They all want better seats. They call each other names and fight in the aisles. They want to eat and drink their fill, and each wants more than anybody else. When they whine and complain, they might give you a little kick in the shins to let you know they`re unhappy.
This is not the 3d grade. This is a jetliner six miles high, traveling near the speed of sound between New York and Miami. Here is all the greed, avarice, aggression and lust that one of the largest cities in the world can inspire, concentrated in the confined space of an aircraft cabin.
Legends and myths are born in the skies between the Big Apple and the Big Orange. These are the most famous (or infamous) round trips in domestic jet travel among airline employees: the 60 or so flights a day from New York to South Florida`s airports, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Ask any flight attendant who has ever worked on one.
Have you heard about the flight that was delayed at LaGuardia because a couple of escaped convicts were clinging to the outside, hoping to hold on for the takeoff so they could fly south?
It is not a pretty sight. You have your New Yorkers going on vacation. And you have your raving drunks, your drug smugglers, your migrating hookers, your transvestites, your mental patients, your public wife beaters, your escaped convicts and a man who thinks he`s Elvis Presley.
The man who thinks he`s Elvis Presley travels with two women who profess to think they are Elvis Presley`s girlfriends.
”He`s always dressed in Elvis Presley white jumpsuits, even when it`s cold, you know, with the black Happy Days boots. And the collar is always turned up,” says Eastern flight attendant Carol Ferguson.
”And he always comes on the same way. He says, `Hey, can anybody get a beer around here?`
”I say, `Hey, it`s you, Elvis!”`
And the man is so pleased to be recognized that he gives 8-by-10 glossy pictures of himself to the cabin crew. He autographs them all as Elvis.
Jack Barker, now a public affairs spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Atlanta, says the routes were famous more than 20 years ago when he worked for the old National Airlines.
He remembers wealthy women headed to Palm Beach for the winter would purposely abandon their fur coats aboard the planes. ”They would want a new coat. So they would say they had lost their old one. And they would take the insurance money to buy a new one. We would track them down. `Is this your coat?` And they would say something like `No, it`s not mine, and get that thing away from me.”`
These days among flight attendants, New York-Palm Beach is called the Miracle Worker Flight. That`s because a huge squadron of wheelchair-bound elderly women will board in New York, where wheelchair passengers are boarded first. And then when the flight lands at Palm Beach International, where passengers needing wheelchairs must wait to leave last, the same invalids will rise from their seats to race for the door ahead of everyone else.
To work the New York-South Florida route as a flight attendant, you must expect the unexpected.
Picture this. Eastern attendant Carol Ferguson is serving drinks on a New York to Miami flight to a woman passenger with an empty seat beside her.
Woman passenger: ”Don`t let anybody else sit here.” (She gestures toward empty seat.)
Ferguson: ”All right. Would you care for a drink?”
Woman passenger: ”I`ll have a scotch and water, and he`ll have a scotch and water.” (She gestures toward an unoccupied seat.)
Ferguson sets two drinks in front of the woman.
Woman passenger: ”Well, aren`t you going to let his tray down and give him a napkin?”
Ferguson releases the serving tray and sets one of the drinks in front of the woman`s imaginary companion. ”That will be $5 please.”
Woman passenger gestures toward empty seat. ”He`ll pay for it.”
In an age when humankind has learned to streak through the stratosphere, when a modern jetliner can carry hundreds of people in comfort and safety, when technology provides hot food and a movie in the sky, passengers between the Big Apple and the Big Orange still cling stubbornly to the viciousness of the Stone Age.
”It`s the dog-eat-dog lifestyle in New York. You can`t sit back and be patient or be courteous,” Ferguson says.
Passengers get into push-and-shove contests over stowing coats in overhead compartments. ”`Don`t let his coat touch my coat,”` says Ferguson, quoting a passenger.
They fight over seats. ”`I got here first and I`m not moving.`
”I`ve seen instances where people have gotten into an argument, and they`ll have cheering sections. This side will be cheering for one guy and the other side will be cheering for the other guy. And you get in the middle of that, and they all turn on you.”
Often, the fights are between smokers and nonsmokers. Eight years ago, police rescued Ferguson and a squad of terrified flight attendants from aroused passengers after the crew tried to break up a fight aboard a jumbo jet before takeoff at LaGuardia.
”We`ve had people who have had heart attacks in the aisleway, and the New Yorkers have turned on the person who had the heart attack because he`s delaying their flight.”
She quoted a male passenger, a businessman:
”`Well, what are you stopping for? He`s already dead.”`
Passengers on these flights are famous for trying to walk off the plane with the lifejackets from beneath their seats. (They want life jackets for their boats.) And they want those plastic earphones they rented for the movie. (They take the earphones so they won`t need to rent another set for a movie on their return flight.)
Flights attendants say people have brought empty flight bags on board with them in hope of filling them with airline blankets, pillows, silverware and extra food and beverages that they demand.
Mike Clark, a spokesman for Pan American, remembers a time with National before its merger with Pan Am, when the airline had set up a promotional display of German sausages and cheeses at a boarding gate in Miami. The display was meant to promote National`s flights to Frankfurt, Germany, but by the end of the day, all the sausages and cheeses had been stripped away.
”We found them all later, strewn around the gates where we had been boarding the New York flights,” Clark said. Apparently, the New York-bound passengers had dropped the delicious-looking snacks as soon as they found they were made of wood.
New York-Miami flights are also well known to police at Miami International Airport. Airlines often ask police to meet arriving flights when cabin crews have been victimized by rowdy passengers. So airport officers have their own stock of stories about New York-Miami flights. Police Lt. Glennis Gregg says police recently rushed to greet an arriving flight after the crew members reported they had a near on-board riot.
Gregg said the instigator of the disturbance turned out to an 87-year-old man. ”This little old man got on the plane in New York and fell asleep, and the attendants didn`t awaken him until Miami. He apparently was angry that he missed the dinner, and he was demanding his money back.”
Eastern flight attendant Susan Lapham was a member of a cabin crew recently that tried unsuccessfully to deal with the demands of a woman traveling with an infant, the infant`s nanny, her husband and a giant, crib-size stroller.
The woman insisted that the giant stroller be placed in the cabin beside her seat, even though it blocked the aisle.
When the senior flight attendant objected and removed the stroller, the angry woman kicked her in the shin, Lapham said.
On another flight, Lapham and another attendant found a man on his knees in a restroom. ”He had dropped his false teeth down the toilet and he had stuck his hand in there to try to get them back. And his arm was stuck.
”We got the rest of the crew back there, even the captain, and we`re trying everything we can think of to get this man`s arm out of the toilet. The arm is turning red, and it`s starting to swell. The man is starting to get upset.
”Finally, after a mechanic on the ground radios up instruction on how to disassemble the toilet, we get the man`s arm out. He is completely humiliated. He is blue like a Smurf.”
There is no escape. The close quarters of a jetliner passenger cabin afford little opportunity for dodging angry passengers, intent on revenge because their wants have gone unappeased.
”A nice, elderly couple, very well dressed, were sitting next to a woman, who asked the man if he would move so that her friend with a child could sit next to her,” Lapham said.
”The man said, `Well, no, I`m sitting with my wife.` And this made the woman angry so that she browbeat this man the whole trip. She finally threw her tray on the man`s head . . . salad, mashed potatoes, cheesecake.”
Sometimes, these New York-South Florida veterans say, the passengers are crazy to begin with.
On one flight a 200-pound woman chased two flight attendants through the aisles and galleys, threatening to kill them.
The chase continued through the final approach and landing. The woman was finally subdued at the gate, where a woman who was meeting her, chided all the attendants: ”Don`t hurt her, she just got out of an institution.”
On one Eastern flight from New York, a large, obnoxious man insisted on sitting in the first-class cabin without a first-class ticket. He was so verbally abusive that attendant Nadine Deresh asked that police be called to meet the plane in Miami. And it turned out that he was wanted in New York for murder.
The next day on the ground at LaGuardia, two New York City detectives chased two nicely dressed suspects right onto the plane. As the men in their stylish suits fled down the aisle, they shed small packets of white powder.
Actually, the ultimate in passenger activity on board is probably sex. Says Eastern attendant Dee DiMartino Ruth, ”Sex is rampant.”
She and other attendants saw one passionate couple stroll into a restroom together. Apparently, the two positioned themselves against the attendant call button.
The result, Ruth said, was ”ding ding ding ding ding. You had a half-dozen flight attendants doubled over in hysterics at what was going on while all the passengers were wondering what all the bells were for.”
