Stranded airline passengers tell horror stories
SkyWest Airlines has apologized to a passenger barred from a plane’s restroom by a flight attendant. James Whipple says that after repeated pleas to empty his beer-filled bladder on a recent flight, he finally found relief - with an air sickness bag. Now, the Sandy man says SkyWest has issued him an apology for his distress….”It was like I had no choice. I started to urinate on myself. So, thinking the way I thought, I grabbed one of those vomit bags,” Whipple said….”I didn’t think I did anything wrong. I could have relieved myself all over my pants. It was almost like that was what she preferred me to do,” he said. On Wednesday, an airline representative apologized to Whipple on behalf of the attendant and promised to send him some travel vouchers. But a SkyWest spokeswoman also said Whipple wanted to use the bathroom while the fasten-seatbelt light was illuminated. That is against Federal Aviation Administration regulations. The captain had switched on the fasten-seatbelt light during the hour-long flight because the bathroom was unusable - the light was out. SkyWest spokeswoman Sabrena Suite-Mangum says that policy is a matter of passenger safety…. “As such we expect all our employees to adhere to those federal regulations,” she said.
Flying commercial has never been anyone’s idea of luxury travel, but over the past few years, the idea of customer service in our nation’s (not so) friendly skies has become the very definition of an oxymoron. Passengers are now treated more like cattle than customers, and, as if that reality wasn’t already bad enough, travelers must endure the invasion of privacy and dignity that is getting through security. Just wait; someone will try to sneak a bomb tucked in his underwear onto a plane. Before you know it, we’ll be instructed to remove our clothes (this wouldn’t be so bad if you happened to be traveling with the Swedish Bikini Team). Then will come the digital cavity search (OK…everyone bound for Boston, bend over and grab your ankles….)
FAA regulations and airline policies seem to be completely ignorant of the reality that THESE ARE PAYING CUSTOMERS they’re humiliating in the name of profit (the airlines) and security (TSA). James Whipple had to go…and as any beer drinker knows, what goes in eventually has to come back out, and there’s just no ignoring it. That one of the flight Nazis took it upon themselves to deny Whipple access to a bathroom is simply unconscionable. It’s just simple human decency to try to accommodate a person who has to use the bathroom. It’s a bodily function, and one not easily ignored after a couple of beers. Frankly, I think Whipple would have been justified in walking into the galley, undoing his zipper, and relieving himself in a coffee pot (airline coffee is generally bad enough that no one would likely notice the difference, anyway).
The problem here is that TSA and the airlines have the flying public over a barrel. We have to get where we’re going, and there isn’t another feasible, affordable alternative. Therefore, TSA and the airlines know that they can mistreat, disrespect, and abuse customers without having to pay the price. After all, most of us just want to get where we’re going. We’ve accepted that the airline industry is not exactly a bastion of prize-winning customer service, and we’re painfully aware of the lack of reasonable alternatives. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if airlines at least pretended that customer service and satisfaction was important to them?
