An American Airlines first class passenger on a delayed flight departing Las Vegas reportedly called 911 trying to get police to force the flight to leave. Reportedly he was “high as a kite.” When you’re high it’s not the best time to call police.
And police aren’t going to force the Airbus A321 to fly. A delay is going to be for a good reason – the airline wants to depart on-time and officers won’t second guess them and lack the authority to in any case. Video shows the passenger taken off the aircraft by police, “7 cops carried him off.”
Calling the Las Vegas police to try to get them to force your plane to take off almost never works. pic.twitter.com/KDzLgcSxqc
— Las Vegas Locally (@LasVegasLocally) March 5, 2025
Back in June an American Airlines passenger, stuck on the ground on a plane in Dallas for three hours amidst several terrible days operationally as the carrier battled storms around Dallas and ran low on reserve crew, reported being forced “to dial 911 for someone to help us get off [the] plane.” 911 said they were helpless.
Stories like this resonate with me because it was a plot point of L.A. Law‘s season 3, episode 10 “The Plane Mutiny.” Firm managing partner Douglas Brackman was trying to fly to Chicago to win a client. The flight went mechanical, and passengers sat in the aircraft for hours.
Brackman demanded to be let off the aircraft, so he could find another flight, but the captain put him in his place – threatening to shoot the lawyer.
But the woman sitting beside him on the plane had a cell phone. In the late 1980s! He asks to borrow it, and we pan to a lawyer from the firm appearing before a judge seeking an order to have the airline free the passengers off the aircraft. That works, the everyone is let off – and Brackman is arrested for interfering with flight crew and for use of a cell phone on the aircraft.
Brackman lands the client (they’re impressed by his resourcefulness and aggressiveness) and a date with the cell phone woman.
Fast forward a decade and a man with a cell phone on a delayed flight became a national hero. 198 passengers on board Northwest Airlines 1829 were famously delayed in January 1999. The flight had diverted, and then the next day sat on the tarmac in Detroit for 7 hours. Toilets overflowed, food and water ran out, the cabin filled with a stench, and passengers threatened to open an emergency door.
One passenger figured out how to dial the Northwest’s CEO at home. John Dasburg’s wife answered. Eventually the captain spoke directly to the CEO, and they got a gate and everyone finally made it off the aircraft.
The Goldsteins figured Mr. Dasburg must live in one of the nicer suburbs of Minneapolis. Mrs. Goldstein’s uncle lives in one of those suburbs, Edina, Minn. They called Edina directory assistance on their cell phone. To their amazement, they found a listing.
The doctor dialed at once and got Mary Lou Dasburg, the CEO’s wife, who said her husband wasn’t at home. “I’m currently on one of your husband’s planes in Detroit,” Dr. Goldstein, 35, said. “There are 30 planes on the ground here. He needs to know.” As the two talked, passengers in nearby rows leaned in to listen. According to Dr. Goldstein, Mrs. Dasburg promised to call flight operations herself to find out what was going on. (Mrs. Dasburg confirms the call.)
In this case, though, the incident happened in Las Vegas and the passenger stayed in Vegas.
Yet another reason to not route through Vegas—it really does attract weirdos.
And let this be another reminder that those with money (I presume this guy could afford First) aren’t necessarily ‘smart.’
Likewise, being intelligent doesn’t make you rich, either. Kinda sad to think of all the brilliant minds that have died ‘in the fields’ throughout human history.
So who DO you call if you sincerely believe your pilot (or flight attendant) is “High as a kite”? Yes, it happens.
Pilots, etc are not always right. Regardless of the situation. Lives are at stake.
And there are some real a-holes in NYC. They are a-holes largely because NYC culture lets them get away with it. If you pout and never smile in NYC (extremely common in particular among 25-65yo Manhattan women and 45-75yo Brooklyn men) nobody will call you out on your lack of charisma. In communities outside the urban northeast US, you get ostracized for such coldness.
Former US President John F Kennedy said Washington DC had the efficiency of the South and the charm of the North. To wit he was saying NYC has no charm. That is certainly true of below-median people in NYC, a total dearth of interpersonal charisma.
Virtually all big money (which you certainly don’t need to buy First, but my point stands) is earned by people who got lucky. Fortune may favor the bold, but luck and intelligence are orthogonal. You don’t know what orthogonal means? You obviously aren’t as smart as me or even at a baseline acceptable level of college educated smartness in our modern AI powered world. Every modern college student graduating today ought to have taken basic courses in statistics and linear algebra lest they have absolutely no way to grasp even the very basics of inferential models.
This is extremely sad. The only way intelligence makes you rich is through quant research at a HFT/hedge fund or similar. And you practically, if not actually, need to be autistic for that to happen. Normal (non-savant) levels of intelligence is relegated to the tenure line faculty of universities that pay maybe $250,000 a year to a full professor at age 50. A junior associate at most Manhattan law firms earn that in their first year out of law school. An entry level software engineer at a big tech company earns that in their first year out of undergrad.
I just read that article you linked about the Northwest flight in 1999. Very interesting. But I wonder about the other planes that were stuck waiting. Some even longer.. I’d like to know what the longest wait was that day..
@Dick — Honestly, I enjoy your banter. Yes, there are indeed a-holes are everywhere. Small towns. Big cities. Geography makes no difference. Yet, there are also wonderful folks in the same places. How do they co-exist?
JFK is indeed one of the greats, though you paraphrase his words without the necessary context–if those were his views in the 1960s, we must admit that all these places have changed quite a bit since then. NYC is far different after 9/11. DC depends largely on the party in-control.
However, we do agree on ‘luck’ as a major factor in obtaining wealth–inheritance, for example. Separately, I’d add, a willingness to infinitely ‘exploit’ people and resources, regardless of the harms that often causes, is the key to excessive wealth (like oligarchs, billionaires, etc.)
Language can be power. But, if you go too eccentric and you’ll simply lose people. So, use ‘orthogonal’ if you wish, but most folks are not going to understand what you mean, just as speaking in ‘Shakespearean English’ does not translate well to today. Instead, I think most would understand the theory that ‘being intelligent doesn’t make you rich’ as I said above. Either way, you do you.
On ‘high value’ careers, which I believe was your last point, that may have been the case over the last 40 years or so, getting into corporate, finance, tech, etc., but moving forward, artificial intelligence may change the game entirely. There have been a lot of white collar layovers in those exact roles over the last couple years, and I do not think that is slowing down at all–it could become exponential. Does this mean we need more trades, or nurses? It depends how good the robotics become, I suppose. Then everyone’s out.
And on work-life-balance, yeah, most of those guys (and they are mostly men) do ‘burn out’ or literally ‘need’ amphetamines to keep going. It’s just not healthy. Not to mention, most of those kids, early 20s to 30s, are just mercenaries for the much wealthier folks who could honestly care less about them or anyone. Back to my theory on ‘exploitation’ above.
I suspect a lot of the nouveau riche are about to hit a brick wall. That doesn’t bode well for our consumer-based economy, which relies on that strong ‘middle’ class. I suspect there will be a lot of ‘anger’ and ‘despair’ following that new reality, which is ironic, because the prior round of off-shoring and automation affected mostly blue collar jobs, and those folks were basically abandoned by everyone.
The real question is whether these former finance and tech bros will unite behind the new oligarchs (as they apparently already have done), or will they join in with the rest of the people in expressing their ‘disappointment’ and their demand for positive change for everyone. Perhaps, they will want something better, or we’ll all end up back in the fields. Time will tell.
Of course, I mean: *layoffs (though, I hope you will agree, ‘layovers,’ as a Freudian slip, is far more appropriate on a travel blog, such as VFTW), if you even read that far along. Anyway, take care.
What a moron. Hope he spent a few days in a Vegas jail and AA put him on a no fly list. When airports/ATC start experiencing issues it’s not as simple as bloggers make it seem. Going back to the gate might only make matters worst and cause a cancellation. Pilots often can’t get good information albeit that’s no excuse not to communicate with passengers. Increasingly we live in a land in which stupidity and low rent behavior is encouraged, prized, and rewarded-although not in this case.
In response to craig jones who wrote, “So who DO you call if you sincerely believe your pilot (or flight attendant) is “High as a kite”? Yes, it happens.”
First, reread the article. It wasn’t the flight attendant that was “high,” it was the passenger.
Second, it does NOT happen that a crew member is high. Crews meet hours before a flight to prepare and complete paperwork. They police each other. They will stop each other from getting to the aircraft. They don’t want to be on an unsafe aircraft, and they don’t want passengers on an unsafe aircraft. Also, it’s job protection for their fellow employees. Major airlines have a system in place to help employees who might have a ‘problem’ before it becomes a real problem.
Kites, when flown by adults, typically go up about 600 feet. I think that the record is somewhere around 16,000 feet. If you ask me, the problem was that neither the passenger nor the plane was high enough.
I’ve posted this many times, and I’ll do so again. Certain penalties are already in place as per 49 U.S. Code § 46504. These are evidently insufficient. Therefore, they shall be modified as such: When a pax creates a disturbance under 46504 the following shall apply, without regard to race, creed or religion:
1. Mandatory 30 days in jail. No bail.
2. $7500 fine, payable instataner upon release from the 30-day mandatory jail term. Failure to pay results in an additional 30 day jail term.
3. After the 30 day non-bailable mandatory jail sentence is served, an additional sentence not to exceed 20 years shall apply.
4. All current and future government benefits shall be terminated, including, but not limited to, Medicare, Social Security, CHIP, SNAP, WIC, studen loan forgiveness, state & federal pension benefits (if applicable).
5. Placed on a permanent no-fly list
6. Prohibited from being on the premises of any commercial airport in the USA. Violation will result in a mandatory 10 additional years in jail.
The result of these modifications, over time, will be a more civilized travel experience for the rest of us.
@DFWSteve — I think 49 U.S. Code § 46504 is sufficient as-is (the fines can be major and the prison sentence can be up to 20 years already!) it’s about enforcement—are airlines and crews going to charge the perpetrators, and will prosecutors actually pursue these cases. If and when they do, you’ll then see your desired deterrence.
@1990 the addition of forfeiture of state and federal benefits assures a punitive action follows them far longer in life than a jail sentence or fine. And no-fly and no trespass provisions are not currently in 46504. They should be. You are correct in that if the perp isn’t prosecuted then nothing happens.
@1990 How was jail? I knew you looked familiar. You are the offender in this story who got tagged by the po-po. Hilarious. Your insane rant on the video matches your rhetoric on this site. Give my best to your cell mate.
You’re hanging your hat on the knowledge of the word “orthogonal.” Lol. I bet you’re a real hit at parties.
Unclear if the flight was still at the gate and delayed or was there an extensive delay awaiting takeoff. I can see almost anyone going berserk sitting on a tarmac for hours.
New AA in flight entertainment, I guess.