Prats on Planes

I thought this post might be basically about bruised knees, because it is a family joke that every time I do  a long distant flight I am always behind the only person in the row in front who throws their chair into full recline mode without so much as a by your leave and I end up with many hours of painful pressure on my knees while desperately trying to do the exercises they recommend you do with your feet to obviate the risk of a DVT.

 

(As a digression I used to wear those travelling socks that they said also helped, until I read something that said actually unless they were specially made to measure to fit your own particular legs then they increased rather than decreased the risk. Hmmmm.)

 

The trip back from Sydney was no exception. Before the flight even got off the ground the woman in front with the tangly hair and the strangely rigid expression had stuck on the Qantas headphones, belted herself up and then pressed the button in the arm rest and bounced onto my knees. I was not impressed. But actually she pales into insignificance.......

 

because when we got back on the plane after a refuelling stop in Dubai there was this eejit two rows in front, who refused the air stewardess' request that he switch off his mobile phone. Not once but several times. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but eventually she said she would have to get her supervisor. The moment she walked away he took the phone out of his shirt pocket and switched it off. The supervisor came and when the passenger said he had now switched off the phone, the supervisor asked him to get it out so he could check. The passenger refused. Over and over again. By this time we were taxi-ing towards the runway and eventually the staff member said that neither he, the pilot nor air traffic control had the time for the argument. If the passenger wouldn't show him that the phone was switched off then there was no alternative but to take the plane back to the parking rank. The passenger made some reply to the effect that 'Ha, that wasn't going to happen', and the supervisor took himself off to the internal phone and called the captain.

 

At which point the passenger took the phone out of his pocket, waved it at the supervisor and graciously allowed the steward to check that he had indeed switched it off. And we continued on our merry way.

 

So, what was the point of all that grandstanding? At no time did the guy appear to have any justification for his actions other than some sort of in-bred desire to be truculent. All he did was make lots of his fellow passengers cross and himself look a prat. People do occasionally astound me, in a bad sort of way.