Unstable air

No sooner than I post the story about demonic children on a plane, then the story breaks (so to speak) about a plane that had to land due to a flatulent passenger. Last weekend, a low-budget Dutch airline called Transavia, flying from Dubai to Amsterdam, had to divert to Vienna due to a fight between passengers on the plane. The pilot reported to traffic control, “passengers on a rampage.”   

Apparently, two Dutchmen were sitting next to an elderly, overweight man who was suffering from some gastronomical distress and was loudly breaking wind. The two men asked the man to stop, but he refused to comply. The two men then asked the airplane crew for assistance with the gassy patron and the pilot then gave a direct order to the passenger to stop farting. The passenger did not comply, and a fight ensued. 

When the flight landed in Vienna, police boarded the plane with dogs and removed four passengers. The two Dutchmen who had complained about the farting and two Moroccan sisters who were sitting in the same row were removed from the plane. The airlines said the two sisters were unruly, but the Moroccan women claimed they were just innocent bystanders who just happened to be caught in the “crossfire.” The airlines permitted the flatulent passenger to continue to Amsterdam. The four passengers who were removed from the flight received lifetime bans from traveling on Transavia ever again.

I can see how this situation got out of hand. I used to live on the German-Dutch border, and I know the Dutch are not the kind of people who can refrain from saying what’s on their minds and they are usually somewhat blunt in how they say it. Out of control, flatulence is just not the kind of thing that Dutch people are going to endure without comment.

Flatulent passenger, “Riiiiipppp!”

Dutch passenger, “Hey! Vat is dat noise? You can’t do dat in here.”

Flatulent passenger, “Pppphhhhttt!

Dutch passenger, “Hey you, stop dat fartin right now dis instant!”

Flatulent passenger, “Rumparumparumpa-phht!”

Dutch passenger, “OK, dats it! You gonna die now!”

The nationality of the offending farter was not revealed in any of the numerous news stories about the incident. Nor was it revealed what he had for lunch. Do they sell chili at the airport in Dubai? Was this man a victim of a bad culinary experience or was he just a product of a different culture where farting on a public conveyance is considered appropriate?  

I’m not clear on the international aviation rules about flatulence. Does the captain of the plane really have the authority to tell someone to stop farting? What do you do if the passenger can’t or won’t stop? You can’t exactly open a window.

The was an incident several years ago on a British Airways flight out of London that had to turn back because someone had a particularly smelly bowel movement in the lavatory. The odor was so foul that the plane turned around after being only 30 minutes into the 7-hour flight and had to return to Heathrow. Passengers had to wait 15 hours to catch the next flight to, you guessed it, Dubai. 

Is it a coincidence that both these flights were connecting to Dubai or are we seeing the beginnings of a diabolical plot from an international terrorist organization that is trying out a new form of biological warfare? Maybe that is why the Austrian police brought fart-sniffing dogs on board the Transavia plane.  

Now we understand what the pilot means we he says we are about to experience “unstable air.” 

Demonic children on a plane

I used to fly a lot. I flew on the E-3 Sentry for several years, but I also often traveled on business while I was on active duty with the Air Force. Many of the flights were long. The E-3 flights typically lasted ten hours or more. I also made a lot of trans-Atlantic flights when traveling to and from Europe. It was no big deal back then. Now I don’t fly it all if I can avoid it.

Flying, like many aspects of life today, has changed. First, you have to be electronically strip searched before you can get on the plane. You must empty your pockets, remove your shoes, remove your coat, and possibly endure a manual strip search. I have a piece of metal in my arm that is large enough to set off a metal detector. I have a card from my surgeon explaining this. Unfortunately, my surgeon has a Pakistani name.

Getting on the flight is just the beginning of the traveling ordeal. As I discussed previously, you may find yourself seated next to someone who has a comfort animal sitting on their lap—like a turkey or a Rottweiler. Or, perhaps you’ll be next to someone who just flushed their comfort hamster down the toilet.

However, most any animal is better than sitting next to someone who has a toddler. I have endured the toddler thing both as a passenger and as a parent.

I once did an overnight trans-Atlantic flight next to a young mother who had a small, squirming, noisy child on her lap. It wasn’t a problem for me. Being a highly trained military professional, I can sleep in any place and any situation even if there is gunfire and tear gas involved. When I awoke the following morning, completely refreshed, I noticed the young woman staring at me with hatred. She had been up all night with the child and couldn’t even get up to use the toilet. She dropped the child in my lap and went to the bathroom for what seemed like the rest of the flight. I think she took a nap in there.

Years later, I was in her shoes when bringing my family and one-year-old son back to America for a visit. He did not travel well. He cried for much of the first leg of the journey despite all my wife’s attempts to distract him. When the plane landed, and people began to disembark, they all turned to look at the devil child. On the next leg, I decided to shroud him like a bird in a cage. We had strapped him into his seat in a car carrier, so I draped a blanket over him like a tent. He squawked for a few minutes and then went to sleep. Peace at last.

I don’t know if this technique would have worked with the demonic child that was filmed on an 8-hour flight from Germany to New Jersey last summer. The child was running up and down the aisle and climbing seats and screaming for the entire journey. Someone posted a video of the ordeal on YouTube. Now we know why weapons aren’t allowed on airplanes.

 I’m sure there are other ways to deal with demonic children that don’t involve cruelty. I mean, don’t they have overhead bins and duct tape on airplanes? Perhaps one of those air masks in the overhead compartment could be rigged with a general anesthetic? I’m just spit-balling here.

I’m sure someone will eventually figure this out. Until then, I’ll just drive to where I need to go. 

Hamsters on a plane

What is the world coming to when a young college girl can’t take her emotional support hamster on the plane with her?  Last November, Belen Aldecosea was told she couldn’t bring her hamster, Pebbles, on a Spirit Airlines flight out of Baltimore. The airline employee allegedly advised the young woman to release the hamster into the wild or flush it down the toilet. Aldercosea chose to flush the hamster as she thought that would be more humane.

Well, I have some problems with this course of action. First, there is nothing humane about flushing anything down a public toilet unless it is that bag of “medicinal” marijuana you forgot to remove from your backpack before going through security. Second, isn’t this how we wind up with giant, mutant hamsters in our sewer system? Although there is nothing that Baltimore needs more than an attack from a giant, mutant hamster, we don’t want to start an epidemic in the rest of the country.

It seems the airlines are getting a little fed up with all the emotional support animals people are trying to get onto airplanes these days. One of the latest incidents occurred In January when Delta Airlines denied a woman permission to bring her emotional support peacock on a flight out of Newark. The woman claimed she had a ticket for the peacock and all the appropriate paperwork validating the peacock’s emotional support credentials. And yet, she was still denied. Wow. Where is the humanity? I wonder if she had to flush the peacock down the toilet?

Airlines don’t allow reptiles, rodents, ferrets, insects, spiders, goats, or animals with tusks or hooves to fly on the airplane. What? You mean I can’t bring my emotional support javelina on an airplane flight? I’m shocked and disappointed in the capitalistic, fat-cat, animal-hater airlines that choose to ignore my emotional problems for no other reason than bogus concerns about the health and safety of other passengers and the flight crew.

According to Delta Airlines, they flew some 250,000 emotional support animals on their airplanes— increase of 150 percent since 2015. The number of incidents involving such things as biting or defecating animals on flights has doubled since 2016. It used to be that the worst thing that could happen to you would be If you wound up sitting next to a squalling baby on a long flight.  Now, you can end up sitting next to someone’s emotional support animal that might maul you to death and then defecate on your corpse.  

The emotional support animal concept is a relatively new phenomenon. It seems to me that if someone is so emotionally fragile that they need to travel with a hamster, maybe they shouldn’t be flying at all. Maybe they should be traveling in a wagon or an ark. Maybe that’s what Noah was up to with all those animals he had on his boat. Maybe they were all emotional support animals. After all, the earth had just been wiped out by a flood. Who wouldn’t want an emotional support animal or two?

Flying on an airplane used to be a classy affair. Now, airline flights are starting to take on the same characteristics as traveling on a bus in rural Central America. You get squeezed into a smelly, overcrowded vehicle and end up sitting next to someone who is traveling with their goat.

Well, you will be happy to know that young Belen Aldecosea, who so humanely flushed Pebbles down the toilet, has acquired a new emotional support rodent. However, this one has a tiny mask and snorkel just in case. 

Nutella orgies

One never knows when a riot will erupt. Well, sometimes you do. We’ve pretty much gotten used to seeing riots on Black Friday or when the Lakers win a championship. Soccer riots are so predictable they are now scheduled as part of the game. However, sometimes riots erupt due to systemic inequities in society. For instance, on 14 July 1789, the French people had finally had enough of the French monarchy and stormed the Bastille to fight for the Rights of Man.

On 25 January 2018, the noble French people once again resorted to violence to preserve the rights of man to have…uh, cheap nut spread. Yes, some marketing genius at a supermarket company called Intermarche, decided to slash prices on Nutella by 70 percent, prompting riots all over France as people scrambled to get a jar of the coveted nut spread.

Nutella is a spread made of hazelnuts and cocoa. After World War II, an Italian man named Pietro Ferrero invented the nut spread as a way to extend limited supplies of cocoa powder. He had plenty of hazelnuts, so he just mashed them up and added what little cocoa he had to make a chocolate-tasting spread to put on bread. Since then, Nutella has apparently become a mandatory part of the French diet. They consume about 100 million jars of this stuff each year. That’s a lot of nut spread.

When the supermarket chain announced the Nutella price discount, chaos erupted. One customer said, “They are like animals. A woman had her hair pulled, an elderly lady took a box on her head, another had a bloody hand.”

According to one supermarket employee who wishes to remain anonymous, “People just rushed in, shoving everyone, breaking things. It was like an orgy. We were on the verge of calling the police.”

The employee’s statement is very interesting. “Like an orgy,” he said. JUST WHAT KIND OF PERVERSIONS ARE THEY GETTING INTO IN FRANCE! No wonder Nutella is so popular. I guess we now know why they call it a nut spread.

I don’t remember reading anything similar about the French Revolution. Sure, there were lots of people getting their heads chopped off after Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake.” Or, something like that. But, I don’t remember reading anything about cake frosting orgies.

To the credit of the Nutella company, they issued a statement condemning the actions of the supermarket chain that started the riots. “We wish to specify that this promotion was decided unilaterally by the brand Intermarché,” the statement read. “We deplore the consequences of this operation, which create confusion and disappointment in the minds of customers.”

Of course, the Nutella company immediately began ramping up nut spread production to cash in on the “confusion and disappointment” of the Nutella-addicted masses. They also canceled all their advertisements for the year since the international news media was now doing that for them for free.

The truly scary thing about this whole episode is that France is only the world’s second-biggest consumer of Nutella. The biggest consumer is Germany. No wonder the French Ministry of Economy and Finance had an emergency meeting. They aren’t worried about supermarket riots; they’re worried about another German invasion. The Germans are probably already forming up their tank battalions ready to smash through the Maginot Line once again. All the Germans need to do is figure out how to run Panzer tanks on wind and solar power.

Silly Europeans, rioting over silly stuff like nut spread. We Americans riot about important stuff, like if the Patriots win another Super Bowl…