from John

I boarded a United flight from Baltimore-Washington Airport to Chicago in around early 1986. I had a seat on the aisle about six rows back at the front of the coach section. As usual I was one of the first to find my seat because I was a frequent United flier. Then I observed a large loud group of teenage kids filing in. It turned out that this was Chicago’s Hawthorne High senior class trip to Washington DC returning home.

After we took off, the students got rowdier and by halfway to Chicago they were out of control; the profanities could probably be heard in the small first class section at the front of the plane.  At some point the kid across the aisle from me started shouting and whipping the kid who was sitting directly behind me with the black wiring that connects the headphones to the music. Whack, Whack, Whack was the sound that followed after each pass of his wind-up.  All this action was seen out of the upper corner of my right eye causing me to flinch every time the kid took a swing.

I don’t know what the passengers behind me were thinking but the elderly passengers in front of me were terrified by the uproar.  The worst part of this scene was the two flight attendants standing at the entrance way to the coach section taking this all in with blank expressions of their faces. It astounded me that they did nothing and seemed perplexed more than bothered.

After five or six whacks passing by my head, I reached up and the whip was neatly delivered into the palm of my hand. It was like a perfect hand-off of the baton in a relay race. The kid was shocked and muttered something that I don’t recall. I gathered my stuff calmly, walked up to the attendants who had seen everything – one was a burley male – and presented the whip to them unceremoniously. Then I proceeded to seat #2 in the first aisle of first class, sat down and buckled myself in. Shortly afterward the female flight attendant came to inform me that I had to go back to coach to which I replied basically ‘no way’ and I reminded her that they had done nothing to control the riot. She asked for my ticket and marched into the pilots’ cabin. Someone behind me gave me some support by saying that I had done the right thing. I was indignant and knew that I had done the right thing.

It seemed like a very long time before the flight attendant returned from her conference with the Captain – 10 or 15 minutes maybe. She returned my ticket and told me tersely that I would be met at the gate. I have to say that I was looking forward to being met at the gate. I was the first off the plane and saw the man waiting for me up the gang-plank. I wasted no time walking up to him armed with a serious complaint. At that point he reassured me that I was free to go … probably to avoid a scene as the rest of the passengers caught up.

That’s the end of the story.