I recently spent a few happy days in Spain with old friends. The bad news is that they live about an hour from Alicante, so I had to fly on what my Scottish missus refers to as ‘The Benidorm Jimmy Bus’.
My misgivings took tangible form from the moment I went into Wetherspoon’s in search of a pre-flight breakfast. A group of around sixteen females, in various stages of obesity and decrepitude, wearing ‘head boppers’ and dayglow t-shirts emblazoned with the legend ‘Bren’s Hens: Benidorm 2019’, were already well oiled and raucous.
On board, I was settling into my aisle seat as this pie-eyed assortment shrieked and swayed its way into the cabin. To my chagrin the seating allocation meant that I found myself virtually surrounded by them. It was going to be a long three hours. Things weren’t too bad initially. As we took off there was a ragged chorus of ‘here we go’ from The Hens, and some clapping and ribald comments, but at least they were confined to their seats. Unfortunately once the seat belt signs went off, they quickly spilled out into the aisle and started to play musical seats. The noise level climbed and the language became riper. Clearly they weren’t about to follow the captain’s invitation to ‘sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight’. Requests from attendants for restraint fell largely on deaf ears.
Then the drinks trolley appeared. Needless to say, the attendants saw fit to ignore the warning signs and doled out further refreshments to this unruly bunch; there’s profit in it for the airline of course. Things started to get really raucous when the inevitable inflatable dick made its appearance, to a bawling accompaniment of ‘ee ay addio he’s going to breach her piece’ and ‘Bren wants knob’.
Parents with kids started to object, further requests for calm were met with hoots and cat-calls, and what up until then had generally been a fairly good natured atmosphere became distinctly heated. After one of the idiots lobbed a plastic bottle across the aisle, the first officer appeared and told them in no uncertain terms that further nonsense would result in the captain radioing for police to meet the aircraft on landing. A cringing apology from Bren herself notwithstanding, the first officer’s final threat was the imposition of a ban on the group’s return flight.
Mercifully things did calm down after this ticking off, although there was a lot of complaining of the ‘it was only a bit of fucking fun’ kind, and more ribald chanting as we landed. I was glad to get off. It could have been worse; it wasn’t a case of some nutter trying to force a door mid air, or start a punch up, but one can only wonder what possesses people to indulge in the kind of arsehole behaviour on planes that makes things unpleasant for everybody.
Alcohol plays its part of course, but the wife (who studied psychology) maintains that there’s a kind of psychosis at work that affects some people in the confined space of an aircraft, and jokes that she’s going to work it up as a PhD thesis. Me, well I’m not sure that I hold with that interpretation. I reckon that this was more a case of a group of self-entitled airheads being dead set on showing what a great time they were having by acting the cunt and making a fucking nuisance of themselves in the process.
Tossers.
Nominated by Ron Knee
