Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
While loading oven racks in the galley of a 757, I looked up from a cluster of half-frozen chicken dinners and noticed two passengers moving toward me down the aisle. They were the first to board. The fact that no passengers followed them was not unusual. Perhaps they were pre-boards, I thought. Perhaps age or physical disability made it necessary for them to board ahead of everyone else. But they were in their early 30s and showed no apparent signs of physical disability. The reason no one followed, I soon discovered, was that both of them stank to high heaven.
The smell hit me as they approached the rear of the empty cabin. I staggered backward as if I'd been shot. Seconds earlier, I noticed a slight shift in air quality, as if the door to the Detroit Lions locker room had opened just a crack. I stood at the back of the aircraft and took a tentative sniff. It was as if I were a farm boy inhaling a big-city line of cocaine. A frogman sampling the stench before splashing into the sewers. My nostrils were on fire and my olfactory gland was ready to burst.
By the time I came out of the lavatory the couple had settled into seats 30-A and B, and several pissed-off passengers were waiting for me in the galley. I was bombarded with statements like "You better do something right now, godammit" or "I'm not sitting next to these filthy pigs." But the most telling comment came from a man who spoke in a slow Southern accent. "Smells like sumthin' crawled up their asses and died."
I called on the interphone to confer with the purser. She told me to tell the couple to come to the front of the aircraft. I argued, insisting that dirty work like this falls under the domain of purser duty. "That's why you guys get paid more," I said. "That's why you get special training." But the purser was busy with another problem in first class. Besides, the galley was filling with angry passengers. If I stalled any longer we might have a riot on our hands.
With all the composure I could muster, I approached the offending couple. I held my breath, speaking from a constricted diaphragm that suddenly made me feel dizzy. "Excuse me folks," I said. "But ahhh ... the purser ... she ahhh ... she needs to speak with you in the front of the aircraft."
Aside from the caustic odor, they seemed like pleasant people. They were dressed in clean casual clothes and smiled as I spoke. "What does she want?" the man asked.
I was running out of air. "Well," I said, "to be perfectly blunt, the ahhh ... the passengers are complaining about the way ... about your ... the passengers say your body odor is offensive." Like a swimmer who'd been under a couple of seconds too long, I took a huge gulp of air and immediately wished I hadn't. The couple exchanged a look and threw at me a gaze that could have melted steel.
"We are not moving!" the man said defiantly.
After a visit from the gate agent and the captain, after we threatened to call airport security, after patience was ready to give way to a passenger revolt, the couple finally grabbed their bags and walked to the front of the aircraft, leaving a sea of gagging passengers in their wake. But before leaving the airplane, they bestowed upon us a parting comment. The final insult voiced by anyone -- drunks, obnoxious jerks, violent passengers and yes, the indelibly stinky -- who has ever been tossed off an aircraft: "We're never flying this airline again!"
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