Lisa Carter-Knight, a 47-year-old mother of three living in Boston, had come to her hometown of Philadelphia for a few days to take care of her ailing mother — who was having surgery following a breast cancer diagnosis. She had flown in for nearly a week and was flying out this past Tuesday to make it home in time for her 7-year-old’s birthday when her flight home experienced a few unexpected delays.
After passengers were finally allowed to board their 8:25 p.m. flight at 10:30 p.m. due to the first two delays, the pilot misconstrued a passenger’s joke about having a “fully stocked bar” on board — and as we should all know by now, DON’T MAKE JOKES ON PLANES.
As such, the joke was taken as an accusation that the pilot was intoxicated, and under strict federal laws any pilots suspected of intoxication must take a sobriety test. Take delay #3, which Carter-Knight made the mistake of tweeting about:
At 10:26 p.m. she wrote, in part: “Major debacle on flight 760 in Philly —pilot accuses passengers of accusing him of being intoxicated.” At 11:11 p.m., she tweeted a photo of the plane, writing: “Philyflight760. Still grounded as authorities board plane for pilot sobriety test.”
Just after midnight, when the plane was cleared for takeoff, Carter-Knight’s real problems started: The pilot and flight crew informed her that she was denied access to the airline because of her tweets.
“I was told the pilot did not want me on the flight,” she said.
I’m sure after the whole ordeal of having to take a sobriety test the pilot was probably not in the best mood, but for f*ck’s sake, you can’t boot someone from a plane over tweeting about a delay. JetBlue is apparently aware of this, because they have since refunded Carter-Knight’s money and isued a statement that the ejection was not of their policy.
So I guess the moral of the story here is don’t make jokes on planes, don’t write anything on social media that could inadvertently piss off your pilot and always go for the half bottle of wine if that’s an option. Sorry, that last part wasn’t part of the story, just a little personal advice I thought I’d impart on to you, the reader.
(Via TheStar)