disability

My wife and I went on a Caribbean Cruise, and took a nonstop flight back home, Puerto Rico to Los Angeles, on American Airlines.

On this return flight, we encountered one of the BATTIEST flight crews around.

It started in the airport. First off, they neglected to do any pre-boarding. We saw this poor old lady, who didn’t speak English, sitting in her wheelchair watching everybody else board. What’s she supposed to do? I still don’t know what happened to her, hopefully they got her on-board.

Even the boarding process itself was off. The lady taking the tickets, and the lady announcing the boarding group, were totally out of sync. Microphone: “Groups one through three please.” Ticket lady: “Group one only, we haven’t started group two yet.”

Then I get on board. As I’m heading back to my seat, I pass the bulldog flight attendant. She is walking through her section of the plane (about 12 rows), closing all the overhead bins. They’re still empty, but she’s closing them. As each person arrives in her section, she asks where they are sitting. If it’s behind her section, she permits them to pass. If it’s in her section, she examines their bag to decide if she’ll let them put it in the overhead bin. Rinse, repeat.

We seated quickly. A few minutes later this family with three kids (all under 10) gets on. They clearly speak very little English. They needed to have a serious talk with whomever booked their seats: three across in one row, then single middle seats in the subsequent two rows. So they’re trying to figure out which child should sit alone between two strangers. I attempted to call the bulldog over to help, but she says we’re not in her section, so to ask the flight attendant at the back of the plane. I head back, and that flight attendant told me that she had just gotten all the drinks, and had to load them or we wouldn’t be able to take off. She told me to ask the bulldog. When I said the bulldog sent me to her, she said to sit down and someone would be over eventually. Eventually that got straightened out.

So we manage to take off successfully, and we’re about 2 hours into the flight. Suddenly, one of the flight attendants comes on the PA system: “ladies and gentlemen, the pilot has just turned on the fasten seatbelt sign, as we are expecting some turbulance. Please return to your seats as quickly as possible. If you can’t get to your seats, please sit on the floor.” HUH???

There was no turbulance. Maybe they flew over it, who knows. After about 15 minutes, the fasten seatbelt was turned off, and we could get up off the floor.

Toward the end of the flight, the back flight attendant came to talk to the people sitting directly behind us, who had brought a small dog on the airplane with them. She tells them that she’s glad they brought it onboard, because it’s really bad to check dogs under the plane. They tell her that they actually have two dogs, so there is also one under the plane. FA goes on this long rant about how horrible it is – some pilots forget to turn on the light so they’re trapped in the dark for 8 hours, if there’s any power problem that’s the first area where power gets cut so your dog might freeze to death, there is frequently trauma lasting days after the flight, etc. So helpful.

As an alternative, the FA suggests that they have a doctor write a note claiming that they need the dogs for medical reasons, and they’ll be permitted to bring both on board. Someone behind her butts in and asks about consideration and safety for the rest of the passengers, and she tells them that if a doctor writes a note, that takes priority.

We managed to land equally uneventfully. After a quick detour because the flight attendants gave us the wrong baggage claim location, we got our bags and headed home.

Tagged as: animals, disability, dog, flight attendant, overhead bin, seats

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