Category Archives for Passengers.
A passenger hanging their hair over their seat back, in front of the passenger behind them, frequently creates a social media stir. And it immediately prompts fiendish dreams of cutting off the passenger’s hair with a pair of scissors. Fortunately the person trying to work on their laptop on a Southwest Airlines flight on Tuesday had no such impulse – or scissors.
Southwest is in the news after a flight attendant reported a white mother traveling with her 10 year old biracial daughter as “suspicious.” The mother was investigated as a sex trafficker.
On Monday, a Gol flight from São Paulo Guarulhos airport to Minas Gerais in Brazil took off but wound up diverting back to São Paulo due to weather.
Passengers got frustrated with a lack of help getting rebooked, and facing spending the night where they started. And they started to riot.
What’s an employee supposed to do when they see F-Fentanyl on a mask? American has said F-cancer is ok, after all.
Vaping is just as illegal on planes as smoking, even though when someone ‘smokes’ an e-cigarette they generally aren’t exhaling smoke, just water vapor.
Passengers bring their own life experiences and (emotional) baggage with them to the airport. So do flight attendants. We also have different cultural expectations and behaviors. And then we’re trapped inside a metal tube together for several hours. Sometimes that goes very badly, and we all need a bit more patience and understanding.
After another flight diversion following a flight attendant assault, I have to wonder why is it that so many passenger incidents – this one seemingly worse than most – seem to occur on American Airlines? They’re much larger than Spirit, to be sure, carrying far more passengers. But why do they have more inflight crazy than Delta, United and Southwest? I don’t know. There are several hypotheses I’ve entertained that don’t quite fit perfectly.
A Delta Air Lines flight attendant brought out the yellow flexcuffs to subdue a passenger who brought her own microphone on board in order to rant at the cabin about the origin of Covid-19.
Another crewmember insisted she sit down but the woman ignores this and unleashes her thoughts on unwilling seatmates. That flight attendant managed to handle the situation with help from a passenger and so no zip ties were actually used. During the dispute the passenger with the mic says “I don’t need to be cuffed” “I’m completely harmless” and “I’m not terrible to look at.”
Macaulay Culkin was left behind when his family went on vacation, but what if a sequel had been filmed where he’d snuck into the family luggage and wound up checked in the cargo hold instead? That almost happened in real life, but with a chihuahua rather than a child actor.
American Airlines won’t serve alcohol in coach. They’ll serve alcohol to first class passengers, though, and on a recent Charlotte-Miami flight one passenger was spotted with a full bottle on their tray table for the short 650 mile trip – impressive indeed for a two hour flight.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
