Coyote wrote:Broomstick wrote:If the man won't pay attention and follow requests to sit down during normal boarding what the hell is he going to do in an emergency? THAT is the way the flight crew would be thinking. Noncompliant people are a hazard in an evacuation. It is well within the authority of FA's to deplane such people even prior to an actual emergency. It applies to drunks, ill passengers, disruptive passengers... and those who deliberately ignore the lawful requests of flight attendants.
It has also been applied to people wearing "unpopular" political slogans on their T-shirts and women in miniskirts and tight shirts, and I believe to two teenage girls for being "annoying". So again, we're back to rules or judgment.
We have no information on whether the plane lost its takeoff slot because of this guy; it seems they did not. And, in fact, the airline later gave the guy another seat on another plane, leading me further to believe that the stewardess's problem with the guy was found to be without merit.
Allowing him to fly the next day in no way is an indication of "merit" or lack of it. Drunk, unruly passengers, and even people with just plain old body odor problems are typically de-planed and offered another flight - only if they continue to be a problem would they be summarily dumped from the airline entirely. The idea behind removing a problem passenger from an airplane is to defuse even the
potential for a problem later on the flight.
The blunt reality of the matter is that when your airliner is in cruise you are sealed into a small metal container with a hundred or more other people. You can't leave - the environment outside would be lethal in under two minutes. You can't escape. At typical cruising altitudes you are
at least 30 minutes from landing anywhere, at least 30 minutes from outside assistance. There have been injuries and even deaths from problem passengers and from other passengers acting against perceived problems. This is not a place to get on a fucking soap box. If you can't bend somewhat for the common good you don't belong on board. It's not fair to the other people you might endanger. And that, my friend, IS the way the aviation world operates, and has for
decades. This is nothing new.
ANYTHING the flight crew thinks is even
potentially disruptive or hazardous is grounds for a passenger removal and the FAA and other authorities will back them up on it nearly every time. Why? Because the flight crews have the knowledge and training to determine what is and is not safe and the average person doesn't. In matters of safety flight crews will
always be quite conservative. Are flight crew decisions sometimes overruled? Yes, once in a great while - but not on the spot.
The issue is that he did not obey a request by a flight attendant to sit down. Aside from an imminent emergency you are not permitted to do that. It doesn't matter if you're boarding or leaving, whether the airplane is moving or not, whether you're delayed or not, whether or not YOU think there is a reason to sit down - if the FA ask you to sit you sit. They are not "watiresses", they are people trained to keep you safe and/or haul your ass out of a wrecked, burning airplane - they pass out peanuts and drinks partly for passenger morale (crowd control is an important part of their job), but the moment things go awry to hell with food service.
No, it's because he is a Fundie Jewish asshole. The vast majority of Jews do not have sudden, urgent needs to pray in the back of an airplane
Well, actually, it is pretty normal to see on El-Al flights; Orthodox Jews pray before going on a journey, especially if there is a chance that the journey may be dangerous.
First of all, while this sort of thing may be typical on El-Al, it is NOT typical on any other airline. Second, I think what you are calling "orthodox" is what most everyone else calls "ultra-orthodox" - the orthodox Jews in my family manage to fly on airplanes without being disruptive assholes or feeling a need to pray in an ostentatious and annoying manner in public.
If he MUST pray prior to a journey he can damn well do it at home, before he actually starts out on the trip, or fucking get to the airport early enough to do this sort of thing in the terminal instead of waiting until the last second
(none of his friends had a sudden urgent prayer needs, did they?).
Assuption on your part. They may not be Fundie, they may not even be Jewish. They may have prayed before boarding. They also tried to explain his actions to the FA but she wasn't having any of it, was she?
The regulations regarding the authority of flight crew do NOT have a religious exemption. It doesn't matter if he was Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddist, or an unwashed Heathen. Also, she was not addressing the man's friends, she was addressing
him - HE needed to be the one to respond to her, not these other people.
As I said, the
prudent course of action would have been to ask the FA prior to starting his ritual if he could go to the back of the plane and pray in an uninterupted manner. People praying before/during flight is nothing unusual - I remember one rather horrific flight I was one that had one little old lady frantically reciting the rosary for a solid 40 minutes - but you do not have license to do so in contrary to the commands of the flight crew. Sorry, you just don't.
The vast majority of Jews in the world can pray while sitting down in their seat. The vast majority of Jews understand that they should do what a flight crew tells them to do.
Typically, Orthodox prayer actually is done standing, facing Jerusalem. His friends tried to explain and afterwards he explained, too. But again, by that time everyone's minds were already made up.
Typically - but is is really
required even by most Orthodox? In any case -
praying is NOT a good enough excuse for violating aviation regulations. Got that? The fact that nearly ALL religions would allow for prayer while in one's seat under such circumstances, the fact that nearlly all JEWS would allow for prayer while in one's seat under such circumstances, does not help this man's case.
Mr. Fundy Jew does not want equal rights - he wants EXTRA rights for his religious practices, including potentially inconveniencing a hundred or two hundred other people with his antics.
We don't know if the flight was delayed because of him, or if it was because of the FA insisting on security, or indeed even if it was delayed at all. It may well be the only person who got a bug in their butt about the whole thing was the FA herself. So relying on that as a basis for the rightness of this action is on pretty thin ice without proof.
The Federal aviation regulations grant airline flight crews, including flight attendants, the authority to order passengers to comply with requests or have said passengers removed from the airplane. What part of that do you not understand? It is IRRELEVANT whether or not the flight was actually delayed, whether or not other people were still boarding or not, whether there was a hazard or not. This is not a "bug in their butt",
it's the goddamned LAW! And not just in the US - although the details differ I can't think of a country where flight crews
don't have the authority to throw your ass off the airplane if you don't cooperate with them.
You know what Mr. Fundy Jew SHOULD have done, that probably would have avoided this whole debacle? He SHOULD have asked a flight attendant "Do you mind if go to the back of the plane, out of everyone's way, to say a prayer for two minutes?"
I already gave that is the ideal, preferred position, that or pray in the terminal prior to boarding. The guy is not 100% blameless here, but I think the FA seriously over-reacted
No, she did not. For the safety of the rest of the passengers FA's cannot tolerate an uncooperative passenger.
