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Bad passenger, bad!
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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 | 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: 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.
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