Rampant Stupidity Continues

Stay away from airline stocks. Any airline.

I had occasion, last year, to take some continuing education which required I fly twice a month up until October. I primarily flew Southwest Airlines (the subject of A&E's "Airline" show), which is a local carrier in Fornicalia with a solely-dedicated fleet of Boeing 737s. All told last year I took 18 flights on Southwest and had occasion to witness flashes of brilliance and stupendous blunders.

And no matter what anyone says, either despite or because of the TSA, regulations vary widely between carriers and between airports.

But no matter what, the stupidity marches on:

SkyWest sorry for not letting passenger use restroom
Desperate, he used air sickness bag for urinary relief
By Paul Beebe, The Salt Lake Tribune

SkyWest Airlines has apologized to a passenger barred from a plane's restroom by a flight attendant.

James Whipple says that after repeated pleas to empty his beer-filled bladder on a recent flight, he finally found relief - with an air sickness bag.

Now, the Sandy man says SkyWest has issued him an apology for his distress.

"It was like I had no choice. I started to urinate on myself. So, thinking the way I thought, I grabbed one of those vomit bags," Whipple said.

"I didn't think I did anything wrong. I could have relieved myself all over my pants. It was almost like that was what she preferred me to do," he said.

SkyWest's position? A spokeswoman said Whipple wanted to use the bathroom while the fasten-seatbelt light was illuminated. That is against Federal Aviation Administration regulations.

Why was the fasten-seatbelt light on? Turbulence? Flatulence? The captain had switched on the fasten-seatbelt light during the hour-long flight because the bathroom was "unusable" - the light was out.

Okay, so let me get this right: no one could piss on that flight because the light was out.

Hey SkyWest, how about this: fix the fucking light? Or didn't you CHECK? No, that would be WRONG because you KNEW the light was out because the CAPTAIN placed the fasten-seatbelt light on. So, that means you're simply NEGLIGENT and then further: STUPID and OPPRESSIVE for refusing to let a passenger do what, after a few minutes, many HUMAN BEINGS must do: urinate or defecate.

Hey SkyWest, how about this: fix the fucking light! Or would that require three workers representing two separate unions managed by a supervisor?

This, and a myriad of other stupidities by the TSA, the carriers, the airports. One example simply from me?

On my final flight last year, during the heinous "no liquids and no gels aboard planes" heresy, I was held up in San Diego because I had packed my Class A uniform (for the class graduation), which naturally contained my badge pinned on my shirt. I was screened by the X-ray process and then pulled aside for a hand search of the luggage. I explained that my badge was in fact not a shuriken (throwing star) but indeed what it appeared. However, gladdening my heart in terms of their scrupulous security, I discovered I had forgotten NOT to pack a few extra things. Every screener, including the TWO who conducted the HAND SEARCH of my luggage failed to discover not only my large tube of proscribed toothpaste, but my three bottles of shampoo.

Passengers have been held captive in airplanes for literally hours and hours due to mechanical and ramp problems. Passengers were held captive recently for 10 hours in thin aluminum tubes in New York. Did they get to piss and defecate? Did the light work? If not, perhaps they shat on the jump seats to the rear. I wonder. . . ?

Also in New York during that same storm, hundreds of Jet Blue passengers were stranded on the asphalt in those tubes whilst thousands more waited inside the terminal for two days, for planes that never took off. From The Week magazine: "Police were summoned to several departure gates after crowds of waiting passengers grew unruly?"

Huh. Imagine that. No communications. Abusive ramp and short-tempered desk personnel. Everyone scared to make a decision. Scared to speak. Scared to tell the truth: we can't handle it.

It's gotten so incredibly stupid that our brain-dead Congress is actually thinking of butting their heads in, mandating that planes be stocked with sufficient food and water to last for "long delays" and a 3-hour cap on how long airplanes can stay on the runway before returning to terminals.

Some have even suggested a Passengers' Bill of Rights. Yes, clearly there are stupid and obnoxious passengers. Hey, reality check: don't let them on in the first place!

I guess, all told, I was lucky: I wasn't forced into a strip search, I didn't endure a colonoscopy, I didn't have to piss my pants in the seat, I didn't lose any luggage (mostly because I insisted on paring my belongings into one carry-on), I wasn't held captive for hours on a hot, toilet-clogged plane.

Ah, the blessings of living in the most civilized nation on the planet, eh?

And the carriers wonder why people aren't flocking to planes? Stay far away from airline stocks!

More and more people are insisting on driving. And with the price of gas now at or over $3 a gallon (I predict: $4 a gallon by this summer), I guess we'll just kill non-mandatory travel altogether?

But that's another post for another day.

BZ