G
uys: You’ll never have to sit next to noisy
kids on flights any more. A policy sweeping
through the airlines means all men seated next
to unaccompanied children are ordered to
change seats before take-off.
Not everyone is happy. In Australia and the UK, men
have complained about the implication that they are latent
child molesters when their only crime is to have been born
male. In the UK case, the courts agreed and made British
Airways pay compensation to a guy who was moved.
I understand how he feels, but I have to ask: Hey, fella,
whose side are you on? If the airline wants to move us away
from annoying kids, let them. Attendants, why not upgrade
me to that nice little child-free cabin at the front? I don’t mind.
There is one exception to the new rule, and I foresee
the following conversation taking place regularly as this
policy spreads through domestic Asian airlines.
ME: “Attendant! I am seated next to repulsive wailing
infants and should be moved up the plane.”
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: “Nice try, mister, but
they’re your own kids so shut the @#$% up.”
airport bound
It’s summer and father-of-three
Nury Vittachi
is ready for a break.
two: An irrational white guy with a furious temper turned
up at the airport and demanded to be allowed to take his
firearms (he has three of them) on his flight. He was a
known drug addict with a hair-trigger temper.
What happened? You guessed it. Airport officials
handcuffed the nine brown Americans and took them off
the flight to punish them for being non-white and religious.
The raving junkie, whose name was Elvis Presley, received
a personal apology from the pilot. He was escorted on
board and enjoyed the flight with all his guns to keep him
company. He could probably even have got away with
taking a carrot with him.
A reader who had better remain unnamed was
thrilled to read that US airports recently said they were
abandoning their Rapiscan X-ray machines – the ones
that take full-body X-ray pictures of travellers naked. He
was wondering whether he could pick one up cheap for his
apartment. “I’d hide it in the entrance hall and then check
out all the hot women who come visiting,” he said.
I told him that: A) they cost US$180,000 each, and B)
no hot woman would go within a mile of him, because he
looks like the sort of creep who would hide a Rapiscan in
his apartment hallway.
Undaunted, he told me that the tricky bit would be
finding a way to make women pause at exactly the right
place. “You look wonderful. Just stand there for a moment
and let me gaze at you. And would you mind removing all
metal objects and lifting your arms?”
Why are airports abandoning the machines? A friend
in the airline business tells me that airline security people
were getting seriously worried that they could be sued
under current pornography laws.
A single successful class action lawsuit could see
thousands of airport security officials thrown in jail for 20
years. I can’t think of anything that would give the world
more happiness, except possibly Gordon Ramsay getting
his head stuck in a colander.
Nury Vittachi writes a regular humour column at
.
If the airline wants to move
us away from annoying kids,
let them.
It’s summer, so I'm trying to focus on travel rules such
as: “Remember not to pack any vegetables”. Remember the
Carrot Bomber”? A man named James Andrew Matthews
was detained at Hong Kong airport after he was detected
to be carrying carrots and other vegetables. Outraged at
being searched, he said: “Look at me. I’m white and not
religious.”
Being non-white and rather religious, this worried
me. Many people think like Mr Matthews. Compare the
following two cases, both real-life incidents from the airport
in Washington. Case one: A group of nine US citizens
got on an AirTran plane. Although born in the US, they
had brown skin and were going to a prayer meeting. Case
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