Reclining Seat Leads to Air Force Scramble

Huh? Now that just sounds utterly ridiculous doesn’t it? Here how it apparently went down.

1. Shortly after take-off from Dulles International in Washington, Passenger in crowded Boeing 767 on its way to Ghana fully reclines coach seat smashing knees of passenger sitting one row back.
2. Passenger one row back takes exception to knees being smashed.
3. Heated words are exchanged over reclined seat and smashed knees
4. Passenger with smashed knees smacks reclining passenger in head.
5. Scuffle ensues.
6. Flight attendant and another passenger attempt to intervene
7. Pilot, uncertain what the ruckus is all about, decides better to be safe than sorry and heads back to Dulles.
8. Pilot can’t land with full fuel tanks and needs to fly around for about an hour.
9. The Air Force gets wind of the confusion and scrambles two F-16 fighters from Andrews Air Force Base.
10. The two F-16 fighters take position 1,000 feet above airliner “just in case.”
11. Airliner finishes burning off fuel and lands.
12. Fighters return to Andrews AFB.
13. Dulles police take arguing passengers into custody.
14. Passengers get to stay at flea bitten airport hotel until the next morning
15. Arguing passengers are released by Dulles police.
16. Flight heads for Ghana 12 hours or so late.
17. Disposition of arguing passengers is unknown.

Now if would be interesting if the airline and the U.S. government presented these two morons a bill for the airliner fuel, the lost time and the F-16 fuel and wear and tear. I suspect it would be a healthy sum.

Simple courtesy says, given the lack of leg room on airliners, you don’t recline your seat unless the one behind you is empty. On long fights this is a bit annoying but those are the breaks. If it’s so important to you to be able to recline, buy both seats.

Can you imagine what it was like for those two yo-yos on the trip back to Washington and during the time circling to burn off the fuel? You could get lynched for making people spend extra time on an airline flight like that. I hear Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin are blaming Obama for the whole incident. After all, Obama is black and there are black people in Ghana so obviously it’s his fault.