According to the Australian Federal Police, a then-32-year-old man from Western Australia was disruptive on a flight headed from Perth to Sydney. As a result, the plane had to turn around and go back to Perth, which meant that the pilot was forced to dump some fuel to land.
Now, the passenger has been ordered to pay $8,630 AUD ($5,806 USD) back to the airline to cover the cost of the wasted fuel. The Perth Magistrate Court also fined him $6,055, meaning that his mid-air misbehavior has a total price tag of $11,861 – likely many times higher than whatever h
Honestly that’s way less than it should be given how much other passengers were inconvenienced. That might be harder to quantify the value of, though, I suppose.
can start by reinbursing all passengers 3x their ticket value
Depends on who gets to decide what qualifies as “bad behavior”
It must have been bad enough for the staff to decide that it’s better to fuck up a plane full of passengers itinerary by turning around than continue on with the flight. I seriously doubt anyone would want to make that call unless they absolutely had to.
Mr Rogers before, Tom Hanks now.
The single highest individual penalty, $40,823, was issued to a traveler who brought their own alcohol on board, was intoxicated, attempted to smoke marijuana in the lavatory, and sexually assaulted a flight attendant – all in a single flight.
Elon? You flying commercial these days?
They said alcohol, not ketamine
Maybe it was just to wash down some Ambien.
The article doesn’t say why the pilot had to dump fuel to land. Was this because the plane needed to be lighter (dumping what would have otherwise been consumed)? If anyone can provide context that’d be appreciated.
They dump fuel so they can safely land due to weight, as you guessed. In this case it was a cross-country trip, so the plane had a fair amount of fuel that needed to be offloaded.
Airplanes are usually limited to land at only around half of the total weight they can take off with.
This isn’t normally a problem for normal trips.
If they went to a higher landing weight, the landing gear struts would have to be designed quite a bit stronger. This would make the landing gear heavier, and that would reduce the useful payload weight in the plane.
Half the weight of a plane is the fuel??
A350-900
Maximum takeoff weight: 283 tonnes
Maximum landing weight: 207 tonnes
Manufacturers’ empty weight: 115.7 tonnes
The Perth to Sydney flight is a longer one. I think around 3000km, so maybe they had a bigger fuel load
Which that’s something i find interesting about electric planes they’re testing. MTOW and MLW are almost identical in an electric plane. You can’t just dump fuel
Which is good for the environment but makes it really hard to design airplanes.
I’m guessing it’s comparable to designing SSTOs in KSP where it’s hard to get to orbit (and often back) on a single stage because you don’t get much lighter.
10/10 analogy 👌
The story in the article about the guy who tried to get into the cockpit is amazing… he’s lucky he didn’t get himself killed by the other passengers. Since that little incident twenty years ago even Granny will chew on your face if it looks like you’re pulling that shit.
Tell me you’re from Perth without saying you’re from Perth…
Get this in America.
One unruly passenger should not have the power to control 300 other flyers’ plans.
They should outfit planes with brigs.
They could cure a lot of it, if they stopped serving alcohol in the terminals or on the plane.
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typo was actually cure
I had a layover in Midway at maybe 7:30am once. Everyone — and I mean everyone — was drinking. Like, are you going to get the shakes between security and boarding?
Yes?
But then how would I get my breakfast beer? Only at an airport do you get the plausibility of being accustomed to a different time zone.
In all seriousness though, this is the classic “blame the person or the tool” argument.
Wow just directly parroting one corporate airlines solution to the hell that is airline travel? If they’d instead suggested that they fill the plane with knockout gas to put the passengers to sleep, would you be suggesting that here instead?
You can’t drink in a museum.
You can’t drink at a park.
You can’t drink in a lot of public places.
Why’s that?
Because people can’t act like fucking adults and so this has been banned in public places.
An airplane is a public place. It’s a close quarter public place, where when one person fucks up, it fucks it up for the whole plane.
Bars and restaurants are public places too. What’s the difference? Airline travel is stressful since people are now treated like cattle in a high security area. Banning alcohol sales just means that normal people won’t drink at the airport while the people with problems will chug shooters before getting to the airport and be drunk all the same.
What’s the difference?
They get kicked out when they cause a problem, and don’t cost the other 150 other people hundreds of $$$ and days of their time.
Airline travel is stressful
Alcohol is not the fucking solution to that, are you kidding me? Now you have have drunk people in a stressful situation.
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Museums have Night events where they serve beer. There’s three of them happening in my city this month at a Art Museum, science Museum, and a Arboretum. Wine is often at gallery showings.
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Depending on your state laws, You may be able drink at a public park. Review your States laws. Many forbid open containers.
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Review your state laws. Again, it “depends”. In New Jersey, you are allowed to drink in public.
Because people can’t act like fucking adults and so this has been banned in public places.
Again not true. Millions of people drink responsibility. If your statement was correct, then every single bar would be a haven for violence and destruction. Yet most cities are now allowing CHILDREN into bars and converting them into family friendly establishments.
I’m not Pro-alcohol - it’s literally poison for your body to give you a pleasant reaction. But Jesus Christ, if you’re going to use blanket statements, do some research. This is the same line of thinking as “DRUGs is BAAAAAAD”. Like no?
Museums have Night events where they serve beer
Beer, wiine, and liquor, even.
Heck, I was at pop up exhibit that had a bar outside, and another that had one at the end of the exhibit.
Millions of people drink responsibility.
We don’t have seat belt and speeding laws for the good drivers.
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Do you want mass murder? Because taking away a republican’s right to get drunk and express their anger for not being served first is unconstitutional, and against the principles in which this country was founded. Liberty and justice for me.
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Daba dee, daba di.
What’s the point of taking a vacation if I don’t get to send my coworkers pictures of my airport mimosa as they’re clocking in at 8am?
This guy flies.
Please dont take one of the remaining socially acceptable places to get absolutely blitzed before noon. Football tailgates are only in the fall
please do not cut off your hands and throw them at me in a drunken rage.
DONTCHUTELLMEWHATTODO!
Eh… Alcohol doesn’t care about party lines
Tell that to the Conga! CHECKKKMMATEEE!!!
Alcohol doesn’t care about party lines
But it does flow downhill.
Alcohol is the only way to survive the terribleness that is air travel, until such a time that weed vending machines become available in airports, or air travel becomes less shitty. The latter will never happen. Former inside of a decade.
Alcohol is the only way to survive the terribleness that is air travel
…is it?
This only works for shorter flights, but you can eat an edible before you go into the airport. I reccomend one that you’ve tried before the flight so you know how high you’ll get and how long it’ll last.
Sadly, Edibles aren’t legal all around the world.
We aren’t there yet.
It’s pretty much a ritual of mine to be and stay hammered most of my travel day.
Chug most of a half pint of liquor in the parking garage, double of Johnnie Walker Black for pretty much every hour I’m in the airport, order some mini bottles (or carry on my own) on the plane, sleep until my destination, and then do whatever it is I’m doing that day.
But then, I handle my alcohol extremely well (and have the red hair gene that makes you less susceptible to its effect and process it more quickly). So I don’t really get in trouble.
the red hair gene that makes you less susceptible to its effect and process it more quickly
Shit. That’s my wife’s secret weapon. I’m only a half (‘stealth’) ginger, but she’s - how do I say this? - full-on ginger. Green eyes, gorgeous flamin’ hair, and now probably this.
Scotch-in-your-3-1-1-bottles team, unite!
They’ll never do that. Drug dealing is too lucrative and alcohol is the western world’s favorite poison.
As a person who likes to drink a beer to take the edge off, meh.
You don’t need alcohol or drugs to be a disruptive asshole.
You don’t need alcohol or drugs to be a disruptive asshole
But it makes it easier. It’s like a cheat code for dickhead, and bonuses stack with maga hat, tobacco of any kind, dodge ram keys or any clothing without sleeves.
Sin pays.
Neither the man nor the airline was publicly named, nor was it specified exactly what he did to earn such a hefty penalty.
Why the hell not? I feel like it’s weird for this information to not be public in a case like this-- In this same article, there are three examples of other incidents where the details are known.
Phrases like the passenger “was disruptive,” and “It’s far simpler to obey the directions of airline staff than cause unnecessary issues, which can end up hitting you in the hip pocket” seem weirdly euphemistic to me.
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So does “dump fuel” literally mean “sprinkle a large volume of jet fuel over a large swathe of countryside?” Does it become diffuse enough that the environmental impact is negligible, or do we get a big splash that kills everything in an AoE?
Like… I’m surprised the fuel cost is the focus here, and not the environmental impact of releasing jet fuel just… into the air I guess? But maybe it doesn’t work the way I’m picturing.
That’s exactly right. But much evaporates or is diffused over such a large area that no one particular piece of land gets a significant amount.
The alternative is landing overweight, risking potential damage or failure to the aircraft’s landing gear, full of human lives, while still full of the explodey stuff.
The other alternative is designing planes to land at heavier weights, resulting in every other flight being less efficient.
Thanks… Yeah that makes sense. I can understand that sometimes the trade-off would make dumping fuel the right choice… I just wonder if the environmental impact factor in.
Dumping fuel is not uncommon.
The plane needs to be a certain weight to land and so fuel burn is calculated into that.
Obviously planes don’t intend to dump fuel but there are unforeseen circumstances which mean necessitate this.
It’s hard to say but I should imagine dilution, has a large impact on any sort of environmental concerns.
jet fuel isn’t dumped that rarely, it diffuses over an enormous area and isn’t significantly harmful to the ground, but is a greenhouse “gas” source iirc.
