| February, 2008 |  |
< Prev Page 4 Next > |
Weirdest Travel Stories of 2007 ...
2007 was not kind to travelers. Flights were packed and delays legion. Gas prices soared. The dollar tanked. But at least travel news offered some levity. USA TODAY’s Jayne Clark reviews stories that made us shudder — or laugh. And laugh we did, because if we didn’t have a sense of humor about travel’s vagaries, we would have just stayed home.
Crowded flights sparked tempers, igniting nastiness more often associated with barrooms than aircraft cabins. Among this year’s low blows:
- A fracas involving 20 passengers erupted in June on a flight from Lagos, Nigeria, to London. It was touched off when a passenger took exception to the reclining seat in front of him. Fliers duked it out with fists, bottles and belts, causing the captain to make an emergency landing.
- In July, a flight from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Turkey turned back after the crew was unable to break up a fight involving three inebriated men. It started, said the Russian News and Information Agency, when one of the men was “given the cold shoulder” by a woman he was chatting up and hit her in the face.
- A British couple pleaded guilty last summer to charges stemming from disruptive behavior on a 2005 flight from London to Jamaica, which included pursuit of “mile-high club” membership. After reportedly having sex in an aircraft bathroom, the couple, who had been drinking, caused additional disturbances in the cabin, and wound up handcuffed as the flight was diverted to Bermuda.
Passengers weren’t the only ones guilty of bad behavior in 2007. In April, a Northwest Airlines pilot locked himself in an airline restroom, where he had a loud, obscenity-laced conversation on his cellphone as passengers boarded his flight in Las Vegas. When confronted by a passenger, the pilot cussed at him. The flight was canceled as a result of “inappropriate language by a crewmember,” the airline said.
In other flight crew missteps:
- A British Airways flight from New Delhi to London was delayed 13 hours after the pilot refused to fly, saying he’d had a lousy night’s sleep in a noisy hotel room and needed to catch up on his rest.
- SkyWest airlines apologized to a passenger who said he was forced to urinate in an airsickness bag during a short flight in March because the only restroom was closed due to a malfunctioning light. The man told the Salt Lake Tribune he’d had two “really big beers. It was like I had no choice.” The pilot called police upon landing in Salt Lake, but the airline later gave the passenger a travel voucher in addition to the apology. Rude and annoying people weren’t the only elements that made unpleasant flights downright ugly. Consider these:
- Toilets overflowed on an Amsterdam-Newark flight on Continental Airlines in June, causing passenger Collin Brock to tell a Seattle television station King 5 News, “I was forced to sit next to human excrement for seven hours.” (Full story: Continental Airlines apologizes for sewage overflow)
- A passenger in first class on a British Airways Delhi-London flight in March awoke to discover that a corpse, upgraded from coach, had been propped in a seat in his row.
- She kept slipping under the seat belt and moving about with the motion of the plane,” Paul Trinder told Britain’s Sunday Times. “When I asked what was going on, I was shocked to hear she was dead.”
- A 64-year-old man was hospitalized earlier this month after chugging a liter of vodka rather than surrendering it at a checkpoint in Germany’s Nuremberg airport. (Full story: Man chugs vodka in airport line)
- In the Philippines in February, a German tourist displayed his annoyance — among other things — when he dropped his pants after being asked to go through a metal detector a second time. Unamused officials summoned police.
- An exasperated mother dumped the contents of her toddler’s sippy cup on the floor at Washington’s Reagan National Airport in June after officials told her she’d have to empty it if she wanted to keep the cup. She claimed mistreatment by the Transportation Security Administration and said she’d accidentally spilled the water. The TSA later posted a video of the incident on its website to bolster its version of the situation. (Full story: TSA releases video to counter sippy cup accusation)
- Not even Vatican-backed Mistral Air was willing to appeal to a higher power when authorities confiscated holy water from pilgrims returning from the Roman Catholic shrine at Lourdes, France. The airline’s president cited rules that ban carry-on containers holding more than 3 ounces of liquid, telling the Associated Press, “These (regulations) have to be respected.” (Full story: Holy water seized from fliers at Lourdes airport)
Online help to identify data modes
There are a bewildering number of digital modes on the air these days. While decoders are readily available,
it can take a practiced ear to work out what mode is in use. Recognising this issue, the British Amateur Radio
Teledata Group has put downloadable samples of around two dozen modes on its web site. The idea is that by
listening to the samples you can more easily identify modes you hear on the bands. You can get the files from
www.bartg.org.uk by following the Datacom link on the site. [RSGB]
| February, 2008 | |
< Prev Page 4 Next > |