Hostage

The flight from Newark was delayed. Continental refused to board passengers until we got one volunteer to take a later flight. The problem wasn’t overbooking, but too much weight. (My rule of thumb is generally to stay off of planes that have to dump weight. Did they need a fat passenger or a skinny one? If my 110 lbs makes a difference, hell I don’t want to be on that plane.) To entice someone overboard, they dangled $400, meal vouchers and a seat on the 9:25 PM flight to Albany. It was noon. No takers.

A few minutes later, the offer was $500, meal vouchers and a seat on the 9:25 PM flight and now they needed four passengers. The friendly reminder that the plane would not be boarded until volunteers were had stirred the crowd gathered at the gate. Two takers, got train tickets to Albany through Penn Station.

The announcement that the offer was not going any higher so if “You expect to hold out for more…” It wasn’t going to happen. Lies, Lies, Lies.

I use to purposely book a flight out of Detroit to Atlanta on a Friday night because it was always over booked. As a graduate student at the University of Michigan, I flew back and forth more times on free round trip tickets because of the over booking. I’d show up early and put my name on this list and 75% of the time, I got a round trip ticket to anywhere in the continental US. Today, I scoffed at the offer and shuddered at the thought of 9 more hours in Newark.

Then the threats. “We need eight and if we don’t get them, we will take the last eight that checked in.” The crowd stirred but remained calm. After all, in this day an age they can shaft you and then have the TSA boys haul your ass off somewhere where you can die. It happens.

The ransom was now $700. And miraculously, 20 more seats were added to the 4:25 flight.

The stand off could drag on for hours. Starving, I strolled over to the deli adjacent to the gate. Ten minutes later I was eating a piping hot chicken sandwich and watching the passengers cue up to load. They extorted the passengers and got their weight, but I was toting an extra pound.