LAX: Hell at in a Tin Can
I am amazed that my brother-in-law is not in jail. No, it’s not that he is a bad guy or some kind of crook. He is a normal human being—at least by the standards of my extended family. Still, I expected Homeland Security to cart him off. Again, not that he is a terrorist or bomb-carrying anarchist. No bombs, I would have expected him to explode all on his own.
My brother-in-law was trapped like a sardine on an international flight at LAX on Saturday night. After the hell of Heathrow, where nothing works, and an eleven-hour flight, he got parked on the tarmac at LAX for over five hours. I would have gone nuts—literally claustrophobically crazy. I would have been carried off the plane either in handcuff or a straight jacket (and under some circumstances, I am slightly more patient than he).
He was saved and the judicial system was saved because the aircrew handled this radically unacceptable situation with grace. They kept the plane air-conditioned, the water flowing and the entertainment on. They even attempted to keep the passengers informed, telling them it would be an hour. Then after two hours promising only another two hours. Still, they tried.
Many other passengers of many other flights were not so lucky. They got hot planes, no air, no water and no real news about their situation. This is just wrong on every level.
Yes, we need to vet international passengers. We have to control our borders and one place is at our very vulnerable airports. But it is neither right nor humane to keep people locked up on hot planes and give them no reliable information about what is going on. We need a Passenger’s Bill of Rights that assures minimally decent treatment of people who are only trying to fly. Continued abuse of passengers on international and domestic flights will hurt our economy by keeping visitors away and us on the road and off the planes. We do not accept the excuse that “the computer broke.” Mayor Antonio demands answers and an investigation. Not good enough. I don’t want reports and panels. I want passengers to be guaranteed the right to deplane and to be able to wait in tolerable conditions.
I know that I make some travel choices based on the current hellish state of air travel. And I only can hope that if I’m trapped on the tarmac for many hours and go ballistic, that an American jury would be understanding and let me off for time served.
Airlines and the TSA and everyone involved with flying has indeed taken advantage of "national security" to turn airports and planes into jails and passengers into inmates.
Stewards/esses threaten you at the slightest pretext, like objecting to their giving away your window seat and putting you in the center aisle because of "a computer glitch," -- Shut up, or I'll have the pilot land the plan as an emergecny and have you arrested!" is an actual incident I witnessed. Like that makes sense and makes people feel safer. It's all an excuse for horrible service and intimidation.
As if women being patted down on tbeir privates in public, not being allowed to carry you own water and being dependent on their largesse, weren't enough.
The pathetic thing is, this whole LAX disaster happened because of the same sort of thing any home computer user has experienced: the router goes bad, but you think it's the service provider, and after wasting hours dealing with it as a computer problem, the provider (Spring in this case) says it's not their fault, so you finally check the router -- voila, something you should have replaced hours ago had you known.
Meanwhile, the LAFD, LAPD and all sorts of agencies were there making plans and calls, wringing their hands, formulating a contingency plan from scratch. How much did that cost us? In order to make such a poor, primitive impression on travelers.