Airline travel today: full of unpleasant surprises

A child’s tantrum got her family kicked off a JetBlue plane, a ranting flight attendant who babbled about 9-11 and a possible crash, and the latest glitch from the TSA were all part of a week-long series of airline mishaps. Perhaps the accumulation of absurd incidents was summed up best by the mother whose daughter was kicked off a JetBlue plane:

"I don't know that I could blame JetBlue, to be totally fair. I just feel like it's (examples) of airplane travel today in general,” said Colette Vieau.

Her Rhode Island family of four claims they were kicked off a flight from the Turks and Caico Islands to Boston after their 2-year-old daughter threw a tantrum.

Colette Vieau said she was on board a JetBlue plane with her husband and two daughters — Natalie, 2, and Cecilia, 3 — when Natalie began acting up before take-off, according to various news reports surfacing last week about the incident last month.

The parents said they were “holding their children down” when the Captain ruled the aircraft could not take off safely. The entire family was ordered off the plane. The family ended up paying $2,000 for an extra night in a hotel and costs of rebooking their flights.

In an unrelated act, investigators are still looking into the highly publicized incident in Dallas when a female flight attendant began making threatening remarks over the public address system. Passenger Greg Lozano told ABC News:

“The last thing she said was ‘hey, pilot, I’m not going to be responsible for your crash.”

The attendant also spoke about losing friends during 9-11.

Passengers intervened and restrained the flight attendant before Dallas airport police boarded the flight. The Dallas Morning News reports passengers said police escorted the flight attendant, kicking and screaming to one of several police cars that surrounded the plane on the tarmac.

Media accounts said the airline is treating the incident as a medical issue.

American Airlines said in a statement:

"This morning Flight 2332 had left the gate at DFW bound for Chicago, when an incident occurred involving some of the cabin crew. The aircraft returned to the gate, where it was met by Department of Public Safety officers. Two flight attendants were taken to local hospitals for treatment. We continue to investigate the details and circumstances and will have no further comment at this time.”

American said no passengers were in danger at any time.

The cabin crew was replaced and the flight departed for Chicago later that morning.

FBI agents took the unidentified flight attendant for a psychiatric evaluation, airport spokesman David Magana said.

Passengers got one bonus from the incident: they were offered free drinks.

Then, there was the often embarrassed TSA (Transportation Security Administration) which may still be reeling from a viral video about how a passenger outsmarted full-body scanners. The scanners have cost at least $1.2 billion so far, reported travel journalist Chris Elliott. But a 27-year-old technology entrepreneur foiled the machines “by simply turning to his side and exploiting a blind spot on the scanners,” Elliott wrote. “That’s all it took.”

TSA dismissed the video as a “crude attempt to allegedly circumvent TSA screening procedures.” But it did not say he was wrong.

This was hardly the first screening breakdown for the TSA, which Elliott thinks should be embarrassed by the fact the machines have yet to capture a single terrorist.

Elliott portrays the TSA as a failed deterrent to terrorism.

“At what point do we say, ’enough is enough?’” he asks.

By David Wilkening