The Problem with Free Airline Tickets
The day we started a riot on a 737
A few years ago the Australian domestic airline Virgin Blue — the planes were painted bright red; it was an Aussie joke that puzzled tourists — had a generous “Free Flight” program for travel industry people, and a few of us were heading to a conference in Sydney.
One of my colleagues, a lovely old gentleman who had the surname of Gay, was boarding the flight when he found a passenger sitting in his assigned seat.
There was a vacant seat beside me in the row behind, so I waved my workmate up. We were near the back of the plane, and it didn’t matter much where we sat.
Mr Gay, whose surname had meant “merry, frolicsome” back in the Sixties when he’d been born, was a fun guy. Straight, despite the new meaning of the word, and he took a lot of ribbing, but he was good-natured about it, and I liked him a lot. Spending a couple of hours swapping travel stories while we drank airline booze sounded pretty good to me.
Then the wheels came off
An incoming flight landed and taxied to the stand beside us. I looked at it, and then nudged my companion. One of the tyres had obviously taken a hit and been shredded. Those puffs of smoke you see when an airliner lands? They are burning rubber, and…
