I have a bone to pick with Delta Airlines. Call me crazy, but when the FAA promulgates rules to stop terrorists from taking over American airplanes and ramming them into the Pentagon with me on board, I take those rules seriously. How Delta takes those rules, well, let me tell you.
First, let me remind folks what the Dept of Justice recently said about the 30-minute-rule:
"The 30 minute rule on flights into and out of Reagan National Airport exists to help protect the critical infrastructure of our Nation's Capitol from a terrorist attack," U.S. Attorney O'Connor stated. "The need to comply with in-flight restrictions never has been more important. We have a zero-tolerance policy toward anyone who acts inappropriately during a flight, particularly for those who disregard the commands of flight attendants or a federal air marshal."We're around 25 minutes out of DC (certainly less than 30 minutes out as the captain already said we were 30 minutes out) and someone gets up and walks the length of the plane and enters the bathroom in back. A few minutes later, that person comes out, and at 22 minutes out of DC another guy gets up and goes to the bathroom. He's there for 2 minutes, then goes back to his seat at around 20 minutes out of DC.
I find this odd, as the FAA regs say that all passengers to DC's National Airport have to remain seated 30 minutes out of DC until landing, or else folks are going to think you're the next Mohammad Atta trying to take over the plane. Let me make clear, NO ONE from the flight crew talks to any of these people or even vaguely challenges them - they didn't get permission to get up, they just got up, unchallenged and went on their way. Of course, right after take-off from JFK, as we were still climbing and had literally just gotten off the ground, a man gets out of his seat and heads for the bathroom, and the flight attendants don't bat an eye.
So, what does Delta do about several people getting out of their seats in apparent violation of FAA anti-terror regs? (As an aside, the passengers who got up weren't exactly innocent-looking grandma-types either.) What does Delta do? Nothing.
Finally, the flight attendant walked by at about 15 minutes out of DC and I asked him "aren't the 30 minute rules still in place for flying in to DC?" and he says "yes." I said, well, then why are passengers walking around? And the Delta employee proceeds to tell me that it's hard to tell the passengers to stay in their seats, a lot of them don't speak English (they're coming from foreign flights), and "there's no perfect solution" to the problem of these passengers apparently violating FAA anti-terrorism regulations.
I told the flight attendant that, uh, these were anti-terror regulations meant to stop terrorists from blowing up the plane and what did he mean "there's no perfect solution"? He said, what am I supposed to do, force them back in to their seats? The flight attendant then told me that they fly this route all the time and I have to understand that this is the way it works. Oh, so you routinely blow off the safety rules? Well now I feel better.
After a rather heated discussion with the flight attendant where I literally, quite really did mention the plane blowing up, did he then challenge the next woman who literally got out of her seat in front of us, so the guy didn't have a choice but to send her back.
So a Delta Airlines representative told me tonight that Delta routinely ignores the FAA's anti-terrorism regulations. And the reason they violate it is that a lot of their passengers are foreigners. Oh, well THAT explains it. I mean, we wouldn't want a FOREIGNER to have to comply with our anti-terrorism regulations, I mean, who would want to do something crazy like that.
I will say that, after I told the flight attendant I was a journalist and not happy about what was going on, he came back and talked to me a number of times and was very nice. But still, he made clear that the airline routinely violates this regulation, and that scares me.
I have only once since September 11 been on a flight that broke this rule and did nothing about it. And the passenger next to me said she'd never seen anything like it, nor did the guy in front of me and to the right who turned around and said he lived in DC and had never seen anything like this on a flight before.
So, the question for Delta is: Has someone at the FAA given you the nod to violate the anti-terror regs, are you just routinely violating them on your own, or are your flight attendants simply lying about this apparent routine violation of the rules (though, again, it clearly wasn't a big deal to them on this flight - again, NO ONE even spoke to these passengers, so spare us the excuses about there being exceptions to every rule - no one made an exception because no one cared to begin with).
It's bad enough the crappy quality of service you offer on your international flights (we're talking Air France gave us foie gras and an incredible meal on the way over, and on the way back Delta gave us salami and bad American bread (how do you GET bad American bread in Paris anyway - I mean you really have to try to pull that one off), but when it comes to safety, there's a reason I choose Air France over any American carrier, and today only reinforced that reason.
Oh, and one more thing. I was practically the last passenger off the plane as I was sitting in back, and as I stepped out of the plane on to the walkway the flight attendant pulled me aside to again explain. 5 feet away at the door of the plane stood this enormous hulk of a man in civilian clothes just watching us - he had to be an air marshall. If he was, where the hell was he while this was happening?
