Navigation Salon Salon Travel email print
Arts & Entertainment
Books
Comics
Health & Body
Media
Mothers Who Think
News
People
Politics2000
Technology
- Free Software Project
.Travel & Food
_______
Columnists

 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Travel Services

Articles by Region

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Also Today

For a full list of today's Salon Travel stories, go to the Travel home page.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon


  
Advanced Search  |  Help

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Travel

Travel Advisor
Is Isla Mujeres safe?
Our expert answers readers' questions about Mexico, artists' colonies, Belize and touring Java by train.

By Donald D. Groff
[04/09/99]

Book Bag
Lonely Planet's hidden passion
Guidebook pioneer publishes Eric Newby collection, prepares to launch three new series.

By Don George
[04/07/99]

Complete archives for Travel

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Travel
by e-mail
Sign up here to receive our weekly e-mail newsletter listing recent and upcoming articles and events in Travel.

 
Unsubscribe

- - - - - - - - - - - -





Out of the blue


Bad passenger, bad!
AH, THE GLAMOROUS LIFE OF THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT,|
WHERE YOU GET PUNCHED, KICKED AND DEFECATED UPON.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Elliott Neal Hester

Editor's Note:Today Salon Travel launches Out of the Blue, a biweekly column about the flight attendant's life in the air and on the ground. Our columnist, Elliott Neal Hester, is a flight attendant for a major U.S. airline. He has also written for numerous national publications, including National Geographic Traveler, Men's Fitness, Glamour, Maxim and Caribbean Travel & Life. Do you have a tale of life in the sky? Send it to uzapme@.msn.com.

April 13, 1999 |A few years ago on a United Airlines flight from Buenos Aires to New York, Gerard B. Finneran, an investment banker, went totally bonkers. Newspaper accounts said that after becoming intoxicated, Finneran demanded more alcohol from the flight attendants. When they refused, he began helping himself to the liquor supply. After being cut off a second time, he became visibly angry. He pushed one flight attendant (federal offense No. 1), verbally threatened another (federal offense No. 2), interfered with a third who was assisting a sick passenger (federal offense No. 3), then walked up to the first-class cabin, dropped his pants and defecated on a service cart in plain view of the passengers and crew. Then he stepped in his own feces and tracked it through the main cabin (federal offense Nos. 4, 5 and possibly 6).

Finneran was arrested upon landing in New York. He subsequently pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to two years probation. In addition, he was given 300 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine and was ordered to pay more than $50,000 in restitution to the airline and to reimburse fellow passengers for the price of their tickets. (Not surprisingly, Finneran's lawyer said his client was "ill" when he committed the now infamous in-flight atrocity.)

Every one of the estimated 110,000 flight attendants currently flying in the United States has witnessed strange behavior in the air. Occasionally, as in the case of Finneran, passenger misconduct exceeds all rational limits. Sometimes these in-flight incidents are violent; sometimes they're wickedly funny. Either way, the following examples will give you a better idea of what flight attendants put up with every day:

  • Seated side-by-side on a 14-hour overseas flight, two business-class passengers became romantically involved. At some point they began kissing and fondling each other while sitting in their seats. The passion became so intense that the couple began having sexual intercourse in their seats. Bewildered passengers immediately began ringing their flight attendant call buttons. Despite the flight attendants' urgent pleas, the couple refused to terminate their airborne lovemaking. Ultimately, the captain had to intervene. It was necessary for him to physically separate the lovers to get them to stop.

  • While a female flight attendant was serving food from the meal cart, a female passenger thrust a small bundle of trash toward her. "Take this," the passenger demanded. Realizing that the trash was actually a used baby diaper, the attendant instructed the passenger to take it to the lavatory herself and dispose of it. "No," the passenger replied. "You take it!" The attendant explained that she couldn't dispose of the dirty diaper because she was serving food -- handling the diaper would be unsanitary. But that wasn't a good enough answer for the passenger. Angered by her refusal, the passenger hurled the diaper at the flight attendant. It struck her square in the head, depositing chunks of baby dung that clung to her blond locks. The infuriated attendant leapt upon the passenger, strangling her until passengers could separate the two.

    . Next page | Broken jaws and a peanut-tossing provocateur



Salon | Search | Archives | Contact Us | Table Talk | Ad Info

Arts & Entertainment | Books | Comics | Life | News | People
Politics | Sex | Tech & Business | Audio
The Free Software Project | The Movie Page
Letters | Columnists | Salon Plus

Copyright © 2000 Salon.com All rights reserved.