I work for an airline. I will admit that our passengers are pretty legit most of the time aside from the typical grumpy, annoying, run-of-the-mill BS, so when someone is abnormally terrible, it’s hard to forget.
It’s a morning flight from Las Vegas to Seattle, and the whole crew is on the last leg of their four-day trip, exhausted and trying to get home. This classic Vegas five-foot-nothing blonde floozy begins to board in last night’s clothes and makeup, with NO SHOES, and starts demanding blankets.
Me: “We don’t have blankets on our flights, ma’am.”
We are a super short-haul budget airline, and I try to explain this.
Passenger: “You’re all just lying and being lazy!”
This whole time, she’s holding up boarding.
Me: “Ma’am, ain’t nobody got blankets here. Please take your seat. Like, now.”
She takes her seat but within five minutes she’s ringing her call light repeatedly, bothering the other flight attendants.
Passenger: *In a demanding tone* “Stop being lazy and just get me a blanket!”
She’s not causing too big a disturbance (being crazy, obviously, but no swearing or yelling), so other than her reluctance to just chill out, I really have no reason to kick her off the flight.
Yet.
The gate agent gives us a final opportunity to kick her off, but she seems to have finally come to terms with the lack of blankets and chilled out. The pilots have to hold off our departure to press a few more buttons or whatever, and while we’re waiting at the gate, that’s when she loses it. Had we taken off with her on board, Lord only knows how much patience I would have had.
Passenger: *In an even more demanding tone* “I want all of your names! I’m going to get you all fired! Get me my blanket!”
Me: “Ma’am! I promise that if we had blankets, it would be soooo much easier to give them to you than to continue having this terrible conversation.”
She then starts cussing and throwing out some slurs. I give our gate agent the go-ahead to take her off the flight, but now she refuses to leave. The passengers are all getting angry and yelling:
Passengers: “KICK HER OFF ALREADY!”
At this point, the procedure is to call the police if a passenger refuses to leave, which can result in arrest. Explaining this usually lights a fire under any resistant passenger’s a** and gets them off the plane. Unfortunately, police are at least an hour out from being available to arrest her, so they send the three biggest airport firefighters to the scene.
She once again refuses, and all logic is out the window.
Passenger: “I have a medical condition! It’s my circulation! I can’t walk off the plane anymore! Just let me fly!”
Firefighter: “Yeah, and that won’t somehow turn into an in-air medical s*** show. Yeah, but no.”
With the captain, the flight attendants, the firefighters, and the gate agents all standing around trying to reason with her that she’s holding up all these nice people, she finally cooperates.
Passenger: “Fine! But I have to be wheeled off the plane because I can’t walk!”
That meant pulling out our little ghetto onboard wheelchair, which was the only thing narrow enough to fit down the aisles.
Gritting our teeth, we wheeled her a** off! I s*** you not, the whole cabin CHEERED. They said we — as a crew — handled everything as well as we could’ve, so that was a relief.
