Volume 4, Issue No. 44
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
Our latest as of Monday, January 30, 2023
~ The sight of a flight attendant going down on his knees to comfort a woman passenger in her seat is just too touching to pass up without comment. A photo of that circumstance aboard a Delta Airlines flight has gone viral and shown on CNN. Some years ago, on a flight from Gatwick Airport in London to Barcelona, a similar situation happened. At that time, no attendant came to console a nervous passenger who howled and howled as the Vueling Airbus 320 climbed to cruising altitude. I was on that plane and documented it.
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AIR TRAVEL EXPERIENCE
A Comforting Hand Amidst the Anxiety
Attendant Calms Down Nervous Passenger
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
TORONTO - I was watching Don Lemon's interview on CNN with a Delta flight attendant the other day curious about why he was devoting his morning program to featuring him on his show.
The questions I had in mind soon get answered by a picture showing Floyd Dean-Shannon, the steward, on his knees comforting a passenger in her seat who apparently was getting nervous from the moment the plane took off.
The sight of him taking the passenger's hand and reassuring her everything would be alright was heartwarming, which was what accounted for the photo going viral on social media. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZZLpp30arc).
The incident brought me back to London's Gatwick Airport in May 2014. I was going to Barcelona on a three-hour flight aboard Airbus 320 operated by Vueling, the airline headquartered in London which serves 122 destinations in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Whenever I travel I always prefer a window seat regardless if it's by plane, bus, or train. I'm uneasy with heights, but I still want to sit by the plane's window and look below, trying to figure out the landmarks I knew from reading maps and glossy travel magazines.
It's kind of a refuge for me from seatmates who have a habit of engaging in everyday conversation to while the time. Not for me; either I stay silent, read a book, or do some video recording. (Related video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0TW1fPyw5A).
A seat by the window reduces my perception of being claustrophobic and allows me to film what's happening outside the cabin, a habit I formed since I started my social media news outlet 13 years ago. Besides, it affords a bird's eye view of the world beneath as the plane climbs to cruising altitude.
I do agree with a travel writer who wrote about what he called "situational awareness" i.e. knowing where you are and what is going on around you.
On this Vueling flight, however, I got the aisle seat; the next two seats on my right were occupied by a young Spanish mother and her daughter. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GZ4TL0DGfE).
On my left across the aisle sat the African woman who was traveling to Barcelona to catch the five-hour-long connecting flight to her native Gambia in West Africa.
The experience shared by Dean-Shannon on CNN is very much like what happened on this trip I was in, except that there was no flight attendant like him to console the jittery passenger.
I began filming as soon as the plane taxied down the runway preparatory to takeoff. It was nice to see Gatwick, the planes in the queue waiting for their turn out to fly out, the airport workers, and the unfamiliar surroundings.
Once the plane had stabilized at an altitude of 30,000 feet, the African woman stopped screaming. Other passengers would not cease mocking her shrill cries. I then turned off my camera and talked to her.
She said she had a fear of flying. At boarding, she had informed a flight attendant about her fright so as not to cause panic on the plane when she began shrieking.
That probably explained why nobody bothered to come to her the way Dean-Shannon did with the passenger on the Delta flight.
I created the video of that episode on Vueling once I've settled at the home of a friend in the resort town of Sitges. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6stjyvQxM0).
Because there's no internet connection there I had to go to the Sitges Tourism Office (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4ssVd9eb-Y) where I uploaded the video to my YouTube channel.
That video has amassed more than 830,455 views, 1,806 comments, 3.1K likes, and no dislikes from the time it was published on May 29, 2014. It is my channel's first biggest hit. (Copyright 2023. All Rights Reserved).
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