I was shocked by the apparently laissez faire attitude displayed by passengers during an incident onboard a flight from shanghai to london heathrow yesterday.

Mid flight, some goon called mustafa (who later announced to us that though his english was not good, his french and arabic were just fine—this was no surprise given his looks) started arguing very noisily with a member of the flight staff (who kept his cool) near to the back of the plane.  The idiot stormed up the plane and started to shout at the top of his voice about the terrible iniquities he had supposedly suffered at the hands of that same crew member, whom he then proceeded to threaten.  He was gesticulating very wildly and i think he was holding something in his hand although the cabin was dark, and so violently was he throwing himself around, it was difficult to know for sure.  He was a pretty big guy and it looked to me as if he might be heading rapidly for a total loss of control with dramatic consequences.  I honestly anticipated, among other things, the throwing of one or more objects (in a flying plane, remember) and i can hardly have been the only one to have had that thought.  It’s not a nice place to be when your sharing space with a lunatic rogue element seven miles up in the air at six hundred miles per hour.

The staff member in charge decided that this rather large meathead needed to be forcibly restrained asap, and this the staff prepared to do with a team consisting mostly of flight attendant girls—well, one has to use the resources at one’s disposal, i guess—so i (a mid sized guy, but certainly no hard man) helped them restraining the fool when the time came.

What shocked me beyond belief is that none of the other passengers did !  Why not ?  They must have known what was happening.  The noise this guy was making was as loud as can be, and for a good few minutes, on and off.  Even inflight entertainment, with headphones, can’t cause you to miss that sort of commotion.  There were other signs of trouble crying out for attention too ; the fact that many were turning their heads to look in the direction of the incident, the *unusually purposeful* march of obviously anxious crew girls from the front of the plane to the trouble spot, and other signs besides.  Were passengers scared of being hurt ?  We might all have died if this guy had been allowed to pull any more stunts.

Surely, when you’re in that situation, knowing what we all know, it’s better to act together to make sure that order is restored, and that the plane lands safely, than it is to look the other way when trouble is being tackled at thirty odd thousand feet.

I have btw said little about the staff on board the plane.  I shall confine my remarks to saying as i honestly believe that each one of them acted with good sense and humanity from the moment this situation arose to the moment the police entered the plane at heathrow to cart the loser off.

jonathan riley,
october 8, 2005
blogged

A year later . . . The guy who caused the trouble was given a 52 week suspended sentence, an order to pay compensation (not to me, thank heaven) and costs totaling seven hundred and fifty pounds, and a few other minor court imposed inconveniences.  Hope he learned his lesson;  it certainly can’t be said he’s been taught it the hard way.