Passengers Subdue Man On Southwest Flight

[WNjetdoc]

Tornyhoad, I apologize.

Jetdoc, got it.

Now with regards to me being a squid I would like to clarify:

We both got our checks from the same place they were stamped "Department of the Navy." I carried ALICE around with me everywhere, slept outside, and my tool was and M-16. You sir, in the AIR side grew your hair long and had beer bellies, and loose women. So I do admit you're a little smarter than I was, but I was never a squid. Semper Fi.

[post="244755"][/post]​

You sir have it partially correct, however the women were both loose and had the beer belly's, lol. My hair was a bit longer than you grunts, but we were the chick magnets, remember?

I will never say that the AirWingers were more intelligent than the Grunts, it was on a case by case basis.

I somehow got you mixed up with being a squid because of your recall of your "time" in the Marine Corps, remember? Uhh, "I was at 28 Palms Calf", or "My Drill Sergeant", or how about, "Yea, I spent some time at Camp Lejune SC". You can hardly remember what year you were in and you totally have forgotten your platoon. You kinda threw up some red flags from us jarheads at BWI, but we had to remember you were a "weekend warrior", aka, "spareparts", so that could cause some of your recall problems sir.

You are still the best afternoon stock clerk here at BWI, today, in the whole system...so get back to work, bubbleboy!!

 

[jimntx]

But, none of us wants to see this kind of thing keep happening.  I'm headed in for my annual recurrent training in a few months...at the end of the session, we are asked for suggestions.  What would you have me tell our training department we could do to keep this from happening again?

[post="244124"][/post]​

A couple of suggestions that I have made at AA (which, of course, have fallen on deaf ears)...

1. The TSA, ticket agents, and gate agents should be as vigilant in their watch for intoxicated passengers as they are in their watch for intoxicated crew members. I applaud the TSA for stopping drunk cockpit occupants from flying, but they should also be stopping drunk passengers at the front gate, too.

In my vast and long career of 3 years as a f/a, I've had to get the cockpit to assist me (agent wouldn't do it on my say-so) in removing passengers that were obviously impaired when they came down the jetbridge. The agent would have had to be incredibly blind or stupid to have missed the passenger's condition. (Same goes for some of them and their inability to count carry-ons, also. )

2. Mandatory self-defense training for all flight attendants at all airlines with refresher courses included as part of annual recurrent training.
(Company paid on company time.)

3. Serious penalties for passengers who get reported for inflight disturbance (instead of some ground supervisor giving them a free upgrade for their next leg). Not just the ones who charge the cockpit and make the news. The one's who refuse to turn off cell phones, PDAs, laptops until the 3rd or 4th request. The ones who want to argue that their leg and arm casts do not prevent them from sitting in the exit row (and where was the agent on that one, also?). The ones who demand to be served another drink after being told once, and politely, NO. And so on and so forth. I'm sure you could add to this list as well.

 

[hp_fa]

As you might tell from my "handle", I am a FA. We have very little time to make judgment calls. We try and catch people who are impaired when we greet them onto the aircraft. That leaves us 1-2 seconds to see if any little red lights go on in our mind regarding that passenger. In the air, if someone is making a move on the flight deck, there is even less time.

Let me tell you of one experience I had. I was working a PHL-LAS flight and this one guy in his 20's came from the main cabin and used the FC lav. On his way out he said that he had hidden a bomb in there. I informed him right then and there we don't joke about that kind of stuff, sent him back to his seat and then followed our procedure for when someone says something like that (I won't discuss the procedure.) I also got the distinct feeling this guy was a few fries short of a happy meal, if you understand my drift.

About 45 minutes later he again comes to the FC cabin. This time I see him ball his right hand into a fist and draw back. I was literally within 0.1 seconds of putting this guy down. I forcefully told him to stop and he did. The situation was finally and completely dealt with in LAS.

My point is you do not know who is who. You need to be on guard all the time and there isn't much time to make a decision and even less time to consider mitigating factors. My incident shook me up for weeks after that because I really thought I had given this guy too long in my evaluation process because if he had ill-intent I would have been the one attacked while I was "thinking about my options."

Absent some form of demonstrated gross misjudgment, I am not going to second guess any flight crew member from any airline on the situation they had at the moment in time.