Page 3 of 3 FirstFirst 1 2 3
Results 51 to 52 of 52

Thread: Steven Slater (38) Airline Steward Pulls Emergency Chute, Steals Beer Flies Coop

  1. #51
    Senior Member blighted star's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Probably South Of You
    Posts
    11,256
    Rep Power
    21474859
    This isn't a very exciting bump & the update's 3 yrs late, but for anyone who ever wonders how things turned out ...


    http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ndant-sentence





    Steven Slater says he is moving to California and plans to write a memoir about his 20 years in the airline industry

    A fed-up flight attendant whose spectacular exit down an emergency chute made him a national sensation completed his court-ordered treatment programme on Wednesday and was sentenced to a year of probation.

    Steven Slater avoided jail time for his stunt when he pleaded guilty to attempted criminal mischief and agreed to undergo counselling and substance abuse treatment. He was allowed to withdraw the plea on the more serious charge and plead guilty to a lesser charge after successfully completing his yearlong programme.

    "That was one moment, that was not indicative of who I am," Slater said, adding that he was moving from New York to California and that he planned to write a memoir about his 20 years in the airline industry. "I feel like I'm in a much better place. I have control over my life."

    The former JetBlue attendant admitted he pulled the emergency chute on Flight 1052 from Pittsburgh on 9 August 2010, after the plane landed at JFK airport in New York. He went on to the public address system, swore at a passenger who he claimed treated him rudely, grabbed a beer and slid down onto the tarmac.

    Slater's swift exit made him a hero to put-upon workers everywhere who have fantasised about quitting in a blaze of glory. He was a topic on TV shows, on the internet and on the front pages of newspapers, with many cheering him for standing up to the often-inhospitable world of airline travel and others accusing him of childish and dangerously reckless behaviour. Ricky's of NYC made a Halloween costume of him last year.

    But Queens district attorney Richard Brown said it was no laughing matter. Brown scolded Slater and the public for not taking his actions more seriously. It cost $25,000 to fix the slide, and the plane had to be taken out of service, causing flight delays. The airline has also pointed out that someone on the ground could have been hurt.

    Brown said on Wednesday he was satisfied with the outcome of the case and it "benefits society by fairly balancing the seriousness of the charges against the defendant's need for rehabilitation".

    Slater, who has no criminal history, said he cracked under pressure because of his terminally ill mother, recently deceased father and health problems of his own, including HIV. A mental-health evaluation determined that Slater has a clinical disorder and alcohol-abuse problems.

    JetBlue Airways suspended Slater after the incident and he resigned a year ago, leaving him unemployed. He must pay his former employer $10,000 in restitution.

    Slater, 39, said his memoir would be dedicated to overworked flight attendants everywhere.


    http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/0...ons/index.html



    (CNN) -- Steven Slater may not be a flight attendant anymore, but he's still a fixture on planes -- no longer serving passengers but now observing them.

    As he shuttles back and forth between his residences in New York and Los Angeles, Slater has collected 168,000 airline miles since August, when he burst into the public spotlight after dramatically quitting his job at JetBlue.

    You'll recall that Slater had just finished a flight when he told off a passenger over the plane's public address system, grabbed a few beers from the beverage cart, opened the emergency evacuation slide and slid down at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

    Many people saw Slater as a hero for confronting what he said was a rude passenger trying to wedge an oversized bag into an overhead bin and for his take-this-job-and-shove-it sentiment, but the incident also got him in trouble with the law.

    These days, Slater is living off his 401(k) and some savings while "working on a few things," he said. Much of his time since the outburst has been taken up by dealing with personal affairs, like the recent death of his mother and handling her estate in California.

    Slater is also writing a memoir that he plans to call "The Diary of a Mad Flight Attendant."

    He's still recognized, especially on planes.

    "It's a lot of high-fives," Slater said.

    "I'm very, very widely embraced by airlines personnel, but it's also amazing to me how many passengers, especially the frequent fliers, will come up to me on a flight and thank me for calling attention to the lack of civility of the airplane because everyone is tired of it."

    Slater recently spoke with CNN.com about the lessons he learned during his 20-year career in the air and in the past few months while sitting in the passenger seat rather than the jump seat.

    1. Carry-ons are still a nightmare

    "A lot of the headaches that the passengers and crews deal with are nightmare situations that the airlines have created," Slater said.

    "The most glaring example of that to me is that we charge passengers to check their luggage so of course common sense would say you try to bring on whatever you can, myself included."

    "Most of the temper tantrums I see revolve around baggage. You've worked so hard to get to the airplane, you get on the airplane and all you have is your one little piece of luggage and there just isn't anywhere to put it."

    "Everything is so packed full because we've required everybody to bring everything on board or pay some of these, in some cases, really exorbitant fees."

    "If you've got a family of four, and you're looking at paying $30 or $35 in baggage fees [per person], that's as much as a whole ticket sometimes. Sometimes the ancillary fees are going to be more than the actual ticket price, and that's kind of galling."

    2. Security process needs to be improved

    "It seems you see a lot of the [temper] flare-ups at security. People are faced, to my mind, some kind of really ridiculous requirements," Slater said.

    "When you see children going through these full-body scanners -- if I'm a parent and I'm sending my 5-year old through that, that's offensive to me. That bothers me. It bothers me to see any child go through that."

    "I see a lot of really stressed and tired people. I think that by the time you get on the airplane, you've already run the gamut, you've been through so much with getting to the airport, going through security, going through some of these just ludicrous procedures, going through the nude-o-scopes and queuing up and waiting in line for half an hour."

    "It just seems like the airport experience is such an ordeal that by the time you get on the airplane, usually you're exhausted and you're thankful to just be on the darn airplane."

    3. Airline industry is in a sad state of affairs

    "I came from TWA, and we were in 747s going to Europe carving Chateaubriand in the aisles and pouring Dom Perignon," Slater said.

    "We're now throwing Cheetos in the back of commuter planes. It's really tragic."

    "The airlines are still trying to wring concessions from a work force that has absolutely nothing more to give. We have reduced rest, we have reduced salaries."

    "When I started flying, we might go from New York to Los Angeles, have a reasonable layover and come back. Now it's very typical to go from New York to Los Angeles and back in a day and do that three or four days in a row."

    "It's very important to say how incredibly proud I am of my fellow flight attendants and pilots and airline workers who have stayed true to their passion."

    4. Flight attendants have their limits

    "I think it's OK to set boundaries. Everyone wants to be a professional, you want to be courteous, you want to be empathetic and believe me, flight attendants get it," Slater said.

    "We're hired to be compassionate people, we're there because we do care, we understand that people are going to weddings and funerals and they're flying for often very not pleasant experiences and there is that compassion. But it's not OK to be abused."

    5. It's possible to make the experience less stressful

    "I see everybody trying to do the best they can with a really bad situation," Slater said.

    "I try to stay as flexible as possible. I give myself a lot of time. I try to get there early, I try to fly the day before the event -- if I have a meeting on a Friday, I make sure I fly on a Thursday."

    "I never rely on the airline to provide what they say they're going to."

  2. #52
    Scoopski Potatoes Nic B's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    Sacramento, California
    Posts
    12,776
    Rep Power
    21474861
    Is there a video of him sliding out of the plane?


    Quote Originally Posted by marakisses View Post
    yes i said i will leave it under you storage he said cuddle with me i said shut up it over??? what am i doing wrong??
    Quote Originally Posted by curiouscat View Post
    Happy Birthday! I hid a dead body in your backyard to celebrate. Good luck finding it under the cement. You can only use a stick to look for it.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •