Businessman sues BA 'for treating men like perverts'

A businessman is suing British Airways over a policy that bans male passengers from sitting next to children they don't know - even if the child's parents are on the same flight. This is another aspect of corporate business life, where normal people are subjected to the fears and fanciful thoughts of executives scared witless by lawsuits. It has nothing to do with decency, remember!

Mirko Fischer has accused the airline of branding all men as potential sex offenders and says innocent travellers are being publicly humiliated. The fact is they are branding them exactly as that. Take no chances. All men are possible perverts, so tell them so.

We live in distressing times. Generally people seem to have become utterly devoid of protesting in any manner other that muttering sentiments of disquiet whilst in the local pub or whilst watching the TV News. And the corporate nonsense carries on unabated. Mr Fischer does us all a service and he should be applauded.

I was once publicly vilified by a flight attendant (not British Airways). My son, then a toddler, had just wet his nappy as we were told to buckle up. I could not get him to sit on my lap. Whereupon this young man literally shouted at me suggesting I may be the cause of the imminent flight disaster he was predicting. It soon became an ugly scene, with other passengers joining in. Completely unnecessary but I'm sure that particular flight attendant was more concerned with rules than reality. Safety is one thing. Stupidity is quite another!

Leaving On A Jet Plane!

I see that complaints to airlines have gone up 11% in a year. 12,307 people complained. A whole load more just grumbled, swore and stamped on the floor. In a way, I'm with the 12,307. At least they did something about it. The airlines are so busy giving us cheap seats, which is what we demand, that most everything else goes hang. It is a miracle some days that people don't explode more often.

I'm a great fan of Meet the Parents. Greg Focker had his problems flying to meet his future father-in-law. In this quote from the film, Greg is trying to fit his large bag into the overhead bin -

Flight Attendant: I'm sorry, sir, you're gonna have to check that.
Greg Focker: I got it.
Flight Attendant: No, I'm sorry, that bag won't fit.
Greg Focker: No, no, I'm not - hey, I'm not checking my bag, okay?
Flight Attendant: There's no need to raise your voice, sir.
Greg Focker: I'm not raising my voice. THIS WOULD BE RAISING MY VOICE TO YOU, okay? I don't want to check my bag, okay? And, by the way, your airline? You SUCK at checking bags, okay, because I already did that once and you lost it, and then I had everything screwed up very badly for me, okay?
Flight Attendant: Well, I can assure you that your bag will be placed safely below deck with the other luggage...
Greg Focker: Oh, yeah? How do you know my bag will be safe below with the other luggage? Huh? Are you physically going to take my bag and put it beneath the plane? Are you going to go right now outside, with the guys with the earmuffs, and go put it in there?
Flight Attendant: No...
Greg Focker: No? Okay, then shut your piehole and listen to me when I say that I am FINISHED with the checking-of-the-bags CONVERSATION.

Not a suggested conversation dialogue for real life, but one can appreciated the scene. However, some passengers can be really obnoxious and cause a lot of problems for other passengers as well as the airline crew and staff. I have to say, in my time on planes (30-odd flights in as many years) that it is not the staff but the passengers that I would complain about. Several times when "deplaning" some have behaved as if they were the Gadarene Swine. Pushing and shoving par excellence!

No woman, no flight!

Bob Marley could have written a tune about it. A distressed cabin crew boss is suing her employer because he allegedly forced her to employ only young, slim, single women to crew the private aircraft of his charter company. Alexandria Proud, from London, is claiming unfair constructive dismissal by charter aircraft firm Gama Aviation. That's the nub of all these disputes. Did the employer "construct" a policy of selective screening? Miss Proud says, "The successful candidate would be female, physically attractive, aged 18 to 30, single and no larger than a size 12." So if that was the criteria what were these young women employed to do exactly?

She says she was verbally abused by the company owner, Alireza Ittehedeh, who she claims did not support her. Mr.Ittehedeh would not permit her to employ male flight attendants who he believed to be gay, so she says.

What I gather is that Gama Aviation, as gleaned from its website, is aimed at American, British, French, Arab, and Russian corporate types. The majority of these customers could be described as male, macho and meaning business. It's not surprising that Mr.Ittehedeh may have thought they would expect female, physically attractive, 18 to 30, single and no larger than a size 12, women to be offering drinks and dainty morsels at every request.

My answer to this case is that Miss Proud found the pool from which to recruit exceedingly small and Mr.Ittehedeh's perceived or otherwise views on gays became a paramount issue. He may well have favoured women only as a business reason and he may well not favour gays, but his stance is little different from the 1950's version of flying.

There is something to be said for the anti-discrimination laws but sometimes it gets out of hand. Not all male flight attendants are gay, by a long stretch. Not all flying executives expect to be waited upon as if Peter Stringfellow was in charge of events. Common sense leaves the plane and both sides settle down to stoking up the accusation level. So we end up with pay-offs and not a lot else.

I'm not sure many gay men would be queuing up for such a job, but neither should they be refused just because of a perception. If only all employers ran companies with an eye on the "triangle". A business relies on three parts - the customers, the employees and the shareholders being in a win-win situation and meeting at the centre. Start to pull the centre towards one part and trouble begins.