MyWestworld

Airline Madness

Posted on 31. Jan, 2009 by Kerry Banks in Transportation

All right, so maybe Regina isn’t the world’s most attractive destination, but Eder Rojas’s reaction was a bit extreme. On May 8, 2008, during a Compass Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Regina, the flight attendant ignited a fire inside a paper towel compartment in the rest room because he was upset he had to fly the route. The billowing smoke that filled the back of the plane caused the pilot to divert the flight to Fargo, North Dakota, where all 72 passengers landed safely. Rojas was charged in federal court and the U.S. attorney’s office for North Dakota will prosecute the case. The maximum prison sentence for setting a fire on an airplane is 20 years. But first police have to find Rojas, who missed his court appearance and skipped town. Strange? Sure, but this was not the only peculiar incident involving airlines or airports in 2008.

A sports reporter covering the Euro 2008 soccer tournament arrived late for his Air Dolomiti flight from Verona to Vienna. Angered when the staff for Air Dolomiti told him he could no longer board the flight, the man did what any of us would do: he called the airline on his cell phone and made a bomb threat so the flight would be delayed. The bogus threat closed air traffic at the airport for several hours while the bomb squad searched the airplane. But shortly after his anonymous call to the police, the German journalist went back to the check-in counter to say he had heard the plane was no longer preparing to take off. Since no public announcement had been made as to the flight’s status, the man quickly became the prime suspect. Police then interviewed the reporter and found, of course, that he used his cell phone to make the bomb threat. 

A pilot with the Turkish airline Anadolujet was fired in September after he left the cockpit to use the bathroom and left the controls of the Boeing 737 in the hands of a 15-year-old boy. Well, at least that’s the official line the airline is giving. The captain says he merely let the boy sit in his seat while he went to the restroom; the co-pilot was actually the one in control of the plane. How did the teen get into the cockpit? He was apparently a plane junkie, had practiced on a flight simulator, and asked if he could observe the captain and ask him questions. The pilot agreed and invited him back to the cockpit. The captain landed in trouble after he snapped a picture of the kid sitting in his seat. You guessed it: the picture went on the Internet.

A stubborn German flier nearly died from alcohol poisoning at a Nuremberg airport security checkpoint after he chose to drink a litre of vodka instead of getting rid of it. European security rules stipulate that passengers may take only a small amount of liquid onboard with them in their carry-on luggage. But the 64-year-old German man, who was on his way to Dresden from Egypt, refused to comply. He also balked at his other options–put the vodka in his checked luggage or send it home. Instead he downed the entire litre at the security checkpoint. According to local police, he “was quickly unable to stand or otherwise function.” The man was sent to a local clinic for treatment.

Startled airport employees in Bromma, Sweden, called police in July after a dwarf suddenly hopped out of a large suitcase at the check-in counter. Police discovered that it was a stunt being filmed by a hidden camera for a comedy program on private television network Kanal 5. Police spokesman Mats Eriksson says airport staff decided against filing charges even though they were “shocked and humiliated” by the prank. Kanal 5 spokesman Dan Panas told Swedish news agency TT that the show was meant to be “provocative and entertaining.” He said the intent was not to make fun of dwarves, but to make entertainment out of “extreme situations.”

On a flight from New York to Georgetown, Guyana, in July, a first-class passenger got angry at seeing economy passengers being allowed to exit before him- so he opened an emergency door and slid down the chute. The man appeared to be intoxicated, the Associated Press reported, perhaps unnecessarily.

In May, a Tokyo Customs officer secretly slipped 124 grams of hashish into a piece of luggage belonging to a traveller from Hong Kong. It was expected that the sniffer-dogs who work at Narita International Airport, would find the drugs. But the canines failed to locate the contraband and the passenger cleared customs and left the airport with his souvenir intact. At this stage the dog handler who had made the initial mistake “panicked” and informed his superiors. The Tokyo Customs Department then frantically sought help from airport officials to track down the traveller at his Tokyo hotel and recover the hashish, which had a street value of $10,000. Japanese customs officials are banned from using travellers’ luggage for training practices (normally a training suitcase is used), but one worker admiited that it was common practice. “We want to improve the sniffer dogs’ ability, so we have practiced this way several times in the past.” The officer who lost the drugs was suspended from duty for three months, while two others had their salary cut by 10 percent for three months. The head of Tokyo Customs was also given a verbal warning for failing to oversee the operations, and eight other senior officers were either warned or given temporary pay cuts. The dogs apparently escaped punishment. Said Tokyo Customs spokesman Kazutoshi Takahashi, “We are deeply sorry that such acts have happened.”

Jerome James was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in September for smuggling three endangered banded iguanas from Fiji. While that may seem like a fairly routine bust at first glance, his hiding place was definitely different. James wears a prosthetic leg, which he had hollowed out and stuffed with the iguanas before wearing it back to the U.S.

A homeless chef who lived at London’s Gatwick Airport for three years was jailed in August 2008 for repeatedly breaking an antisocial behaviour order banning him from the airport. Anthony Delaney, 43, who was sentenced to 15 months in prison, had moved to Gatwick in 2004 and ate, slept and showered there in a manner similar to Tom Hanks’s character in the Steven Spielberg film The Terminal. He would only leave Gatwick once a fortnight to make the 12-mile walk to collect his Jobseekers’ Allowance and survived on cheap sandwiches and food voucher handouts from genuinely delayed passengers. He slept in disabled toilets and spied on staff to find out the security code for the showers, and he dodged armed police by learning their patrol routine. But in 2006 he was barred from entering the airport until 2011 after he was convicted of stealing from passengers and an airport store. Over the next two years Delaneywas caught breaking the antisocial order three times, and in January 2008 he was jailed for 95 days. He was released immediately because of the time he had already spent on remand, and within a few hours he was found at Gatwick again, breaking the order for a fourth time. On June 3 he broke the order again and was arrested.

Italian women carrying luggage containing the skeletal remains of a man who died in Brazil 11 years ago were stopped by Munich airport police during a stopover on their journey from Sao Paulo to Naples. “Airport security spotted the skull and bones when the suitcase was put through the x-ray machine,” said police spokesman Christian Maier. One of the women was the dead man’s sister and she explained to officials that it had been her brother’s wish to be buried in Italy. After showing his death certificate, the Italian bone smugglers, aged 63 and 62, were allowed on their next flight to Naples. “We questioned the women and they produced a valid death certificate showing he had died 11 years ago of natural causes. As they were not violating any German laws they were allowed to continue their journey to Italy,” said Maier.

A senior pilot with Cathay Pacific Airways was fired for an “unauthorised low-level flypast” of a new Boeing 777-300ER in Seattle in January 2008. Ian Wilkinson had just taken off from Everett Airport bound for Hong Kong with about 60 passengers on board, including Cathay Pacific chairman Christopher Pratt, when he suddenly returned to the airfield for a low-level flypast with the landing gear up. News sources say Wilkinson had obtained permission from the tower for the stunt, but not from his employers. While onlookers applauded the daring low-level pass, the plane’s passengers were said to be “stunned into silence.” When footage of the Top Gun escapade later found its way onto the Internet, it revealed Wilkinson had taken his jet down to a mere 30 feet above the runway. Following the incident, Cathay Pacific issued a notice to all cockpit crew reminding them of the company’s policy for conducting fly-bys.

Photo Credits:

#1: abcnews.com

#2: pbase.com

#3: people.tribe.net

#4: orientaltrading.com 

Tags: Travel Security, Travel Trivia