Don’t Drink and Fly

A PHOTO of an intoxicated gentleman duct-taped to his seat after this guy attacked a lovely lady and shouted their jet was about to disintegrate has gone world-wide, after a fellow voyager promoted it online.

The picture was placed on Tumblr by traveler Andy Ellwood, who wrote about the experience on his own account.

They were on a New destined intercontinental flight from Iceland to JFK.

Ellwood recalled:” (Passenger) drank all his duty free spirits on the voyage from Iceland to JFK yesterday.”.

“When this person got rowdy, (i.e. trying to strangle the woman next to him and screaming the plane was going to break up), fellow passengers overcame him and rope him up for the rest of the voyage. He was escorted off the aeroplane by authorities when it landed.”.

The man, who remains unidentified, was arrested when the craft landed.

The man’s outburst got going when the aeroplane had two hours left in the air, Icelandic news outlet Mbl. reports.

It is conjectured he also spat on travelers.

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Unverified Picture.

IcelandAir’s Vice President of Corporate Communication, Guðjón Arngrímsson, affirmed to reporters the man was acting precariously but would not discuss the image.

A Port Authority mediator has verified that the passenger was transported to a hospital in Queens, but authorities decided not to charge him.

First glimpse of LA

So that’s LA or at least a small piece of it.

Glimpse of Los Angeles out the aircraft window.

Glimpse of Los Angeles out the aircraft window.

 13+ hours later here we are, very tired and still a long way to go.  Well, I can say although I didn’t sleep the food was good, the service was good and the plane felt pretty comfortable but I would have liked a bit more leg room.  We actually made an enquiry about how much it would cost to upgrade.  The response was A$900 (USD$900).  Hmmm, I’ll think small!

Special Note: LA Customs and Immigration check points.  We made a boo boo.  When disembarking from the aircraft we collected all our rubbish which we were going to deposit in the nearest trash can.  I thought that our fellow travellers were very untidy as they had left a variety of food stuffs including lots of uneaten oranges etc.  Guess what . . there are NO TRASH CANS between the plane and Customs!  What you take off the plane, even if it is rubbish, you MUST declare it!  We had previously completed our immigration and declaration form stating that we had NO food items but because we had food scraps in our rubbish . . we had to declare it.  That meant completing another declaration for both of us.  The queues at LA Customs are really long and guess what another 747 arrived from Australia about five minutes after us.  But wait there’s more . . to save time I thought that I’d go to the toilet after the Customs check and before the baggage search area . . guess what ????? there are NO TOILETS in between those areas.  AAAARRRGGGH!

 

Are we there yet?

It seems like we should have been in the sky for about five hours but in reality less than two hours.  Who made up that saying “Time flies when your having fun” anyway?  Looking down below I can see some land.  What’s that?

New Caledonia or Nouvelle-Calédonie

New Caledonia or Nouvelle-Calédonie as seen from above.

 Aha!  New Caledonia or Nouvelle-Calédonie.  Check out the in-flight map.

Aircraft in-flight seat map.

Aircraft in-flight seat map. Showing our position above Nouvelle-Calédonie.

 Take note in this part of the journey we are 1475 km or 916 miles from Brisbane and still have 10080 km or 6263 miles to go.  Crikey!  Are we there yet?

Coincidentally, at that exact moment in time we were flying over New Cal a work mate of mine was on a cruise liner below us.  We didn’t find out until a month later.  How bizarre.