Women falls asleep on airplane and sues...

I just marked you down for 100 bonus "character" points...

If the Bar Association gets wind of this post they'll probably put a bounty on your head...

my wife tells me if we get hit by a car, that she will undue my seat-belt, punch me in the face, then push me out the door

Does this sound like a good wife?

I'm talking about laws that have been in place since like the 70s!!!!!!!! They are NOT supposed to leave a passenger on a vacant plane! In fact, they are NOT suppossed to allow people on the plaane outside of the time between boarding and disembarking. It is NOT only a safety, liability, and legal issue, but a SECURITY one!

Suppose she were a terrorist? This would be a GREAT time to plant weapons, bombs, etc...

So REALLY... NONE of you would be upset at being left on the plane for 3.25 HOURS LOCKED on a plane and THEN being interrogated by the police!?!?!?!?

BTW There is NO "SNACK BAR" on the average plane! The CLOSEST you get is a cart, that may be, and is supposed to be, emptied! And would she know which one it is? And there MIGHT be packages, AGAIN they should be emptied, etc... that would be in ANOTHER area. Opening up the wrong area, if it isn't cleaned, COULD present you with a lot of garbage. GRANTED that should be cleaned out, but so should the other things.

And the pilot area may be locked! I haven't checked to see if there is an actual lock, and MAYBE it isn't true of some of the smaller planes BUT, a few months after 9/11, they started locking them up. And passengers are NOT supposed to go there.

It isn't like when I was a kid. When I was a kid, a lot of kids were invited up to look, got wings(Like airline employees), etc... But that was like 40 years ago.

Will it be investigated? Probably NOT! There is a law that was created not long after 9/11 that said that NO passenger was EVER to get up out of their seat within 30 minutes of reagan national airport. I have seen that broken many times, and maybe only 30% of the time did the flight attendant say "SIT OR ELSE!!!!!"!!!!! The law stated that the plane was to be diverted, and the culprit(s) detained and fined $11,000.

HECK, there is a law saying that jet bridges must be closed if no plane is there. They break THAT rule all too often. One time it endangered the life of a little girl. Her mother chased in to recover her. Her father went to recover them and THEN some IDIOT gate agent tried to act like a big shot and do what he should have done EARLIER. Well, when he tried to stop the father, the father broke the gate agents neck! The gate agent sued him!!!!!!!!! Luckily, the gate agent LOST! But some laws have a legitimate REASON for being there! Their STUPIDITY, and willingess(almost a DESIRE) to break the law could have led to THREE deaths! What if the toddler decided to play with the controls, and lowered the jetbridge? They could have all slipped off the end.

Steve

Steve - have you been watching Nancy Grace again? Push "off" and put down the remote

I would have thought a flight attendant would have noticed the woman - but she was in the last row of seats and I don't know what sleeping position she was in.

Was it an error that no one woke her up? Sure - but apparently no other passengers bothered either. Who sleeps through a landing and unloading?

Mistakes happen - she is clearly a heavy sleeper and she got missed. The lawsuit is stupid, though. She wasn't hurt - she was quite rested.

I've had three times when I've been advised to "sue" - and they were real problems. But problems happen and there's something wrong with expecting to be paid any time you are inconvenienced or an error causes a short term pain.

I'd suggest the airline award her one free ticket and a watch with an alarm.

kay

That's sadly happened to many people in the past few years. My one bright spot during this economy was that my sons jobs were secure. But then last year my younger lost a $100k/yr job in a downsizing - totally unexpected.

He had some rough months but then landed a job he loves - with a BASE of $120k a year. Good luck - hope the same happens to you soon.

kay

HECK NO! She could have poisoned food, if it was left, poisoned the water, left some sort of bomb, left weapons. WHO KNOWS!?!?!?

I'll bet a lot of us remember this story...(ignore commercial at beginning )

What she went through is nothing compared to this poor soul.




~Bill

It wasn't the fact about sitting in an empty plane if you read carefully she was locked in - and I don't know about you but often when I go on planes I fly someplace where it is a different cellphone provider and difficult to get signal - she had to wait on the plane for someone to get her. God knows when they could have come by - she could have been there for sometime after she woke up waiting on the next flight. Some planes sit in small airports for days. That is a horrifying thought if you were the one locked in the plane

Also the other crucial point is she may have had a deadline to make which was disrupted by the neglect of human safety and policy. Such can not be over looked.

Admit it Ken...You enjoy the extra frisking.

Yeah. We had Visas for Nepal, but since we weren't supposed to have a layover in India, we didn't get the (expensive) Indian Visas.

The crazy thing is that on the way back we got to go to the main waiting area, and it was very modern, clean, and even comfortable.



Unrelated story for you, Steve, since you have some knowledge of airport security:

On the way back from Nepal, my son had 30 pounds of rocks in his carry-on backpack. I'm sure Sal wouldn't need an explanation, but for the rest of you, he's a rock-hound.

In New Delhi, there are armed guards in abundance at every security checkpoint - with very visible machine guns. The station where our carry-on bags were scanned was no different.

I placed my backpack on the conveyor, and it went through the x-ray machine with no problem. When his backpack was passing through the machine, the technician backed it up under the monitor, then called over a supervisor for advice.

We were then escorted to the side where my son had to pull every item out of his pack. The three security guys could not understand why he had a pack full of rocks. After several minutes of very heated and very confused conversation, they called in a higher-level supervisor (all of this was done with the observance of machine-gun-armed guards). The supervisor spoke a little better English, and when my son explained that he collected rock as souvenirs, the supervisor chuckled and then explained it to the other guards who all started laughing.

This extra attention led them to put a special tag on his backpack. Two more times on the way to the airplane we had to completely empty our bags for some very serious armed guards. It was pretty tense.

After returning to the US, I learned that Nepal has serious problems with precious stones being smuggled out of the country. I suspect that this was the source of their concern. Regardless, it was the most hairy situation on our trip. Considering that it was just the two of us and that we went into some very remote areas in the Himalayas, that's saying something.

It was only the flight attendants that should check the plane as well.

Security or not, the flight attendants failed in this case.
A normal person can deal w/ things like this. But I think most 6 or 7 year olds left on a bus would wake up a little more panicked.

Think I'll drive to McD's for a hot coffee. That might payoff.