Flight attendants, prepare for landing

Taken as I boarded a plane from Adelaide to Melbourne

There may be free booze on international flights, but do you know what happens when a passenger's blood alcohol level rises like frequent flier points? I do.

I flew with my girlfriend Lisa on Qantas flight QF12 from Los Angeles to Sydney on May 5. We were in seats 54H and J -- the aisle and the middle. In the window seat was an Australian woman we're fairly sure was named Jennifer, and Jennifer was in a friendly mood. As she sipped on a bottle of wine, provided by one of the flight attendants, we talked about all the exciting things I’d be seeing upon arriving in Australia. When she finished her bottle, she had another. And then another. It helped her sleep, she explained to me. That sounded reasonable.

A few bottles later, she woke my girlfriend and I up because she needed to go to the bathroom. I need to pee after a few sips of wine, so I can only imagine the gusher she had to unleash. We groggily got up, and Lisa switched to give her the aisle seat. Surely, she’d be visiting the restroom more than we would.

Hours and more bottles of wine went by, with Jennifer getting sloppier by the sip.

With about 7 hours left to go in the flight, I took a sleeping pill. The flight arrived in Sydney at 6:05 a.m., and so it seemed reasonable for me to sleep for the remaining part of the flight and wake up at the end, thus avoiding jetlag by getting up at Sydney’s morning. But about two hours into my slumber, Jennifer, with many fermented grapevines flowing through her veins, shook me awake. I was confused and discombobulated, as someone might be when woken up from a drug-induced sleep. Jennifer, though, thought something else was wrong.

“Oh god!” she said. “Oh god, you look all fucked up! You’re all sick. You’re all fucked up.”

“No, I’m fine,” I managed to grumble. My eyes could barely open.

“You’re sick! You’re all fucked up!” she said.

“No, I’m not,” I said. I felt like the guy in the wheelbarrow in Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail: “I’m not dead yet!”

She paged a flight attendant, who arrived in short time, and Jennifer repeated the problem: “He’s all sick! He’s all fucked up!”

The flight attendant hustled away, and returned with a cup of water and some barf bags. “Is there anything else you need?” she asked, and because my nose had started to run, I told her I’d appreciate a tissue. She got me 10.

Lisa then switched seats with me, so that I could escape the drunken beast that Jennifer had become. But Jennifer wasn’t done: She began sobbing randomly, insulted other passengers, and more than one repeated the following cycle: She’d summon a flight attendant, and then, when the flight attendant appeared, she’d forget she ever called. Then she’d ask for another bottle of wine, and shockingly, the flight attendant would oblige.

Seriously now, how much wine do they have on these planes?

I woke up with about an hour or two left in the flight, in order to fill out the customs form and have some breakfast. Because we never moved our bags during the flight of musical chairs, Lisa and I asked Jennifer if we could rearrange ourselves in our original positions. Jennifer didn’t understand what we were asking -- although at this point, I don’t think she understood much of anything. So, we started small: “Get up,” we said. She did, and we followed.

We all stood up in the aisle, Lisa and I facing Jennifer. Jennifer stared blankly at us, and so Lisa said, “Ok, you had the window seat.” We both gestured toward the row, hoping she'd understand.

Jennifer looked shocked, like we had just kicked her puppy. “What!? You want me to get back in there?” she said, loud and slurred but clearly recognizable. “You want me to get back in there, after all that fucking around? After all that pussying around?”

We were at loss. Other passengers were staring. And so, we said yes.

It was a funny answer, really, because it meant we were acknowledging that there had been all that fucking around, and all that pussying around. But at this point, well, those details could drop 20,000 feet into the Pacific Ocean. Yes, Jennifer, we want you to sit down, to sit down and shut up. We didn’t want you drinking all that wine, but at this point, it seems only more wine can help. Sit down and we’ll get a big funnel and pour wine down your inflamed throat until your liver needs to hire a secretary, until your blood could get a vampire drunk, until you sleep the sleep we needed sleeping pills to accomplish. Yes, Jennifer, sit the fuck down.

We didn’t say any of that, of course. But Jennifer’s outburst had summoned a flight attendant, this time without a bottle of wine in her hand, and Jennifer was ushered off to another part of the plane -- a part we hoped had a trap door.

I made a brief drinking motion, to explain to other passengers what had happened. Then we sat down.

Jennifer wandered around the plane for a while, and then was brought back by a flight attendant who gave her energy drinks and juice, and who filled out the customs form for her. Jennifer sobbed occasionally, but mostly she just stared ahead, blankly and drunkenly. When the plane landed, she was escorted off, wobbling down the aisle.

In the airport hallway, Lisa and I related the story to my parents, who had a restful and enjoyable time in first class. We gave it to them blow by blow, delighting in the details, pleased that our horrific flight translated so well into instant humor. And when we were done, I looked behind us and saw a little cart, the type airports use to transport people who cannot walk themselves. It had just started to lurch forward, and Jennifer was sitting on it.

I suppose I could have felt bad about telling the story in front of her, or embarrassed for being caught doing so. But I felt sufficiently wronged -- surely not just by Jennifer, who clearly has a problem, but by the airline for not cutting her off after she single-handedly emptied a winery. So as the cart slowly rolled away, I pointed at her and said, “Look, that’s Jennifer! That’s Jennifer right there!”

And we all watched that cart, with Jennifer weakly rocking in it, until it turned the corner and she was finally, finally gone.

UPDATE: Qantas responds!

Posted by Jason Feifer at May 23, 2005 07:22 AM