Wanna Fly Drunk? Wanna Reach Your Destination? Then Do NOT Fly
Monarch Airlines
By ANN Associate Editor Rob Finfrock
With the holiday season waning and the New Year fast
approaching, the gang at ANN thought we'd take the time to share
this fractured -- but true -- fairy tale, for any of you who may be
feeling a little low on holiday cheer.
Our story begins one holiday night, on a Monarch Airlines flight
(sorry -- inadvertent rhyme) from England to the Spanish island of
Tenerife. Seems a certain passenger onboard was giving the cabin
crew a fair bit of grief, especially as he'd imbibed more than a
fair amount of holiday cheer -- i.e., alcohol. Clearly, something
had to be done -- the man needed to be escorted from the aircraft,
and quickly.
As in, right now.
The plane's destination, Tenerife, was simply too far away -- and it's impossible to actually open the doors and
dump someone off an airliner while in flight. So, the
Airbus's pilot found an alternative: the lovely island of Porto
Santo (above), aptly described in media reports as "a volcanic
outcrop in the Atlantic."
And hey, it even had an airport -- a relic from the earliest
days of the Cold War, back when NATO considered placing a frontline
base on the Portuguese island, according to the Daily Mail.
You can guess what happened next: police met the aircraft, and
escorted the drunken man off. And then the plane flew on to
Tenerife... leaving the man behind... in a jail... on an island
barely 40 square miles in area... described, it bears repeating, as
a "volcanic outcrop."
(That sound you may be
hearing right now, is the cheering of thousands of airline pilots
-- past and present -- wishing they'd had the guts to deal with
similarly aggravating passengers in the same manner... were it not
for the lack of conveniently placed volcanic outcrops, say, on a
flight from Detroit to Las Vegas.)
Porto Santo isn't exactly a well-travelled tourist destination
-- nearly all visitors flock to nearby Madeira instead, leaving the
island's half-dozen hotels and few beaches relatively empty --
which presented an interesting quandary: just how, exactly, did
this particular Gilligan ever get off the island?
Well, after he was released from custody, the man -- whose name
was not given -- took a ferry to Madeira, and caught another
flight. We assume he was sober this time around, and presented
relatively little fuss. (He's scheduled to appear in a mainland
Portuguese court in January)
Meanwhile, the flight the man was originally on landed on
Tenerife about four hours late due to the ordeal -- and while we're
sure some passengers were upset with the delay, no doubt they were
consoled by the great story they had to tell on arrival.
The Daily Mail was unable to reach anyone at Monarch for comment
on the incident.
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