My Plane Story

The finding of a man trying to board a plane at PHL today with a bag full of explosives prompted me to tell my plane story (I have several, but this is the one that came to mind). Alex and I were heading to CA, I can't really remember the reason. My favorite flight to take back to LAX is the 6 or 6:30pm one. It arrives into LAX at 9pm, and I don't have to miss a day of work. Anyways, we were waiting in the terminal, getting ready to board, and I see this "New Jersey Clown" is the only way to describe him. Oversized 76ers jersey, baggy shorts, hat slightly skewed, lots of gel in his hair (even tho it's covered by a hat). He's on the phone, and he's talking loudly. We could all hear him, but I generally tried to tune him out. We start boarding, getting in line, heading down the jetway. Apparently, this asshat decides to continue talking on his phone, saying things like, "This plane is going DOWN!" "No way we're making it to LA!", and more and more obnoxious things. I am unsure what his motive was for his grandstanding, but the flight attendants and the passengers certainly noticed. Once we were all on the plane and mostly seated, some burly Federal Marshalls (? actually not sure who came on the plane? cops?) hauled him and his friend off the plane. It all happened so fast, that I wasn't sure what had happened. Someone came on over the intercom to tell us we had to be re-screened through security. I was sure this guy was just being a tool, and he didn't really have anything that would cause the plane to go down, but I understand that rules are rules and we would rather be safe than sorry. They escorted us back through the terminal to the security line, where I had to quickly down my 1L of water I had filled up before the flight. Thankfully, we were fast-tracked through security, and we ended up taking off about an hour late. The pilot liked us, though, and got us into LAX only about 1/2 hour past our original arrival time. The whole incident was a non-incident, really. But I do recall seeing those signs saying, "Don't joke about bombs or anything!" around the airport, and apparently they take these things pretty seriously. Here's hoping that d-bag spent a good several days in Federal Prison for our little inconvenience.