Steven Slater --- Your Opinion

[Cosima___J]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/08/10/ne ... index.html

Flying is just not enjoyable anymore. Trying to comply with TSA regulations about what is OK to pack in your carry on. Take off your shoes, take off your jacket, watch a gloved TSA person paw through your personal items. Some airlines charging extra for checked bags. No more meals (OK, sometimes the meals were not too great, but sometimes they were pretty good). Seems like the flights I've been on, nobody pays the least bit of attention to flight attendants or to the requests to "remain in your seats until the plane has come to a complete stop and ... blah, blah."

Admittedly, flying across the country beats driving that long distance, but heading to the airport is an experience I now dread, where once I used to enjoy flying. Poor Steven Slater has to ( make that used to) live in that environment many hours a day. Yikes!

[RebLem]

I don't know why they arrested only Slater. The jerk passenger who was the proximate cause of this incident eminently deserves to be arrested and charged with this crime, too.

[HoustonDavid]

It's kind of easy to defend Slater in his anger toward a rude passenger, although
flight attendants are trained to hold their tongue under extreme provocation. What is
unclear is whether the passenger "jerked" the bag in such a way to strike Slater or
it was simply an accident with Slater standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It did leave a mark, as his arrest pictures show.

What I can't defend is his opening a cabin escape door that subsequently released the
chute. Apparently he ranted on the P.A. system so everyone could hear his about angry
confrontation, grabbed a beer from the frig (nice touch), slid down the chute, and escaped
(temporarily) to his car in the employee parking lot. The open cabin door and deployed
chute does appear to be a potential danger to the other passengers, which is one of the
things he's being charged with.

But it sure was a great - even Shakesperean exit. Unfortunately, it was also the end of
his career, which he undoubtedly knew at the time.

[Donald Isler]

It's too bad that this fellow is getting so much favorable attention. Of course, anyone who has experienced mounting frustration at work, and enjoyed not even his/her five, let alone fifteen minutes of fame, can identify with the desire to act this way, and make a dramatic exit.

But basically he's just a jerk who snapped.

That's not good. That's not admirable.

Let me contrast that with two men I knew who exhibited almost infinite patience at the end of a long, stressful work day. Both were doctors.

Five years ago I had my first retinal emergency. I was seen by my opthalmologist, a wonderful man who has since died. He gave me an emergency appointment at 5 PM. He could immediately tell that this was not a good situation, so he decided I should be seen right away by a retinal specialist. Then, on his own initiiative he 1) Called the specialist and commanded him to stay after hours in his office till I could get there, 2) Got me directions to the other man's office and 3) Called my primary physician to arrange for the insurance forms to be sent to the other man's office. He did all of this while trying to remain upbeat so I wouldn't get more nervous than I already was.

I arrived at the retinal specialist's office as his staff was preparing to go home. I got to know him, and them, very well over the next several years through numerous laser treatments and several surgeries till everything was finally just about as good as new. But this doctor, like the other one, on this occasion and later, always spent as much time as was needed to answer my questions and perform whatever treatments were necessary without demonstrating any impatience, or complaint.

These are the kind of people I admire.

Not, as I said before, a jerk who just snapped.

[jbuck919]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/08/10/ne ... index.html

Flying is just not enjoyable anymore. Trying to comply with TSA regulations about what is OK to pack in your carry on. Take off your shoes, take off your jacket, watch a gloved TSA person paw through your personal items. Some airlines charging extra for checked bags. No more meals (OK, sometimes the meals were not too great, but sometimes they were pretty good). Seems like the flights I've been on, nobody pays the least bit of attention to flight attendants or to the requests to "remain in your seats until the plane has come to a complete stop and ... blah, blah."

Admittedly, flying across the country beats driving that long distance, but heading to the airport is an experience I now dread, whereonce I used to enjoy flying. Poor Steven Slater has to ( make that used to) live in that environment many hours a day. Yikes!

You forgot canceled flights, something that has affected me in two out of the last two domestic flying trips I've taken. Even though I can fly non-stop from Albany to Washington, I may very well brave the (familiar from many years of living there) eight-hour drive down the Jersey Turnpike and I-95 the next time just to have things under my own control. I wonder if the airlines have lost any business from people switching like that, not to mention the green factor.

[Cosima___J]

Yes, good point. When you fly out of Augusta, they jerk you around like that a good bit. (We have THREE airlines that serve Augusta now.)

[Teresa B]

I admit, I thought it was kind of funny initially, but now that there's more information out that the flight attendant had been generally rude throughout the flight, and he had the gash on his forehead before the flight, not from the unruly passenger's bag--well, it's sounding like this guy was at least as big a jerk as any unruly passenger. (Still, the panache of his exit has to be credited... )

Teresa

P.S. Don, it sounds like you had a couple of good docs!

[Daisy]

I hate flying anyway. Haven't flown since 1991, and only did so then because there was no other way to get to where I was going. The whole airline industry has gone mad. The aqngry passenger was wrong, Slater was wrong, and this is just one more mountain being made out of one more obnoxious molehill.

[Cosima___J]

Hey Teresa and Daisy. Good to see you posting at the Pub. Stick around and join us more often!

[Daisy]

Hey Teresa and Daisy. Good to see you posting at the Pub. Stick around and join us more often!

Will whenever I can.

[living_stradivarius]

The real heroes are the flight attendants that deal with this crap every day and don't blow up about it.

[RebLem]

To me, Slater's greatest offense was not the chute deal, but getting on the P.A. system and cursing out all the passengers, including children that were probably on the flight, and adults who had nothing to do with his alleged confrontation with one passenger, whose very existence now seems to be in serious doubt. Like Teresa, I'm felling less sympathetic to the guy now that more information is coming out.