

Of course, every one of us has probably seen examples of this same phenomenon every week, if not every day, for most of our lives – if nothing quite this spectacular. So if you’ve ever noticed all of the acknowledgements of stupidity in our society, from warning labels telling you not to use electrical appliances in the bathtub to disclaimers for every possible occasion to the annual Darwin Awards and asked yourself “can people really be that stupid?” I regret to inform you that yes, they can. And the situation is not likely to improve any time soon…

Where’s the Line?

Since we’re picking on air travel and measuring slippery slopes lately, let’s consider an issue that comes up any time you fly anywhere: just how awful does someone have to be before the airline is justified in throwing them off the airplane? I’m not talking here about someone claiming to have a bomb, assaulting a Flight Attendant, or trying to rush the cockpit and break down the door; those things are all Federal crimes, and the means for dealing with them already exists – assuming that the individual’s fellow passengers don’t assume that he or she is a terrorist, decide that a possible chance of being killed stopping the offender is better than certain death in another 9/11 suicide scenario, and beat the unfortunate annoyance to death in the aisle. What about cases where things aren’t so clear?

There were two events in June that illustrate the point rather well. In the first, a woman on a flight from New York to San Francisco decided to light up a cigarette on a no-smoking airplane, and when prevented from doing so, became combative and belligerent, screamed racial epithets at the flight crew, and eventually punched a flight attendant in the face. Efforts to restrain the woman were ineffective, and the pilot elected to land in Denver and have law enforcement remove her from the airplane. It’s doubtful that anyone on board was actually endangered by this episode, and once the offender had been tethered to her seat, her continued screaming, stomping and kicking the bulkhead was probably not interfering with the safe operation of the aircraft. Still, I don’t suppose anyone on board would have objected to the unscheduled landing, except for the fact that it made the flight more than 3 hours late…

Then a few weeks later, a woman was on a short-haul flight to New Jersey with her autistic son when the toddler lost it completely and had a “total meltdown” on the aircraft. Airline personnel attempted to treat this like any other misbehaving child, but their training did not cover handling severe autistic episodes, and efforts to get the boy to stay in his seat, stop thrashing madly about, and stop screaming just made things worse. When the child’s mother was unable to stop the meltdown, or even keep her son from “rolling around on the floor” of the aircraft during the roll out and taxi, the pilot aborted the takeoff, returned to the gate, and had law enforcement escort mother and child off his plane. All parties involved acknowledged that the cheers of the remaining passengers when the police arrived, while understandable, did not help the situation…

So where do we draw the line in these situations? An agency offering public accommodation (like an airline) can not simply ask people with disabilities (like autism) not to come aboard; the law requires them to make “reasonable accommodation” for those people. But if an individual’s condition is so severe that they can’t maintain control during a short airplane ride, at least to the extent of not endangering other passengers during the takeoff, then they really should not be on an airplane. If they use the Americans With Disabilities Act to force the airline’s hand, then they are, at best, taking unfair advantage of a law meant to prevent actual discrimination of the disabled. And if a child without any disabilities is behaving like this, I’d have to say that his or her parents probably should be arrested for something, if only being a useless excuse for parents…

In the case of the out-of-control smoker, we actually have another slippery slope to consider. On being interviewed in the Denver jail, the offender in this case claimed not to remember anything about the episode because of the three vodka drinks she had obtained during the flight, and promptly blamed the airline for not cutting her off. She later admitted to having a few beers (4 or 5) on the ground before the flight, as well. Depending on the exact size and content of the drinks, that would mean a BAC of between .15 and .30, which would qualify as public intoxication almost anywhere in the U.S. But the problem is, there’s no FEDERAL law against public intoxication, and airlines are not equipped to detect/prevent this behavior anyway. I don’t think requiring the flight attendants to give people a breath test before selling them a drink is a good idea, but neither do I think prohibition in the air is a good idea. So when should airline personnel cut someone off, and who gets to decide?

I could go on, but you get the idea. Clearly, when a passenger’s conduct endangers the health and/or safety of his/her fellow passengers, the airline needs to pitch that individual off of their aircraft as quickly as possible. As always, the problem is finding that line, and choosing the person to decide when a customer has crossed it…