Prescription Suitcase

I’ve ranted on this blog before about proper in-flight etiquette and obnoxious airport and airplane behavior, but this recent column on MSNBC by Tripso columnist James Wysong sums the subject up beautifully. He describes - quite artfully, I might add - several annoying travel personalities, such as the Line Moron, the Hands-Free Guy, and the Stop-and-Starter. His list is spectacular. About the only personality I would add would be what I have taken to referring to as the “Alpha Male Business Traveler.” He’s sort of a hybrid of Wysong’s Hands-Free Guy, Strategic Complainer, and Late Arrival.

The Alpha Male Business Traveler is usually sporting one of those hands-free cell phone devices, and he has an assortment of phones and pda’s strapped to his fancy-schmancy regulation business attire leather belt. He is usually very loud when conducting his phone conversations (as Wysong mentioned) but also verbally aggressive/borderline verbally abusive and occasionally prone to fits of cursing. But the Alpha Male Business Traveler doesn’t stop there. This is the guy who hogs the electrical outlets in the gate area so he can charge his eight million gadgets and power his laptop, the guy who complains loudly about the smallest of flight delays, and the guy who shoves his way to the front of the line during boarding because he has elite status with the airline and just has to get on first, regardless of how many other people may be ahead of him. The Alpha Male Business Traveler also has a tendency to treat flight attendants like hired help. I once boarded a plane and the AMBT seated a few rows behind me actually held up the security announcements and push-back because he insisted that the flight attendant bring him and his buddy drinks. (This particular plane didn’t have a first class cabin, so AMBT decided he would just act like he was in first class and get his beverage on before push-back. Oh, and this same guy cut in front of me and a bunch of other people in the boarding line so that he and his buddy could get on first.) The AMBT also likes to argue with gate agents and flight attendants about whether or not his monster-sized carryon will fit in the overhead compartment on a regional jet or a dash-8.

I’ve also noticed that the AMBTs seem to be the worst offenders when it comes to hogging the armrests, sprawling into my seat space, and reclining so rapidly they practically break my laptop in half. There is nothing I relish more than an assertive flight attendant who can take these guys down a few pegs.

A recent news story recounted the unfortunate death of a female passenger on a recent American Airlines flight from Haiti to JFK airport in New York:

NEW YORK (AP) — Struggling to breathe, American Airlines passenger Carine Desir asked for oxygen, but a flight attendant twice refused her request, the woman’s cousin said.

Carine Desir was having trouble breathing and asked for oxygen, her cousin says.

“Don’t let me die,” the cousin, Antonio Oliver, recalled Desir saying after the attendant allegedly refused at first to administer the oxygen Friday.

But Desir did die, Oliver said Sunday in a telephone interview.

He said the flight attendant finally relented but various medical devices on the plane failed, including two oxygen tanks that were found to be empty and what may have been a defibrillator that seemed to malfunction.

You can read the rest of the story here. While this story is very sad and upsetting, unfortunately I can’t say that it’s terribly surprising. A flight attendant refusing a passenger’s request for assistance, empty supplemental oxygen tanks (makes you wonder if those oxygen masks that are supposed to drop from the ceiling in the event of a loss of cabin pressure would actually work), and a malfunctioning defibrillator all point to the declining customer service standards of the airline industry. The bottom line these days is that you just don’t matter. It’s sad but true.