I’m employed by an airline. I must confess that our passengers are generally quite decent most of the time, aside from the typical grouchy, annoying, and run-of-the-mill nonsense. So, when someone is exceptionally awful, it’s really hard to forget.
It’s a morning flight from Las Vegas to Seattle, and the entire crew is on the last leg of their four-day journey, exhausted and eager to get home. This classic Vegas five-foot-nothing blonde bombshell begins to board wearing last night’s clothes and makeup, without any shoes, and starts demanding blankets.
Me: “We don’t have blankets on our flights, ma’am.”
We are a super short-haul budget airline, and I attempt to explain this.
Passenger: “You’re all just lying and being lazy!”
All this time, she’s holding up the boarding process.
Me: “Ma’am, nobody has blankets here. Please take your seat. Like, right now.”
She takes her seat but within five minutes she’s repeatedly ringing her call light, bothering the other flight attendants.
Passenger: *In a demanding tone* “Stop being lazy and just get me a blanket!”
She’s not causing too big a disturbance (obviously crazy, but no swearing or yelling), so other than her reluctance to just calm down, I really have no reason to kick her off the flight.
Yet.
The gate agent gives us a final opportunity to kick her off, but she seems to have finally come to terms with the lack of blankets and calmed down. The pilots have to hold off our departure to press a few more buttons or whatever, and while we’re waiting at the gate, that’s when she loses it. Had we taken off with her on board, Lord only knows how much patience I would have had.
Passenger: *In an even more demanding tone* “I want all of your names! I’m going to get you all fired! Get me my blanket!”
Me: “Ma’am! I promise that if we had blankets, it would be soooo much easier to give them to you than to continue having this horrible conversation.”
She then starts cussing and throwing out some slurs. I give our gate agent the go-ahead to take her off the flight, but now she refuses to leave. The passengers are all getting angry and yelling:
Passengers: “KICK HER OFF ALREADY!”
At this point, the procedure is to call the police if a passenger refuses to leave, which can result in arrest. Explaining this usually lights a fire under any resistant passenger’s butt and gets them off the plane. Unfortunately, the police are at least an hour away from being available to arrest her, so they send the three biggest airport firefighters to the scene.
She once again refuses, and all logic is out the window.
Passenger: “I have a medical condition! It’s my circulation! I can’t walk off the plane anymore! Just let me fly!”
Firefighter: “Yeah, and that won’t somehow turn into an in-air medical shitshow. Yeah, but no.”
With the captain, the flight attendants, the firefighters, and the gate agents all standing around trying to reason with her that she’s holding up all these nice people, she finally cooperates.
Passenger: “Fine! But I have to be wheeled off the plane because I can’t walk!”
That meant pulling out our little ghetto onboard wheelchair, which was the only thing narrow enough to fit down the aisles.
Gritting our teeth, we wheeled her butt off! I swear to you, the whole cabin CHEERED. They said we — as a crew — handled everything as well as we could’ve, so that was a relief.
