How To Deal With An "Unruly Passenger" On A Cross-Country Flight

[Braintree]

This is a really interesting article. Almost reads like a novel.

 

It was a fairly standard news item — man escorted off airplane for unruly behavior. But movie producer Cassian Elwes (Blue Valentine, Margin Call) offered another point of view when he logged on to Twitter to relay the experience.

Here's how the flight diversion unfolded, from Elwes' perspective.

 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/how-to-deal-with-an-unruly-passenger-on-a-cross

[sweepstakes]

Damn.

[baph]

And then he looks at me and growls you must be a cop too. How many american cops do you know that have english accents I say

 

Man, I wish he'd said "unlike some other American Cops, I can speak with an English accent."

[kichiguy]

dark

[Salvatorin]

Interesting read.

[tontonz1]

'We all love the ones we hate. Blood. Lust. I was born in queens. We all lose hope'. Marco I won't forget you I promise.

 

Damn...

 

Almost makes you feel bad for the guy.

[chaosmachine]

nice find.

[RichieBees]

hey guys check out what happened to me u just got to read like 400 twitter posts

[Braintree]

Yeah, that must have taken some patience to post each portion...

[awepittance]

i'm interested to read the story but am i the only one who is literally offended by having to read through that many twitter posts?

[baph]

i'm interested to read the story but am i the only one who is literally offended by having to read through that many twitter posts?

 

you are not alone

it diminishes the whole thing, makes it look like bathos

I don't see how a series of tweets is more efficient than writing the thing at once, and then copy-pasting it to a blog post or otherwise electronically publishing it, but I'm living in the past

[Guest Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald]

Transcription for those that don't like the Twitter post format:

 

I want to write this all down before I forget it, even though it's 3:45 am. I just got home. Tonight I took the 9:00 pm Jet Blue from NY to LAX. When I got on the plane I went to my seat 20F, a window seat I had specifically booked. There was someone sitting already in my seat. A youngish looking guy, maybe late 20's (turned out he was 32), quite burly, white crew cut, lots of tattoos. Gang looking maybe. “Hey, that's my seat man” I said. A quick drawling “fuck you, it's mine now” was the response. I sat down next to him mumbling “charming”.

 

He pulled his hoodie over his face and leant against the window like he was going to sleep. Two minutes later, along come a young Japanese couple. He has the aisle sea next to me and his wife, the one directly behind him. He asks me if they can sit together and I happily oblige.

 

We take off. About one hour into the flight, the Japanese lady who was sitting next to Hoodie gets up and trades with her husband. Hoodie wants to get up. He walks back to the back and stands in the galley for 10 minutes, just staring at the metal wall. The stewardesses ignore him. Then he comes and sits down. The Japanese couple are squeezing away from him. He starts ripping up a magazine and licking the paper. Then he starts sticking the magazine pieces to the mini TV in front of him. The wife calls the stewardess who comes and tells him to stop.

 

Then he wants to get up again. This time he walks to the front. I feel uneasy, so I go to the back, tell one of the ladies he's acting weird and I'm really not sure that it's a good idea he's hanging around the front where all the buttons are for the doors. In the front I see some sort of exchange with him and a lady who has just come out of the loo. He starts back down the aisle and stops halfway. He just stands in the aisle staring at some guy not saying anything for 5 minutes, like he wants to fight someone. The Japanese look worried.

 

I went back to the stewardess and asked “isn't there an air marshal who can some and sit next to Hoodie?”. She says “no, they can't identify themselves. The air marshal's only there to start at the cockpit door and protect it”. She calls the captain who says there's another off duty one on board. The Japanese couple get up and go stand in the back. The plane is totally full and there is nowhere else for them to sit.

 

The off duty air marshal comes in. He sits down next to Hoodie and they exchange a few words. I'm right behind and now Hoodie start shouting at the guy “fuck you” many times. Hoodie tries to get up, but the air marshal blocks him. More “fuck you”'s. Hoodie throws his vodka at him, but it lands on the couple in front of him. The stewardesses come up and and try to talk to Hoodie to no avail. They then turn around and ask if anyone wants to volunteer to sit next to him. As the Japanese couple refuse to to come back and the air marshal sits away from Hoodie, I'm feeling quite guilty for switching with the Japanese couple in the first place and volunteer to sit next to him.

 

I stand up and look over. Let's talk I just say. Hoodie, who's called Marco, says:

 

“I know he's a cop” to the air marshal. He then looks at me and growls:

 

“You must be a cop too.”

“How many American cops do you know that have English accents?” I say.

“You're fucking security” he says to me again.

“No I'm not. I'm going to sit down and we're going to talk about films. Do you like films?”

“Yes.”

 

I sit. The smell of alcohol is incredible.

 

“You do like films?”

“Fuck you.”

“Do you go to films?”

“Fuck you.”

“Do you write at all?”

“Fuck you. Yes” he says.

“Where did you grow up?” I asked.

“I'm a fucking marine man, don't fuck with me”, he says.

“I will kill you man.”

“Come on” I say, “what have you written?”

“I wrote a short story yesterday.”

“Really Marco, what was it about?”

“A kamikaze pilot. He sees his kids and wife in a flashback, just as he crashes.”

 

This is not a particularly reassuring conversation twenty rows away from the cockpit.

 

“Where did you grow up?” I asked.

“Lower east side man, NY. Shooting heroin. My father killed his father, who was a bad man and now my father's dead. I live in Queens now. I went to the marines to get off drugs.”

 

He pulls out a canister from his pocket filled with little green pills. He swigs from it. The plane jolts and the pills fly everywhere.

 

“Did you ever write about the marines?”

“Fuck you man, I don't want to talk about it. I've seen shit no man should ever see. I can't write it.”

 

I tell him I'm a film producer. He tells me he's going to LA to work on a commercial doing construction.

 

“I gotta work man, but I hate LA.”

 

I turn to the air marshal.

 

“I think I can keep him talking for the next two hours until we get to LA” I said.

“Too late” he says, “we're going to Denver.”

 

I turned to Marco again.

 

“I want you to read my stuff. It's a film”.

“Cool” I say.

“Give me your email address”, which he does.

“I want to give you something man” he says.

 

He pulls out this patch that says 'Stay' on it. [image available at http://pic.twiiter.com/dHhAEWJ9 ]

 

The captain comes on and says:

 

“There's a small problem on board and we are diverting to Denver. We will be landing in 20 mins.”

Marco is oblivious to this and wants to tell me about his tattoos. He shows me the one on his arm with the Madonna.

 

“I shot heroin in her eyes”.

 

He then pulls up his wife beater and there's a giant skull on his chest.

 

“See this huge scar? A nigger tried to stab me in the heart in Queens, but I held up my hand just in time and got this car on my wrist too. I've seen shit man.”

 

The air marshal whispers:

 

“Tell him we're landing in LA”.

 

“Listen, this flight was quick. We're landing in LA” I say.

“I want to write down my email for you. Hey lady” he says to the woman in front, “gimme paper”.

 

I give him a pen and he starts to write as he swigs more pills from the little bottle.

 

“Don't forget me man.”

“I won't, I promise” I say.

“You're going to forget me man” he says, before punching me quite hard in the ribs. I laugh in shock. He then whacks on the thigh, which hurts. I stuff his address in my pocket. He wants to wrestle. I push him off jokingly, which stops me.

 

“Don't forget me man”, he keeps saying.

 

The plane starts a rapid descent. The air marshal whispers to me:

 

“Get up when we start taxi-ing. The cops will come on, get out of the way.”

 

Marco is till repeating “don't forget me” as we land and taxi.

 

“Wow, I hate LA” he says again.

“I need to go to the bathroom” I say and get up.

 

The captain comes on and asks everyone to remain seated. A precaution he states. A few minutes later, two policemen come in. Marco stands up. With not much fuss they handcuff him and lead him down the aisle and out of the plane. It's silent. The two stewardesses come up and thank me.

 

20 minutes later a cop comes on board and asks me to follow him out to the jetway. The lady who was coming out of the loo earlier is filling a form.

 

“He groped me” she says.

“I'm pregnant and I'm pressing charges.”

 

An FBI officer comes up to me and asks me to write out a statement. I wrote that I use to be William Morris' agent and that I've dealt with difficult people before and that really, this guy wasn't that difficult. Just then, six police officers come quickly down the jetway with a guy they are pushing / holding / walking. It's Marco, but he has a blue mesh hood on. Just as they are about to reach me, they make a hard right out of a side door and down some stairs to a waiting police car. Marco is fighting it.

 

“He tried to spit at us” says one policeman trying to justify the Hannibal Lecter mask they have on him. Now I can't help feeling bad for Marco. It's a federal offence to make a plane land and the charges from the woman will probably be assault. We eventually take off again. I replay the whole thing in my mind again as the adrenaline wears off. What's the message, what the point?

 

I realise the point is these wars are fucking with our children's minds. A whole generation is being sent home screwed up. I find one of the pills on the floor and the nice lady in front Google's it on her phone. It's clonazepam, a drug for bi-polar anxiety. Heavy. He was probably very anxious about flying. I opened his not and this is what he wrote:

 

“We all love the ones we hate. Blood. Lust. I was born in Queens. We all lose hope.”

 

Marco, I won't forget you. I promise.

[Guest Deep Fried Everything]

yikes

 

though i think the bit about the war is somewhat melodramatic, as this guy was dealing with heavy shit before he ever decided to go into the marines. sure, maybe it intensified (?) his problems, but they were there long before he signed himself away to war.

[lumpenprol]

It's a fairly interesting story but it seems like the only interesting thing that has happened in this guy's life, ever.