Nine Great Ways to Get Thrown Off an Airplane

[Guest Chainsaw]

There are many ways to get booted off an airplane, but some are bolder, more idiotic or more absurd than others. Jim Benning offers “successes†from recent history.

Sometimes it seems that everybody’s getting thrown off an airplane. There’s the Hooters waitress removed from a plane, temporarily, and chastised for her skimpy skirt. There’s the mom ejected from a flight for breast-feeding her baby. Where do they rank among our, uh, favorites? Read on.

 

9) Repeat “bye-bye, plane.†What a lovely travel-themed mantra. Yet after a child wouldn’t stop repeating the phrase on a Continental ExpressJet flight as a crew member recited safety precautions, the nonplussed attendant suggested baby Benadryl for the toddler. “I’m not going to drug my child,†mom replied. The plane returned to the gate and the airline crew said bye-bye to the mother and child.

 

8) Pray. It’s an absurd reason to be kicked off a flight, but doing so got a Muslim doctor from Winnipeg thrown off a United Airlines flight last year, and an Orthodox Jewish passenger tossed off a Canadian Air Jazz flight. And who doesn’t remember the imams removed from a US Airways flight after praying in an airport terminal?

 

7) Breast-feed your baby. Bonus points if you’re kicked off a Delta flight operated by none other than Freedom Airlines. When the incident occurred, Emily Gillette was in a window seat in the second-to-last row, she told USA Today, and her husband was seated in the aisle. “I was not exposed,†she said. Still, a flight attendant asked her to cover up. When Gillette refused, she was removed. News of the incident prompted a nurse-in at airports across the country. A spokeswoman for Delta said later that the flight attendant had been—we’re paraphrasing here—a real boob.

 

6) Stow an economy-class hair dryer in a first-class bulkhead. That’s what kicked off a confrontation that led a United Airlines crew to eject TV star Mo’Nique and company from a flight last year. The actress was seated in first class; her stylist was seated in economy class, and when the stylist stashed a hair dryer in the first-class bulkhead, a flight attendant apparently complained and tensions escalated. “I felt like I was being treated like an animal,†Mo’Nique told the Daily News. “This happens to black people all the time, and they don’t have a voice. I have a voice.†A United agent later expressed regret over the incident and Mo’Nique and company were placed on another flight. Still, there’s a lesson here for the rest of us: Always book your stylist a first-class seat.

 

5) Wear your favorite “Meet the Fockers†T-shirt. Lorrie Heasley’s “Meet the Fockers†shirt—actually, the spelling varied slightly from the 2004 movie title—featured images of President George W. Bush, Condoleezza RIce and Dick Cheney. She wore the shirt as a joke to amuse her Democrat parents, who were going to meet her at Portland, Oregon’s airport. Passengers aboard the Southwest Airlines flight departing from Reno weren’t laughing. Note for anyone hoping to follow in her footsteps: According to Heasley, nobody complained about the shirt at LAX, so pick your departing city carefully.

 

4) Don a short skirt. Technically, Hooters waitress and college student Kyla Ebbert wasn’t thrown off the Southwest Airlines flight this summer. But anyone whose airplane incident earns her a spot on The Dr. Phil Show deserves a coveted place on this list. Ebbert was escorted off the flight earlier this summer and lectured about her wardrobe before being allowed to return to the plane. The incident, she said, was humiliating.

 

3) Be a princess—literally and figuratively. Three princesses from the Qatar royal family were booted off a British Airways flight earlier this year after they refused to sit next to male passengers they didn’t know. Doing so apparently violates their customs. The flight crew tried to shuffle seating assignments to accommodate their complaints but other passengers refused to move. The flight was delayed more than two hours before the captain ordered the princesses off the plane.

 

2) Try to get some fresh air—at 30,000 feet. In 2005, a French woman on a Cathay Pacific flight tried to open an airplane door to smoke a cigarette. (Okay, so it wasn’t exactly fresh air she was after.) She admitted later that she’d taken a sleeping pill and downed alcohol before the flight.

 

1) Damage the crockery. Oh, with thine airline crockery be gentle, celebrity travelers. R.E.M. guitarist Pete Buck famously learned this the hard way. In 2001, he was arrested after witnesses said he went into a drunken rampage aboard a British Airways flight and, among other things, sprayed the cabin crew with yogurt and toppled a cart loaded with breakfast crockery. (Talk about the passion!) Buck later blamed his behavior on the reaction between a sleeping pill he’d taken and alcohol. At least he didn’t try to open an airplane door, right? Uh, wrong. According to the Guardian, at one point during the flight “he tried to grab the control panel of an exit door and announced that he was ‘going home.’†Bono and other musicans later testified to Buck’s good character and a jury cleared him of all charges.

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