Airlines vs. passengers: The in-flight ugliness mounts
YIKES | Recent incidents show dark side of travel in the sky
How combustible can relations between airline employees and their customers become? Consider this report from the field:
A 56-year-old grandmother was handcuffed, marched off a JetBlue plane and arrested in Las Vegas after refusing a flight attendant's demand that she delete video of an argument between passengers during a flight this summer.
''I was never a threat. I never got out of my seat,'' Marilyn Parver told an interviewer for IAGBlog Podcasts, which reports on aviation and travel.
JetBlue disagrees with her version of the story and says in a prepared statement that Parver was taken off the plane for ''unwillingness to follow crew-member directions.'' The airline won't say what directions she disobeyed or comment further.
Sound familiar?
In the past year, Southwest crews directed a young woman from San Diego to cover up a too-short miniskirt and a Largo, Fla., man to take off a sexually suggestive T-shirt. A JetBlue passenger on a free pass was told to give up his seat and ride in the bathroom for a cross-country trip.
Parver, of Kingman, Ariz., says she was shooting pictures out the window of the New York-to-Las Vegas flight and heard noise. She turned the camera toward the mother of a loud child and a nearby passenger yelling at each other.
Thirty minutes later, flight attendants asked travelers what they had seen. Parver volunteered to show them her video. An attendant told her to erase it, Parver said, threatening to blacklist her from JetBlue. Crew members later said the captain wanted the video erased and she could face federal charges for disobeying.
Parver, 5 feet 2 and 110 pounds, stood her ground firmly but politely, she says. Two policemen and a federal agent led her out in handcuffs in Las Vegas. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a complaint against her by JetBlue, she says.
Flight-crew members have full authority to ''stop any activity that could interfere with the crew or affect the safety of passengers and crew,'' says David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the trade group for major airlines.
The tradition goes back to old English law, where ship captains held extraordinary power to discipline miscreants whose actions could endanger everyone on board, says Paul Hudson, a Sarasota, Fla., aviation attorney.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he says, flight crews have too often used threat of criminal charges if passengers don't instantly obey directions.
''When you get on a plane, your rights are different,'' Hudson said. ''But that doesn't mean there's no line that can't be crossed.''
Scripps Howard News Service