Straighten Up And Fly Right
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says, 'The Golden Age of Travel Starts With You,' as the horrifying passenger antics continue
This Week In Blunders Nov. 16-22
“I have had it with these … snakes on this … plane!” - Samuel Jackson
An unruly passenger complaining about life in a “fascist state” diverted an American Airlines flight carrying four members of Congress earlier this month.
On board were Reps. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., Eli Crane, R-Ariz., Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. Without their own jets, they’re likely well-aware of the sorry state of air travel these days without a reminder from some ranting passenger.
When you fly you are indeed submitting to a fascist state. Before each boarding, you are treated as a criminal suspect with advanced scanning technology, facial recognition software, gun-powder detection systems, luggage searches and of course a phalanx of body-frisking TSA officers.
They say it’s for our protection, but it’s mostly security theater. And since Sept. 11, 2001, these intrusions have not made the flying public more polite.
Since 2019, the Federal Aviation Administration has logged a 400% increase in passenger outbursts. Since 2021, there’ve been nearly 14,000 disruptive in-flight incidents, and one in five flight attendants have endured physical attacks.
It’s gotten so bad that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy launched a “civility campaign” this week called “The Golden Age of Air Travel Starts with You.”
The message includes what now seem like quaint suggestions: Saying please and thank you, dress with respect, help pregnant women and the elderly, and keep control of your children.
I would settle for not having to sit next to a woman taking a callous grinder to her bare feet for 30 minutes.
Or how about not pulling hair and spitting on fellow passengers. Or how about just not disrobing and emptying your bowels in your seat?
Air travel is disgusting enough with so many coughing, sneezing, unwashed people crammed into a flying pressurized tube. It’s also dangerous.
You could find yourself buckled up beside a guy who bites. Or a freak who believes he’s being followed by “Satan’s disciples,” eats rosary beads and attacks flight attendants. Or a “Tony Hawk wannabe” menacing passengers and flight attendants with his skateboard – until finally zip-tied only to break free like a suspense-movie villain. (Duct tape and zip ties are now standard equipment on every flight.)
In January, an intoxicated and belligerent business-class passenger on a trans-Atlantic United Airlines flight decided to take a pee in the aisle.
You’d think that the passengers in business class would be a little more discrete about doing their business.
Zachary Greear, 34 at the time, was arrested and pleaded guilty to intoxication, threatening, abusive or insulting behavior, and causing annoyance onboard an aircraft. He was fined $10,000. But worse for him were the headlines on two continents.
How’s that old saying go? It takes years to build a reputation but seconds to destroy it on a plane? Behave people.
Greear, a climate analyst, may never get through another job interview without a hiring manager suggesting adult diapers.
He also gave a new meaning to “The Golden Age of Travel.”
Nurse this
For no stated reason, President Donald Trump pardoned a tax-evading scoundrel who ran a shoddy nursing home empire.
Joseph Schwartz ran Skyline Healthcare, a failed chain that once operated 95 facilities in 11 states. He was sentenced to 36 months in prison in April for a $38 million employment tax fraud scheme.
Before that, he was besieged with lawsuits from seveal states alleging lousy care to thousands of nursing home residents. When Skyline collapsed, some states had to take over his homes or find new places for vulnerable residents to live out their last days.
Read More: Pardon Me (Business Blunders)
Schwartz “stole from… employees and created staffing shortages that endangered the health and safety of their elderly residents,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in 2019. (She’s now governor.)
There’s no White House Press release or explanation from Trump on this one.
“It sends a chilling message: Connected people can risk the financial health of a nursing home, the well-being of its residents, and the livelihoods of people who work there and they will not be held accountable,” Laurie Facciarossa Brewer, New Jersey’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman told NJ.com
We all know that Trump has been playing fast and loose with pardons, giving more than 1,500 convicts a break just this year – including his beloved Jan. 6 insurrectionists. But as pardons go, it just doesn’t get any sleazier than this.
How can you tell when a lawyer is lying?
“How does an attorney sleep? First he lies on one side, then he lies on the other.” - An old lawyer joke.
Pennsylvania attorney Michael Brandon Cohen, 42, received a 15 month sentence on Wednesday for twice forging a judge’s signature on fake court orders.
He was representing a client in suing a health care company and claimed he won the case when he didn’t even file the complaint. … So here’s a fake court order. Happy now?
This may be an uncommon shyster tactic since it’s doomed to be discovered. But it’s happened before in the Keystone State. In 2015, now-disbarred attorney Stephen P. Ellwood got two years’ probation for doing the same thing.
He must have been an exceptionally bad liar. He misspelled the judge’s name.
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I haven't flown in over 10 years. It was stressful even back then. Can't imagine it today. Sad.
The 400% increase in passenger outbursts since 2019 is stagerring. I wonder if the civility campaign will actualy make a difference when flying has become such a stressful experience. The security theater definitly doesn't help people's mood before they even board.