{"id":2317,"date":"2002-07-12T10:52:22","date_gmt":"2002-07-12T15:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=2317"},"modified":"2002-07-12T10:52:22","modified_gmt":"2002-07-12T15:52:22","slug":"what_do_you_do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/07\/12\/what_do_you_do.html","title":{"rendered":"What do you do with a drunken pilot?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is there a reasonable basis for America West kicking off a passenger who jokingly asked if the pilot were sober? Maybe<\/a>, according to an OpinionJournal reader:<\/p>\n

In the case of someone publicly accusing the pilots of being intoxicated, both the pilots and the airline will usually hold up the flight in order to give the pilots a sobriety test in order to allay any doubts that may have arisen in the minds of the passengers who heard the accusation.
\nGiven that this obviously costs the airline a lot of money, the passenger who made the accusation will usually be sent on another airline (as happened with the America West passenger who was sent on American Airlines) and often banned from ever flying that airline again for being a troublemaker.
\nI believe any airline would have done what America West did on Monday for fear of lawsuits, and any pilots would have done the same for fear of any possible FAA or company action against them.<\/p>\n

Oooookay. So it’s now a Zero Tolerance issue.<\/p>\n

I can understand why someone making baseless accusations — especially costly ones — would be kicked off (and banned). I can even see, given the danger, why someone who jokes about having a bomb would be similarly treated.<\/p>\n

But, jeez, folks — given that a week earlier there had <\/i>been a pair of drunken AWA pilots (thus it was likely on a lot of peoples’ minds), and given that it was <\/i>just a joke, it still smacks of retribution by the flight crew (not to mention AWA) to have acted as they did — especially since, as far as has been reported, it wasn’t actually treated as an accusation, and no sobriety tests were made.<\/p>\n

And what sort of message does this send to folks who really do <\/i>have a concern? Shut up and pray? If I think I see something funny out on the wing, should I say anything? If I’m wrong, will I be kicked off the flight for being a trouble-maker?<\/p>\n

Certainly there doesn’t seem to be any problem these days with passengers complaining about that swarthy-looking Ay-rab fellow <\/i>giving someone the hairy eyeball. Pilots have been more than happy to turn around and take the plane back to gate under those circumstances, and I’ve not heard of any passengers getting kicked off and banned for such accusations — except for the accused themselves.<\/p>\n

But when it’s the pilots who are being joked about, well, that’s just trouble-making.<\/p>\n

I feel so much better now …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is there a reasonable basis for America West kicking off a passenger who jokingly asked if the pilot were sober? Maybe, according to an OpinionJournal reader: In the case of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homeland-security","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12201,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/10\/23\/fly_the_friendly_skies.html","url_meta":{"origin":2317,"position":0},"title":"Fly the Friendly Skies","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 23-Oct-07 1:14pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A bizarre story going on here.\u00a0 A few years back, NASA (which does do research into air safety in its \"aeronautic\" capacity) started a survey of pilots\u00a0that came back with...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13045,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/08\/10\/maybe_driving_at_christma.html","url_meta":{"origin":2317,"position":1},"title":"Maybe driving at Christmas is a better idea …","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 10-Aug-08 1:50pm","format":false,"excerpt":"We've actually begun discussing our trip to California over Christmas, pondering whether (given the cost and inconvenience of air travel) it might make more sense to drive out (bonus: more...","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15588,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/08\/14\/saving-the-airline-animals.html","url_meta":{"origin":2317,"position":2},"title":"Saving the Airline Animals","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 14-Aug-09 7:58pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Republic has won the bidding for bankrupt Frontier Airlines, beating out Southwest.\u00a0 Republic improved its initial $108.75 million offer, removing pre-closing conditions and receiving antitrust clearance as part of submitting what was deemed the best offer for the bankrupt Frontier. The other suitor, Southwest Airlines, said its refusal to remove\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/frontier.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2338,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/07\/10\/screw_em_if_the.html","url_meta":{"origin":2317,"position":3},"title":"Screw ’em if they can’t take a joke","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 10-Jul-02 2:45pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It's one thing to overreact to someone doing something stupid like joking about having a bomb or a gun while boarding a passenger jet. It's quite another thing to try...","rel":"","context":"In "Fourth Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Fourth Estate","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/fourth-estate"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":133264,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/13\/when-can-an-airline-boot-you-off-a-plane-when-youve-already-boarded.html","url_meta":{"origin":2317,"position":4},"title":"When can an airline boot you off a plane when you've already boarded?","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 13-Apr-17 7:46pm","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting look from a legal perspective at the now-infamous \"re-accomodation\" of a United passenger because United needed the seats for some crew going to the destination.http:\/\/lawnewz.com\/high-profile\/united-cites-wrong-rule-for-illegally-de-boarding-passenger\/Based on this legal reading, once United had let folk board, all the \"deny boarding\" clauses no longer applied; while there are clauses regarding\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/0bb2d23e-1fdd-11e7-ba38-4217a96bb749_1280x720_0816395B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/0bb2d23e-1fdd-11e7-ba38-4217a96bb749_1280x720_0816395B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/0bb2d23e-1fdd-11e7-ba38-4217a96bb749_1280x720_0816395B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2297,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/07\/15\/awa_aha.html","url_meta":{"origin":2317,"position":5},"title":"AWA? Aha!","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 15-Jul-02 8:35pm","format":false,"excerpt":"After my nastygram to America West about their kicking off a passenger who joked about the pilots' sobriety, I got this letter from AWA: Thank you for contacting America West...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}