I flew JetBlue down to North Carolina this week. The flight attendant that graciously catered to me offered a cold Coca-Cola (the whole can!) and a bag of animal crackers (the lady next to me also offered her Star magazine and told me I smelled better than her sisters, but that really has nothing to do with this story). There was no turbulence, and everyone on the plane obediently followed the pilot’s fasten-your-seatbelts sign.
However, this was NOT the case on a JetBlue flight into JFK yesterday, where flight attendant Steven Slater became so enraged at a passenger that he yelled obscenities into the loudspeaker of the plane, stole two beers, deployed the plane’s emergency blow-up slide, escaped the aircraft by sliding down said slide and went home to his house in Queens, all the while fist-pumping and yelling “suck on that!” Ok, the last part I made up.
According to reports, Slater was working the flight from Pittsburgh Monday when a passenger prematurely left his seat to retrieve his luggage from an overhead bin. When Slater tried to get the man back into his seat, the luggage fell out of the overhead bin, striking the flight attendant in the head. Slater asked for an apology, and the man apparently called him an MFer.
And then this happened:
“Mr. Slater got on the plane’s public address system and cursed out all aboard. Then he activated the inflatable evacuation slide at service exit R1, launched himself off the plane, an Embraer 190, ran to the employee parking lot and left the airport in a car he had parked there.” According to the Daily News Slater’s choice words were: “To the passenger who called me a m—f–er, f— you…I’ve been in the business 28 years. I’ve had it. That’s it.”
All I can think of is the scene in Mean Girls where Janice tells that whole school that she and Cady were plotting to mess up Regina George’s life. She then jumps into a trust fall and crowd serfs to victory. When they make a movie about Flight Attendant Slater, that’s exactly how this scene will play out. I guess he has to get out of jail first though.
NoMad Blogger 