This is clearly a plot by Tonie Christie and the City of Amarillo to get people to visit. They “Hire” a Pilot to go “Crazy” at the right point in the flight, and then the plane HAS to be diverted to the nearest city which is Amarillo. Hospital? More like Airport Pilot’s Lounge for a Brandy to Celebrate another load of customers!

This solves the major problem of Amarillo’s Tourism which is that Amarillo is harder to get to than Narnia.

After all. Since time immemorial people have been asking the question…

“Is This The Way to Amarillo?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld1DTmXesTo

I even have a youtube link of british soldiers asking about the way to Amarillo. A YOUTUBE LINK! You Must Believe Me! I have Proof! PROOOF!!!

This is a completely amazing story.

The service job of flight attendants means dealing with planes full of people who are collectively seated in confined space for extended periods of time, subjected to a long and sometimes undignified security processing, denied amenities often available as baseline service for many airlines in previous decades (I’m thinking of the 1980s specifically), declining standards of customer service, subject to delay and cancellation (these are often beyond control or blame, but there sure seems to be a marked psychological reaction to them), affected by both memory of actual terrorist events as well as media reporting (both accurate and inaccurate) about additional possible events, and compounded by whatever additional stresses they have in their lives outside of the flight (on my way to a funeral, just found out my contract won’t be renewed after this trip to the job site, headed to Mayo clinic for cancer treatment, fear of flight, etc.). Many passengers and airline staff may also be firmly and comfortably rooted in various aspects of privilege and react negatively to perceived outgroup members or not enough “recognition” of their sense of entitlement.

My sister also reported that on many flights, some passengers either arrived tipsy, or proceeded to ingest (or at least request) sufficient purchased alcohol that could result in dramatically lowered behavioral inhibitions. Airlines can refuse to allow drunk or belligerent passengers to board, but there are incidents where passengers arrive sober (or sober-ish) and then make every effort to reach their final destination of drunk-and-loud or drunk-and-indignant.

Lastly, in my sister’s case ([understatement] and I have this sneaking suspicion that it has happened to many women in that job [/understatement]), there was never any shortage of jackasses eager to earn their demerit badge in sexual harassment.

Throw in media attention on international events, add a dash of readily available multi-media portable platforms in the hands of passengers, and put in the oven of 24-7 internet/television media display until done.

What we need are some statistics: number of these kinds of incidents now vs., say 10, 20, and 30 years ago, controlling for things such as travel times, presence/absence of alcohol/drug use, demographics, geography, carrier, circumstances of delay (if any), so forth. It may be a case of “Crime rates have declined, but media reporting of crime has increased and become more sensationalized such that public perception of crime does not match the reality.” Maybe there were “good old days” of air travel, I just don’t know.

Still learning,

Robert

I always wear something blue whenever I’m in the back woods of Arkansas or other places where aliens do their abducting and anal probing. You should too.

BTW: This is also where the tradition of brides wearing something blue started. Aliens LOVE the color white. White is like crack to aliens. So they started abducting brides until someone gave a bride something blue — and they didn’t get abducted.