Friday, August 13, 2010

BloggeRhythms 8/13/2010

The new American folk hero Steven Slater, a flight attendant who chastised an unmanageable passenger over the plane's intercom, grabbed a couple of beers from the galley and then slid down the escape ramp from a parked aircraft at Kennedy Airport reminded me of another story.

Several years ago, during my intensive flying days I was waiting for a flight in Atlanta? Chicago? Cincinnati? Detroit? St. Louis?, I really don't remember. I do recall that we were headed for LaGuardia in New York.

White waiting, an announcement informed us that departure would be delayed for a half-hour, not an unusual occurrence by any means. I had learned long ago that delays were to be expected and frequently happened for all kinds of reasons: weather, equipment problems, a late arriving plane that was to be serviced and then re-boarded, air traffic jams overloading the arrival runways causing landing back-ups, and so on.

What my travels had taught me was, to expect waits for boarding and to bring along things to occupy my time. Ordinarily that included a briefcase full of business items needing attention, and when my work was done, crossword puzzle books. At the time I was a New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle fanatic. I prided myself on completing the puzzles in ink (almost always) and finishing them in one sit-down ASAP.

Somewhere along the line someone had given me a pile of spiral bound Times puzzle books holding 50 puzzles each as I recall. The first thing I'd do is tear out the answer pages in the back, to eliminate any chance of my wearing down and peeking should I not know, for example, the three letter Urdu word for micro-biology.

Anyway, on the afternoon in question, after the original 30 minutes of delay went by and there was still no sign of boarding activity at the gate, a man approached the gate agent and asked when the flight would board. The agent picked up the microphone and announced that there'd be another wait of a half hour or so. The passenger grumbled, and returned to his seat.

Twenty minutes or so later, two or three men approached the agent's desk, asking somewhat louder when they could expect to take off. The agent picked up the microphone once more, then announced another delay of however long. During all that time I'd sat in a quiet corner, working my crossword puzzles, trying to drown out the surrounding noise.

In time, the crowd of passengers around the agent's desk kept increasing. The original man, his two compatriots and now a cadre of others, each moaning, groaning and informing the agent of how important they were, how miserably they were being treated by being made to wait like this -they all had things to do do, places to go, people to see on the other end. They grew noisier by the minute. The gate agent announced another delay.

Overall, I don't remember how long boarding was delayed all told, but it was certainly a couple of hours. Then of course, once we'd all boarded there was a wait to push back from the gate, and then a long queue of other aircraft for take-off. So, naturally, there was a lot more loud complaining from the upset passenger group throughout the aircraft. Through all of that, I sat in my window seat, body angled away from the passengers in my aisle, and kept quietly working my puzzles.

In time of course we took off, flew to New York and deplaned at LaGuardia. As I was walking down the hall, toward the exit, the original complainant stepped alongside me and said something like, "Excuse me, but I saw you in the waiting lounge before we took off. And, during that whole time, with all of us trying to get on board and out of there you never even looked our way or said a word to anyone about it. How come?"

I took hold of his upper arm, pulled him along and said, "Come with me." I entered a men's room, still holding his arm (back then you could do things like that and not get arrested) and stopped in front of a big mirror. I said, "Where are you?"
He answered, "A men's room."
"No, No." I replied, "I mean, what city?"
He answered, "New York."
"Okay," I said, "And where am I?"
"New York," was his answer.

Then I went on to say, "Well now, let's look at us both. You're clothes are a wrinkled mess, your hair looks like a bird's nest, your shirts half out of your slacks, a button or two are missing and you look like you haven't slept in a month. And you did all that to yourself by ranting, raving and jumping up and down about a situation totally out of your control in an airport. Meantime, I'm neat, clean and spiffy and am going to meet my wife right now for dinner. As for you, no restaurant on earth would let you in without you taking a shower and changing your clothes, and for all that you accomplished zip, zero, nada, nothing at all."

The point of all this is, that flight attendants, gate agents, even pilots and crews who have little or nothing to do with determining when flights arrive or take off, take heaps of abuse from a public that is either unknowing, uninformed, uncaring or all three. So, in that regard, I think it's a good thing that Steven Slater did what he did. If others like him follow suit, maybe the quality of air travel will improve for all of us passengers.

That's it for today folks.

Adios

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