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January 25, 2007
AirTran…..We Salute You !!!
Maybe this story should have been titled: “It’s about fucking time!!”
For those of you who have been living under a rock the last two days, here’s what has happened. AirTran, an airline serving primarily the eastern area of the United States, ejected a three year old girl and her parents from a flight because the three year old was screaming and yelling and crying uncontrollably. She was being a nasty little troll and her mollycoddling parents were either unable or unwilling to do what needed to be done to shut her up. And so the airline gave them the boot.
When I first heard of this story my heart went out to the airline because I figured they would be pilloried and hounded by the press, and I believe, that is exactly what the press tried to do. Let’s face it, for the most part the press are a bunch of liberal, politically correct twerps and they love nothing more than a chance to demonstrate their moral superiority in how they report a story. Well, I suffer no such delusions. If political correctness could be held in a bucket, I would find that bucket and kick it over, spilling the contents to the four winds. And so it goes with this story, because it hasn’t gone away.
Here’s how the ABC news tried to spin it:
On Jan. 14, 3-year-old Elly Kulesza and her parents, Julie and Gerald, were kicked off an AirTran Airways flight from Florida to their Worcester, Mass., home because Elly would not stop crying.
Elly, who had been a model passenger on the flight to Florida four days earlier, began to cry uncontrollably once she got on the plane, throwing a temper tantrum on the floor.
AirTran employees demanded that the Kuleszas calm down their child. When Elly didn't stop crying, the crew banned the Kuleszas from flying for 24 hours. Later, AirTran offered an apology to the family along with a refund on their tickets.
"As we have an obligation to the 112 other passengers onboard the flight to operate the flight on time," AirTran said in a statement, "we had to make an operational decision to ask the Kulesza party to deplane so the flight could depart."
Passengers Sympathetic, Unlike Crew, Parents Say
On "Good Morning America," the Kuleszas insisted that their toddler wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary.
"I don't know what happened. No one can tell when something like this is going to happen. She had a great morning, but then she got on the plane and she started to cry," Julie Kulesza said.
"She's like the typical 3-year-old. She has her moments, but overall she's a very, very good child."
The Kuleszas said that unlike the AirTran crew, the passengers on the flight were sympathetic to their situation.
What a bunch of horseshit. When I have found myself imprisoned in a flying tube with some petulant little brat, I want to shoot a hole in the fuselage just so I can watch it get sucked out into the atmosphere. It is only because of deep rooted urges of self preservation that I am able to restrain myself. That and beer. That and beer and the fact that I don’t carry firearms onto planes. Some people are uncomfortable when I do that and so I have an agreement with the airlines of the world. I don’t carry guns onto their planes and they let me fly with them. But back to the kid.
Look, I am a father and I have two kids and they too had their moments. But they would always calm down when I needed them to. On a couple of occasions I chose to depart a location early because of their behavior, but it wasn’t about embarrassment. It was about my unwillingness to make others around me suffer needlessly because of me. In other words, I treated them as I would have them treat me.
I have also run restaurants through the years and on several occasions have asked parents to take their screaming and or misbehaving whelps out of my restaurant. Always to the applause and thanks of those patrons who came in for a meal, not a circus. One father stated loudly that they would never come back. I asked him if that was a promise. I guess it was, though he looked none too pleased at the time. But on each occasion I also did the right thing and wrote off their meals. And that is what the AirTran did too. They refunded the price of the tickets and parted with those customers. But what AirTran really did was not provide bad service to the Kulesza family, it provided excellent service to the other 112 customers on their flight and I hope that in so doing that they opened the door for other airlines to start doing the same.
As I said, it’s about time airlines started worrying about the 'other' passengers and quit worrying about offending a very small few. (Are you paying attention Air Canada???)
Now if only they will start to do the same with passengers who smell like yaks…..
In closing and for the record, the press has done some serious backpedaling because the airline has been inundated with compliments and thanks for how they handled things. If you want to share your feelings with AirTran or better yet, book a flight with them, click the link and have a good flight. AirTran
~ AP
Posted by Anonymous Pundit at January 25, 2007 08:28 AM