Never a dull moment flying out of Japan

The previous time I travelled back from Singapore, we transited Narita airport in Japan. On the flight from Japan back to the US, some of the Japanese (I assume) were really hard up for a smoke, and disabled the lavatory smoke detectors - multiple times. The flight attendants had to get on the PA and warn the passengers not to do that. Note to smokers: if you want to kill yourselves slowly, that's fine with me. But do not take the entire flight down with you.

Near the end of that flight, one of the attendants hustled her way up an aisle and crashed into another attendant coming around a corner, smacking their heads hard. I could not help laughing, even thought it was obviously painful. They both survived.

This trip, we had the fainter. A woman sitting directly behind us came to the lavatories, where I was standing with our baby and waiting for my wife to finish. She stood by me, weaving on her feet, until I pointed out that we were not waiting for one and that another one was open. She drunkenly walked over to it, and then collapsed in the aisle - with a bang. Fell down, hard. I grabbed another guy standing nearby and got him to run down and alert the attendants (I do wonder what the people near her prone body were thinking as they stared at her and did not signal the crew).

I thought she was drunk, but it was most likely altitude sickness - this was her first flight.

Coming through Customs, we were punished yet again for being truthful - our bags got scanned in SeaTac for food. Found that contraband banana we had - United gave it to us on the flight, so we forgot about it...

Note to SeaTac - that jackass who puts bags on the conveyor for people coming out of Customs and speaks loudly and rudely to them? Get rid of him. I have seen him before, and if he grabs an carry-on bag and sticks it on the conveyor, where it will go to baggage claim with no ownership information of ours on it, making it easier for someone to walk away with it, I will lose my cool. Get him away from the public.


Written by Andrew Ittner in misc on Wed 23 November 2005. Tags: international