Fly At Your Own Risk

One commentator wrote "I used to be afraid to fly in case the plane crashed; ah, the good old days."

He's right.  In rapid succession - United beats and drags a pax off; American uses a stroller to subdue a woman flying with 'way too much stuff - perhaps they thought she was moving in?  That the enormous back pack held a camping tent, pots and pans, butane stove?  And another episode in San Antonio when a black woman got on and started flapping her pie hole belligerently, to the crew and pax.  Using very bad language indeed.

Good old days indeed... I was disappointed not to find hilarious one-liners such as those that followed the United fiasco.  Apparently throwing babies and strollers into the mix strikes a chord with our fellow great Americans.  No funnies at all.  Pity. 

In all of our years of flying, we have never seen behavior like this (let alone acted like this) and to a large extent, I blame it on "social media."  All of the pax seem to be armed with cell phones at the ready, salivating to get The Shot that could be seen around the world.

Andy Warhol and his "15 minutes" has a lot to answer for - but he's dead. 

I just remembered an incident back in the '70s.  It was my first flight to Paris and I was having trouble stowing my hanging bag 'cause it was full.  A flight attendant came along and started to help me until she got a look at the shirt I was wearing, black with big white letters that spelled out "Bionic Lover."  She sniffed, dropped her end of the bag and said, "Well, if you're bionic, you can just hang up your bag yourself."    Hey!  She was right!