Maybe the DOT needs to connect the “dots” of the similarity of behavior of the AA flight attendant and JetBlue pilot’s meltdowns that took place recently in a one-two punch at travelers. Maybe I’ve seen one conspiracy-thriller too many but it seems too pat to write off not one but two incidents of irratic and frenzied behavior as the results of bi-polar people off their meds.

So in the spirit of conspiracy theory novels, let me pose the kinds of questions that a good dectective in a John Grisham or Perry Mason story might ask:

What is the possibility that these 2 airlines employees, the AA flight attendant and the JetBlue pilot, and possibly Steve Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who quit his job in a flamboyant and theatrical style by opening the emergency exit, deploying the rubber chute and sliding down to the runway, bought coffee or a soda fountain treat or some other food item that is prepared at an airport shop and ingested the purchased item just before takeoff or once airborne. Take my conspiracy theory one step further by accepting the possibility that there is someone, or more than just one person, working at airport concessions or in places at airports frequented by crew who have access to  coffee pots or teapots or water pitchers or snacks or who just work at a food vending counter. Imagine that this one person or someone working in liason with others in the same or different airports are putting some foreign substance, delivering drops of mind-altering liquids or hallucinogenic drugs, into the cups they fill  or sandwiches they prepare when the customer who has ordered these items is wearing a flight crew uniform.

Is it possible that there is a plot to flip out flight crew by introducing substances into items they buy at the airport to eat or drink? It’s certainly worth looking into considering how strange it is that two (three if you include Steve Slater’s behavior) flight crew individuals experienced similar erratic , ranting, raving, irrational and bizarre behavior within such a short period time of one another’s odd outbursts and both happened in the US? With so many planes flying all over the world every day, how is it that the two recent incidents showed up only in the US and literally days, not months, apart.  It’s always easy to write off odd behavior to mental illness and skipping medication. But just maybe there’s a more sinister story here.  Anyone who sees someone in crew uniform in an airport knows that person is about to fly and will have impact on the operation of an aircraft and the safety of the passeners. What an interesting approach to identifying how to mess up the friendly skies by messing up the body chemistry of crew members just before flights take off. 

Maybe I’ve seen one Robert Ludlum Bourne film too many! But the “coincidences” of symptoms, the uniqueness of the emotional outbursts,the paranoia related to crashing and throttle levels and the general craziness of the scenarios of behavior of the AA flight attendant and the JetBlue pilot were described as completely out of character for them, coupled with the description of foaming at the mouth of the pilot suggest that there may well have been the ingestion of some chemical substance, not the lack of ingesting medications,  at the bottom of this story. I’d love to know what they eat for breakfast and where that breakfast was bought and everything they ate the night before, in the airport and on the plane just to see if there is any possibility of something greater than “coincidence, “a concept I have never believed in, at play.

And if all of the above is just the product of my overactive mind, there certainly are the seeds for a terrific suspense thriller in the ideas laid out above, a thriller I don’t have time to develop and write. So if you get inspired and either investigate the circumstances of the day before and the day of the fateful events in the life of each crew member in this questioning spotlight or you let your imagination run wild and write the next best selling novel based on this, let me know when you solve the mystery or send me a signed manuscript of your novel before you win the Pulitzer Prize as a momento for my giving you something to think about.

Meantime, if you travel on JetBlue, look for me . I fly with them domestically a lot and I haven’t heard anything yet that would deter me from flying with them on my next domestic flight. But I might think twice about drinking items in airports that didn’t come from sealed cans and invasion-proof containers! One never knows, do one!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 31st, 2012 at 2:57 am and is filed under On the Fly!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.