Anybody who's been on a plane with their kids knows what a job it is
keeping everyone happy. Cranky toddlers + airplane + vacation
excitement/lack of sleep = disaster. I should know, since as the former
wife of an airline pilot I got to travel a lot. Woo! With 3 kids in
tow! Traveling stand-by! Which means you never know if you're getting
on the plane until the last minute, if at all (you are SO jealous right
now, I can tell)!
It also means that I know the drill for having
someone removed from a plane. The Captain (pilot) is completely in
charge of the plane. After all, he's got your life in his hands. So if
he says you're off the plane, you're off. Just like that. No questions
asked. The thing is, the pilots mostly stay up in the cockpit, flying
the airplane. For which we should be glad. But that means that they're
not exactly privy to all that goes on in "the back", where the unwashed masses
passengers are. So who's really in charge back there? Why, the flight
attendants, of course. Which means that if one doesn't take a shine to
you, for whatever reason, there's a chance she/he can convince
Mr. Bigshot Pilot to have you thrown off. Because he's got to make a
snap judgment, along with pushing buttons and levers and talking to the
tower and calculating how much fuel they have and using words like
"vector" and thinking about the fight he had with his wife or the
flight attendant he'd like to boink or maybe both, based on what some
flight attendant, who chances are he's never even worked with before
because pilot crews and flight attendant crews travel in different
circles, is telling him. And he's got, like, maybe seconds to do this.
So the fact that
Kate Penland and her 1.5 year old son Garron were thrown off a Continental ExpressJet flight recently doesn't altogether surprise me. But it does sicken me.
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