Where Is Paris Hilton When We Need Her?
No, this is not Kyla Ebbert, and no, she's not
gonna button her shirt.
Photo: Wikipedia.org
Now that the tsuris about Kyla Ebbert, the Hooters waitress with the Sharon Stone peekaboo miniskirt, has at least slightly died down (In case you've been vacationing on Venus, she's the attractive blond who got temporarily tossed off the Southwest Airlines flight for inappropriate dress) I am moved to wonder: Would this have happened if she'd been flying first class?
Yes, I understand that Southwest is a one-class airline and doesn't have peerage and steerage, but what if Ebbert had been flying erste Klasse on Lufthansa, United, Delta or American? Would she have been booted from coach but welcomed aboard at the front of the airplane? After all, first classers have their own security lines, their own boarding and debarking lines, their own lounges, and I suspect their own dress and drinking codes.
Look at it this way: If she'd been Paris Hilton, would Southwest's prudish "Keith" have been so snippy? If he had, you just know that Miz Hilton would have torn him a new one and owned his first-born child before he could say, "Please put your undies on."
I've been fortunate enough to have flown a lot of first class, both domestically and internationally, as part of my work, and oh my, the things I've seen. But even though it has nothing to do with indecent dress, here's my favorite first-class story...
On an SAS flight from Oslo to Newark not long before the 9/11 tragedy and consequent total locking of cockpits, I sent a note to the captain of our big Airbus from my first-class seat telling him that we had a mutual friend, an SAS pilot who owned the very same type of aerobatic airplane I flew. The captain invited me forward to ride in the jump seat for the rest of the flight, and we had a wonderful time trading war stories.
As we started our descent into Newark, the Norwegian said, "I'm not supposed to allow you in the cockpit during the landing, but never mind, would you like to stay, ya?"
I said yes, of course, "but can I make the landing?"
The humor-challenged captain said, "Oh, no, we cannot allow you to fly today, but you may stay with us."
After roll-out, we taxied up to the gate and the crew shut down the engines and began securing the rest of the cockpit. I thanked them for a fun time, opened the cockpit door and, still wearing my first-class slippers, confronted the horde of passengers waiting to debark, held back by the steward until the airbridge was secured.
"Nice landing, sir!" the steward said to me. "Thank you," I said to him. And passenger eyes grew as wide as they might have had I also been wearing a miniskirt.
RSS Feeds
Actually, Stephan, I can do you one better.
I was in Germany in the late '90s on a business trip, flying Lufthansa from Munich back to LHR at 10 am on a Saturday morning. That day turned out to be the start of whichever holiday (Pentecost ??) is celebrated in Germany by every *single* teenager flying to some other city for a long weekend.
So my business-class seat was...already committed. To someone else, presumably important enough to have been bumped up from steerage.
Perhaps because I have a Teutonic surname, the counter clerk asked me something in a blast of German, then switched into flawless English as I shrugged.
There was, he said, a possibility...but I might not like it: Would I be willing to suffer the indignity of occupying the third seat in the cockpit for this very short flight, with Lufthansa's most abject apologies?
Would I? WOULD I? Heh heh.
Suitably strapped into the jumpseat, with a solicitous flight attendant checking in every few minutes to ensure I was OK, I got to observe an A320 take itself off, fly itself to LHR, and land itself--with occasional ministrations from the nominal pilots.
Their most strenuous duty seemed to be springing to attention when the proximity warning horn went off. The far-side pilot grabbed the yoke (or whatever substitutes for it in a glass-cockpit 320) and the one closest to the side of the alarm...looked out the window. Seeing nothing, everything reverted to normal and they resumed their conversation (in German, though sports, women and cars are a universal tongue among male pilots).
The cabin crew even brought me, unrequested, an 11 am beer. How many air travelers can say they drank beer in the cockpit of a jetliner at 38,000 feet and 400 mph?
It'd never happen in our post-9/11 world, but it was quite an experience. And it confirmed what a UA pilot friend had mentioned: At least at that time, Lufthansa were the "cowboys of the sky".
Posted by: jvoelckercon | September 11, 2007 at 01:41 PM