98 Productions Blog

Non-Fiction | Crazy Flight

Wednesday evening.  LaGuardia airport.  By 6pm I had checked in for my 8pm flight and headed to the FOX Sports bar.

In the bar I see three people, mid-20′s, having an alcohol-infused argument: 2 guys, a girl. The one guy’s big, 6 foot, ox-on-hind-legs, jar-head haircut.  The other two are brother-sister.  Jarhead’s the girl’s boyfriend.  Tough to tell whether they’re playful or they want to kick the salt out of each other.  They’re loud, obnoxious, but not enough to cause alarm.  I order my beer and enjoy the moment.

Fast forward two hours.   On the bus to the small plane on the runway.  Who’s on the bus?  The three arguers from the bar, along with a woman in a knit sweater (the girl’s mom).  She’s calm: not involved with the three loud mouths.  Jarhead and his girl drop a few f-bombs on each other.  Passengers pretend they don’t hear.  This trio have the Jerry Springer factor working for them.   8 O’clock; so forget it.  Let’s all just board the plane and get home on a Wednesday night.

We’re off.  A two hour flight from LaGuardia to Savannah.  I’m in the 2nd row from the front.  Jarhead’s a few rows behind, over my shoulder, throwing more occasional f-bombs to his girl rows behind him.  He’s fidgety; seeming quite disturbed by the flying experience.  His girl and her brother and mother in the knit are seated rows back from him.  Jarhead yells a few choice words to his girl.   She responds with a few of her own.  Nothing to pay attention to.  Mind your own business.

Flight goes on. We’re 45 minutes in.  Jarhead gets up from his seat and goes to the restroom at the back.  He’s gone for awhile.  The female flight attendant (the only one on) looks a little worried.  She goes to the back of the plane, and comes back to the front: totally flustered.  She picks up the phone to the cockpit.  Jarhead comes back to his seat and sits down.  Flight continues. The Jarhead guy actually has nothing to do with the military and has never been enlisted.  He just has the haircut.  Turns out they are all on en route to see another brother’s graduation from the Citadel in Charleston, SC.  Got it? Okay, let’s continue…

We begin descending.  I think “wow, the pilot’s making great time! We’re going to arrive 40 minutes early!”    The loud speaker opens with the pilot’s voice:  “Folks, it appears someone’s been smoking in the bathroom.  The external alarms have gone off.  By Federal Safety and Aviation Regulations we’re forced to land in Raleigh-Durham.  Please fasten your seat belts as we prepare cabin for landing.”  The entire cabin growns!  The Captain might as well have just opened a slot in the cockpit door and tossed a live grenade back into the cabin, because at this point, the ox-on-hind-legs Jarhead jumps out of his seat, realizing he’s in trouble, turns back to girlfriend and says “You f@cking bitch, this is all your fault, you’re going to die!” He lunges down the center aisle to attack her.  Her brother jumps up and grabs him saying “I’m going to f@cking kill you!” The girlfriend yells profanities at Jarhead.   The mom sits in her seat crying.  Hey, it’s a live-action Jerry Springer episode on at 50,000 feet! The pilot brings us down like a stealth bomber.  The stewardess runs down the aisle, wedges her way between the brawling threesome, and takes a punch to the head from Jarhead (hitting the stewardess is a major party foul in the airline industry).  The man in front of me and I, run to the back and grab Jarhead, pulling him back.  It doesn’t help that Jarhead is easily the biggest guy on our flight, and we can barely pull him away from trying to choke his girlfriend.  Did I mention the pilot is taking us down at mach 2?

Suddenly Jarhead’s anger disappears.  He relents and turns to us like a three year old boy and we convince him to come back to his seat.  The rattled stewardess calms his girlfriend down.  Yes, like a third-grader, we direct Jarhead to a nice new seat at the front of the plane, a row behind me.  The shaken stewardess gets the girlfriend to sit down and fasten her seatbelt. Now I know what you’re thinking: show’s over…but oh no, it get’s better.

There’s a huge black guy sitting behind me.  I don’t mean huge like Evander Hollyfield huge, I mean huge like 350 pounds huge.  And he’s got the whole Michael Clark Duncan’s ‘Green Mile’ character thing going for him.  He’s been sitting there the whole time saying, “Oh boy.  Oh no.  Oh me. Uh Oh.”  He can’t wait to go crabbing tomorrow (I know this because he told me at the start of the flight)!  The Jarhead sits across the aisle from him, like an inmate waiting on death row. The plane descends.  The stewardess straps herself in and tells us to prepare for landing.

I glance over at Jarhead and see his glum face light up: he gets an idea (yes, even idiots get them occasionally).  Jarhead notices the man behind me is so huge that if he were to get out in the aisle in front of Jarhead; Jarhead would have no means of getting around him.   So he leans over to the big guy behind me, and whispers “When we land, let me get out before you.”  To which the big guy responds, “Oh.  Okay.”

Jarhead thinks that when the plane lands, he’s going to have a brief moment to escape and run away into the airport if he can just get off ahead of everyone else! Brilliant!  He has no idea the party that’s about to happen, considering we’re landing in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, probably the largest ex-military populated area of the country, many of whom become law enforcement officials.  We land.

The cockpit door opens and out steps the Captain, who looks like….yes, Jean Claude VanDam, and has the arms to prove it (which would have been helpful in restraining the big ox but oh well).  He asks the stewardess if she’s okay, his teeth sparkle, and then tells us all to remain in our seats.  Jarhead itches to get out.  Sure enough the door opens, and ten US AIR MARSHALLS  and AIRPORT POLICE (none short of 250 pounds of solid muscle and testosterone) storm into the cabin.  Jarhead sits frozen.  Actually, we ALL sit frozen!  The Sheriff, a tall Tommy Lee Jones type comes right in behind them like Darth Vader capturing a Rebel cruiser and asks, “Who was it?” To which a dozen hands point to Jarhead.  “You, get up.” says the Sheriff.  The big police guys escort Jarhead off the plane.   Sheriff: “Anyone else?” The stewardess points out the girlfriend, the brother and mother.  Sheriff: “You.  You. And You.  Get off.”  They’re escorted off.

Long story short: after we all had to de-plane in Raleigh-Durham Airport, and wait for a new flight crew; we arrived home safe in Savannah at 4am the next morning.

Drawing and written by Trevor Jenkins to commemorate the one year anniversary of this flight.