Oh Canada! Take Him Back!

Posted in In the News | 14 comments

For those of you who don’t live in the Phoenix area, you might not have seen the news. On Monday, February 15th, a Canadian man named Stephen Walter Tait, traveling out of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport created quite the scene. Allegedly intoxicated, Tait creates quite the commotion in front of US Airways gate A4. It is unclear what has Tait upset, but that’s not what has me writing about this. Take a look.

To me, it says something when numerous crew members walk past a disruption such as this. I notice one US Airways (it appears to be) Captain park his bag and come over to lend a hand and surround the guy. But, before and after that event numerous flight attendants and pilots proceed to walk past the commotion.

Now, I don’t blame them for not helping, in fact, thats my point. How sad has it become that situations such as this have become “normal” in airports and on board airplanes. Not only did crew walk past this man, but so did many other passengers. A lot of them, you can tell, didn’t even notice that something was out of the ordinary and something was wrong.

Back to the video. The woman who walks over toward him in the beginning yells out “go back to f***** Canada,” which triggers him to try and start a confrontation with her before the personnel intervene. He then begins to shout “go ahead! Kill Me! Taser Me!” almost as if to expect it, because of his disruption in the airport. Finally, he’s tackled to the ground by a Phoenix Police Officer and arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The Police Officer in the video suffered a broken ankle from the tackle.

First of all, thank god this didn’t happen in-flight, second of all, this raises more questions in my mind as to why we have bars in airports. If alcohol can make someone act like this and jeopardize everyones safety, why do we make it so readily available in airports to people who are going to be locked in a sealed metal tube for a determined amount of time.  And, for that matter, there should be a two drink limit, per passenger, on board flights. The plane isn’t a bar, unlimited drinks doesn’t have to be an option.

I don’t know what it is, but recently it seems like the crazies are out, about and flying around.


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  • Ramp agent who may get written up for posting that he would help

    I wish this happened at my airport. I would have been all up in that. Atleast trying to get him to quiet down. And this is the very reason why between flts I’m always walking the terminal. Why am I never lucky to see drama.

  • Bobby

    Ha! Hello Ramper ;) I don’t know how much help I, personally, would have been. But I am still shocked at how this has become “common” to witness at an airport.

  • Nonoodle

    I don’t think having bar’s at airports is the issue, but the bar person making sure they are not serving drinks to people who have had enough! I also don’t think people were unaware of what was going on,but didn’t want to get involved & in a hurry to make their flights….

  • http://traytables-travels.blogspot.com Traytable

    The problem is, passengers have gotten VERY good at masking their inebriation while ordering the next drink. They even know enough to hold it together until after take-off, then the fun begins.

    The work for the FAs is spotting those small subtle clues that give them away, during the rush & chaos of boarding. I regularly tell pax, this plane is NOT a bar, if you acted like this in a bar they would kick you out so behave!

  • One of the ‘normals’

    I’m actually glad to say I would be one of the people not involved, walking past or just observing. Unless a drunkard is harming myself or someone else I am likely to let the police handle it. This Guy, while having a sailor’s mouth, doesn’t ACT violent til the cop tries to grab him. As for bars in airports, I have on more than one occasion enjoyed one or two before a flight so I wouldn’t be for removing them. However, a drink max per hour would be a good idea.

  • ramp guy again

    its all about money. how much would they be losing if they took out all the alchol?

  • Tony Anger

    You have to remember (talking about crew memebers getting involved) that the police are there and trained to handle disruptive pax. I interceded on a flight with a drunk 12 years ago and for my help the company tried to fire me and I was on the beach for 11 months. Not fun! You need to know that although your first reaction is to jump in and take the idiot down, that you are not prtocted by law and the police are. You can keep yourself and thise around safe by defending yourself, but it’s best to leave the area and call the airport police or security.

  • Former Trolly Dolly

    I was a flight attendant for US Airways for almost 10 years and wouldn’t have enough space to tell you about the things I witnessed, and/or experienced during that period.

    Similar to Tony Anger, I was written up, suspended and nearly fired for trying to “help” with a situation involving a drunken passenger.

    While I understand imposing a drink limit within the airports and perhaps on the plane may help, I also think that somewhere along the line, personal accountability needs to enter the equation.

    People that act up like this in airports or on planes are routinely slapped on the wrist and told not to do it again. However, if some of them were started to be used as examples by doing things like banning them from all domestic commercial airlines for a predetermined period of time, people might think twice.

    Imagine them having to book a trip on charter where there were no $99 RT specials for a year when they needed to be someplace. I’m nearly certain that they would think twice about how they acted and others might think about the consequences.

    We should never be to the point where we have to babysit other adults. There are always consequences for our own actions.

  • Noah

    I don’t think I would become actively involved, but if it was my airline I would stop and stand close by (at the podium). Ready to help out if the guy did become violent, but out of the way otherwise.

    I’ve never been a gate agent, but I imagine the goal is to keep the offender as calm as possible until law enforcement arrives. There really isn’t a need to try and restrain him unless he is hurting himself or others.

    Things are obviously different onboard the aircraft. Exact procedures are headed with the SSI label at my airline, but in general we will restrain someone a whole lot faster when we are in the air.

  • http://www.wix.com/graceybee/graceybee Sure…I’ll take your Drunk off your hands for a 20 minute flight back to base!

    NOT!

    How appropriate to see this post after today. I work for a regional airline….so we get the short flights, and the shorter the flights and smaller the plane, the less excitement we get, but the more exciting it is when we get it.

    Here is my gripe after today….Gate Agents that think something is a little bit off, need to determine WHY a person is a little bit goofy before putting them on my plane.

    This gate agent told me “no i don’t think he appears to be intoxicated, but he’s just a little bit off, like maybe a mental condition, so I didn’t want to discriminate”

    There you go my friends….give me your drunks so that you don’t have to deal with them…all in the name of political correctness.

    This guy was wanting to use the lav as soon as the door to the plane was closed, and then again during our 20 minute flight. Wasn’t hostile or anything, just talked to EVERYONE. He was either drunk, or just weird with a bladder problem.

    This agent was thinking…oh well. it’s a 20 minute flight, by the time they get up in the air, if something happens, they can just land in their destination, and let that airport deal with it.

  • Gregory in Toronto

    please don’t make us take him back.

  • Bobby

    LOL Gregory.. We sure as hell don’t need him here. We have our own issues!

  • Scott

    I agree with you completely about bars in airports. It boggles my mind how the same company (or other times the state/country) who owns the airport can profit off airline landing fees, can also allow bars.

    Its like putting fuel and a lighter in the same room with a pyro completely aware of what could happen. Factor in that roughly 60-75% of people have to take something (often booze) in order to fly (in a tin can spiralling in the air at 30,000ft at 500km/hr). So CSA or FA meets intox and intox gets denied boarding.. the continuation is that now under Positive Bag Match the airline must remove the passenger’s bags from the plane, which usually requires a total offload of the plane. Remember that the airport also charges fines for an airline who remains at the gate past the scheduled departure.

    Airlines should insist that the only location, once sterile, is aboard an aircraft where the airline can exercise their duty of care and witness/control how much alcohol you consume.

    At the end of the day I think an unruly fuelled by alcohol is much more of a danger to FAs, passengers, and the aircraft that one terrorist with explosive testicles could ever be.

  • Barry Swensen

    A similar thing happened to me while on a flight. I was sitting in first class on Delta. I assumed all would be fine.

    The minute we took off the woman behind us started yelling and screaming at her boss whom she had trapped at the window. She yelled and screamed, threw a fit and quit 6 different times. The boss did all he could to calm her down to no avail. When he finally fired her after her 6th quit she really went off.

    She had us all uncomfortable for the entire time. She finally gave up, got a glass of wine and went to the back with her blanket…. Good ridance.

    On the video I love how the guy throws around the f-word around women and children and everyone else in the airport and then accuses the lady of “disrespecting” him.