The most irritating flier who knows everything, interviewed. A handy passenger fixes airliner saves 8-hour delay. A crowded Russian plane doesn’t take off because the passengers think the pilot is drunk.
Frequent flier knows everything about travel … and wants to tell you
Have you ever sat next to an airline know-it-all? Worse, a know-it-all that wants to tell you everything he or she knows. It is a flier’s nightmare. The Onion reporter evidently met up with one of the characters and filed this spoof. Don’t believe a word that’s written even though you have met this guy yourself, I’ll bet.
With an estimated 2,000 flights under his belt in his 23 years of business travel, Meyers claims to be “one of the nation’s leading authorities” on airport amenities, and said he is “more than happy” to pass along knowledge and experience to his fellow travelers.
“If you don’t fly often, there’s lots of stuff you probably don’t know,” Meyers said. “Like how much better the Northwest WorldClub lounge is in Dallas than the one at most other airports—especially La Guardia. Or how you can do on-line check-in with Continental, but that’s only if you have no carry-ons. Or how you should use your Delta SkyMiles card on weekends, because you get double miles on all purchases. Those are the kind of things you may not know if you’re not a seasoned traveler like myself.”
Passenger fixes faulty airliner
This one is real. It happened earlier this summer and was reported by BBC. Wouldn’t it be nice after waiting on the tarmac for hours to have a passenger go to the cockpit and fix whatever whatchamacalit was delaying the flight.
“We were in the plane, ready for take-off, when he (the pilot) announced there was a technical problem and that an engineer might have to be flown out from Manchester to fix it,” he said.
“Then a stewardess told us there was an engineer on board and they were checking out to see if he could work on it. He was obviously successful. When he came back onto the plane there was a round of applause from the back of the aircraft.
“It was reassuring to know the person who had fixed it was still on the aeroplane. What are the odds of something like that happening?”
Passengers reject their pilot, refuse to fly until he’s replaced
This happened in Russia this past winter. The passengers heard the pilot speaking on the plane and immediately recognized that he was drunk. Heck, if anyone can recognize a drunk, it would be a Russian who are experts on breathless vodka.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in Russia who doesn’t know what a drunk person looks like,” said Katya Kushner, who, along with her husband, was one of the first to react when the pilot made his announcement. “At first, he was looking at us like we were crazy. Then, when we wouldn’t back down, he said, ‘I’ll sit here quietly in a corner. We have three more pilots. I won’t even touch the controls, I promise.'”
As passengers waited three hours for a new crew to board the plane, more than 100 of them signed a statement saying they believed that Cheplevsky was intoxicated.
At the same time, an Aeroflot representative sought to assure them that “it’s not such a big deal if the pilot is drunk.”
“Really, all he has to do is press a button and the plane flies itself,” the representative said. “The worst that could happen is he’ll trip over something in the cockpit.”
BBC
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
