A Tale of Manners

This story is from Tuesday when I flew through JFK on my way to Philadelphia. JFK isn’t my favorite airport to fly through for three reasons.

First, JFK usually means I’m on a small plane which means no jetway. Instead, passengers walk down the cramped, tiny steps of the airplane, and then walk outside for a bit to get to the terminal. These planes are so tiny that all bags bigger than normal-sized purses are gate checked, and passengers have to collect their gate checked bags outside at the bottom of the plane stairs. When it's cold as it was on Tuesday, being outside is just awful.

Second, I’ve had one out of the last four flights there leave on time. Two were entirely canceled and the one I’m writing about was 90 minutes delayed.

Third, the gate serves multiple planes at multiple times so you can have four or five flights’ worth of passengers milling around the gate area and shoving forward with their boarding passes in hand. The crowding just adds to the annoyance and confusion.

On Tuesday I initially noticed this woman partly because of how she was dressed (red cowboy boots, black skirt, red sort of fleecy-capey-drapey thing—very distinct) and mostly because she was sort of high strung. She paced a lot, and told everyone around her tired she was, she’d just returned from Europe and was eager to get home. She wasn’t belligerent (yet) but she was agitated.

Then our delays started. They weren’t announced over the PA system, they just appeared on the flight status board. This board stands on the floor and also displays 15 to 20 other flights and it’s in the same area where all those passengers were milling around. So it’s hard to see.

Once the cowboy boot lady realized we were delayed, she got pretty aggressive with the gate agent, demanding more information and a reason for the delay. All the poor gate agent knew was that the flight crew hadn’t yet arrived from their inbound flight. That wasn’t good enough for the cowboy boot lady and she just got louder and angrier, and started infecting others around her. The gate agent had probably six to eight irate people berating her within 15 minutes. At one point, I seriously thought they might turn violent.

Finally the cowboy boot lady took off and announced to us all that she was going to go have a drink at the bar while she waited for the plane. I happen to know this bar pushes double shot drinks by offering a slight discount, and based on what happened next I’m pretty sure she took advantage of that.

We finally boarded and taxied forever out to the runway (another feature of flying through JFK). We were second in line for take-off and actively taxiing and here comes cowboy boot lady stumbling up the aisle to the lavatory. She made it in there and from the sounds of it just puked her guts out. She’s lucky the pilot didn’t go back to the gate and kick her off the plane.

I think she filed a complaint with Delta because I got a survey asking me about the delay and the ground crew. I was happy to fill that one out since what happened was not their fault and in my opinion, they showed admirable restraint in dealing with an out of control illogical screamer.