Though I flew south-west yesterday I feel like I have traveled a thousand miles east. For some reason Korea never felt like a crazy far eastern country to me... well crazy yes. Bangkok is living up to every expectation I had of traveling to a crazy Asian city with a significant dose of "oriental" feeling (sorry E.Said).
But today's blog is dedicated to my flight from Busan to Bangkok.
Everything happened in the regular way of things for early morning plane travel. I woke before the crack of dawn, fumbled into a cab to the airport bus stop, fell asleep on the bus and was at the airport in record time.
The fun started after I boarded the plane and we had taxied out of the gate. The plane was sitting on the tarmac waiting to take off when I became aware of this wailing sound. The plane was pretty empty back around row 64 and I soon located the source. He was a young Thai guy rocking back and forth in his seat, pawing at the window, and sobbing. The flight attendants were already buckled in for take off and didn't deem his behavior too disturbing. I was willing to dismiss it as some sort of weird reverse homesickness or something.
That was until shortly after take off. He ripped off his shirt, started kicking and shouting and quickly garnered the attention of at least half a dozen flight attendants. They eventually managed to keep calm him enough to complete the food service and a couple rounds of water and orange juice. Half way through this 6 hour flight I was asleep when...
BAM!
I was awake in an instant and also quite panicked. A feeling I like to avoid at 33 thousand feet.
Our favorite passenger had broken his window! We were saved from an Air Force One scene, in which half the passengers were sucked out the window, by the backup pane of glass.
That was as much damaged as he was allowed to inflict. He was whisked off to the back of the plane where a large male flight attendant stood guard for the rest of the flight.
So that was a far more exciting start to my trip but in retrospective it makes a decent story. I hope there isn't a sequel.
3 comments:
wow. that pretty much takes the prize for weird airplane stories...
scary! hope that's the worst of it on your travels. how did he manage to break his window? that would be quite a feat.
Yeah it was pretty nuts... for a skinny guy he proved to be quite strong!
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