Armchair Anonymous: Airplanes II
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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Buck Rogers and I'm joined by First Captain Monica Padman. I made it First Captain because it's airplanes. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. And that was the only word I could think of in the airplane world. I think everyone can listen to this one. I mean, look. Yeah. I mean, it's scary. If you have a fear of flying, you might not want to listen. Yeah. And there's Pootie, but-

But I think we don't warn about pootie, right? Yeah, no. There's no way you could have a trigger of pootie and listen to Armchair Anonymous at this point, right? I really don't think so. Okay, yeah, this is okay to listen to. Please enjoy Crazy Airplane Stories. Hi. Hi. Is this Shivani? Oh my God.

It is. How are you? I'm so excited to be talking to y'all. Us too. Monica forgot that she wears headphones. I did. I'm so sorry. I got so disoriented. Is that a dog bridle hanging off the doorknob or a bra? A bathing suit. Yeah, a little bit of both. I'm at a cottage about two hours north from Toronto, so I just got out of the lake. On Muskoka? Yes, Muskoka. Yeah.

Yes. Wonderful. Oh my God. What a fun summer you're having. It is a very fun summer. Have you been in the lake a bunch in boating? Yes. Can't get me out of the lake. Now we're talking, girl. Do you know how to swim? I'm a very poor swimmer, so people do worry about me when I swim, but I love to do it. Aw.

Good for you. Good that you're scaring everyone as you swim. You and Monica should start like synchronized swimming or something. We should. And like the really kiddie pool. Yeah. I'll do that with you. And people will be watching so nervous. Like it's a high dive, like a high wire routine, even though it's very. It's like a platform dive. Yes.

even though it's very simple. Like the Olympic diving team, but it's just us like splashing around. Yeah, exactly. For people who can't swim. Okay, but alas, you have an airplane story. I do. Kind of related. There's a lot of seaplanes flying in and out of Muskoka. That's true. And this took place on a flight into Canada. So it's all a little bit related. I actually live in New York, but I'm a dual citizen, which is why I'm here. So this story starts out in New York City. It was January 2020. So right before everything was about to go to shit. Mm-hmm.

We had no idea. You were probably on the plane with an early COVID person and didn't know it. Oh my God. I'm one of those people who I'm like, I had it at that time. Like I had such a horrible cough. Like, of course I can never prove it, but yeah. So I might've been the person on the plane with it. Yeah. So I was already having the most horrible day. A cat had spilled a glass of water on my computer. And so it wasn't working. On the plane? This is leading up to the plane. No cat airlines. That'd be crazy. So.

So I kept trying to buy a new laptop. My card kept declining because I thought it was fraud. And I literally called my mom and I said, something horrible is going to happen on this flight because that's how bad my day has been. So I don't know if I manifested it or if I was having a psychic moment. Neither is a good option. So I go to the airport. It's a flight from New York City to Ottawa, Ontario, which is about an hour.

We're about 50 minutes into the flight. Everything's been smooth sailing, totally good. And then suddenly the flight attendant gets over the loudspeaker, but it's so choppy. You can't hear barely anything. I just hear the words, emergency landing, loss of air pressure, going down. Oh my God. Oh, oh.

Oh my Lord. Right when she says that, the plane literally dives down and is also shaking side to side. I get like whipped to the side, which I later found out caused me to break two ribs on the like arm rest of the plane. I broke a nail, which was obviously much less significant, but still notable. But real quick, was this a big airplane or was this more one of those commuter propeller smaller planes? It was two seats on each side and then maybe like

12 rows or something. - Yes. - One that's likely to go down. - Right, more likely. I've flown a lot in my life and I also have really bad flight anxiety, but I'm usually able to like talk myself down or distract myself. But this was the first time that I truly was like, I have to start drafting text messages, saying goodbye to my loved ones. I literally wrote a text to my mom. I wrote a text to my best friend 'cause we're literally plummeting down.

And nobody's saying anything. We're just staring out. It's foggy. It's dark. You can't see a single thing. So after about five minutes, that felt like 25 years, the pilot gets on over the loudspeaker and they are clear as day, thank God. And they say, we tried to land in Ottawa. It didn't work. So we have to emergency land in Burlington. But everything's fine. We're fine. And we're going to land safely. We're just going to go to Burlington. And for a little bit of Canadian geography, Burlington...

Ontario is about 30 minutes outside of Toronto. So people on the plane start to like make plans and they're like, okay, you know what? Like we can easily get to Toronto Pearson, get on another flight to Ottawa, still get there tonight. This isn't the worst thing in the world. We finally land and everyone's just like, thank God we're not dead. But then they come over the loudspeaker and they say, welcome to Burlington, Vermont. And everyone on the plane is like, oh, okay.

Oh, no. So not only are we now in a different country than we intended to land on, they tell us that we actually can't disembark from the plane because we flew into Canadian airspace, which means that we now need to go through customs. But because the Burlington airport is...

Teeny tiny. The airport was closed, locked down, key lights off. So not only did they have to get airplane staff to come unlock the airport, they also needed to wake up all the customs people, change from their pajamas and get back to the airport. It's about like 1230 a.m. at this point.

So we end up having to sit on this tiny plane where we've all almost died together for, I want to say, like an hour and a half, two hours. So they finally let us off. We have to go through customs, but they're just asking the basic custom questions like, what did you purchase while you were in Canada? Are you bringing anything back? And it's like, we were in the

guy crash landing. Nobody did any business while they were in Canada. We finally get to go through and they ship us off to various hotels. I get to go to the Windjammer Hotel, which looks like a log cabin. Could have been fun on a different occasion, but I was like, I just wanted a nice hotel if I was going to have to stay the night in Burlington, Vermont.

And they tell us, we're going to send a shuttle back to the hotel at 9 a.m. Your flight will depart at 10 a.m. Burlington, Vermont is even closer. So now it's like literally a 25 minute flight. So I get maybe four hours of sleep, get back on, get to the airport. The airport is also only open for us. No flights were scheduled to leave that Saturday. We're sitting in the terminal for like three hours. They're not telling us anything. Finally, they come on the loudspeaker and they say, the pilot overslept.

And so he's not coming. Oh, he's not coming. Yeah. I don't understand that whole like they time out thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was one of those situations. So they're like, he's not coming. So now we have to call every pilot in Burlington and see who wants to take this flight. Another hour passes. They find a pilot. Finally, we board the plane. He sobers up. They pull him out of a bar. I'm sure that's what it was. He got a little too excited at the wind jam.

or a hotel bar like before. They get us on the plane. Then they have to get the customs people to come on, check the manifest, and check all of our names to make sure we all boarded on the flight because since we've been in Canadian airspace, not going back would have meant we were like stowaways or something. So they're going through the list. They cannot find one guy. They keep recounting as if that's going to change the outcome of when this guy's here. At some point, the flight attendant just goes, we've all had a really long 24 hours and just pulls out the bucket of alcohol on the flight. Oh!

And it's like, anyone take whatever they want. So I'm chugging like mini bottles of Chardonnay. Good and bad idea. I don't know if like adding drunkenness to this scenario is going to make anyone behave better. But at least people feel seen. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Which is a huge deal. We felt like we were getting at least a little bit of reward. I also feel like most of the people on the flight were Canadian. And so they probably would have just gotten more happy with some alcohol.

I'm having my Chardonnay. Finally, we take off. We get to Ottawa 25 minutes later. And basically, it's been a 24-hour ordeal. I've come out with a $250 bill from the Windjammer Hotel. Two broken ribs. They charge you? Yeah. And $250. I would have liked to spend that at a different hotel in a different city. Sure, sure, sure. Not the Windjammer. For four hours.

what the fuck? So came away with that broken ribs, had to get my manicure fixed, but I survived. And so I guess that's the good part of the story, but it was definitely the most unpleasant flight experience I've ever had. Did you submit your doctor bills or anything? Did there, is there any kind of effort made to make everything good with you guys or no? No, because it was like, it fell under the act of God category. So basically that means they don't have to compensate you for anything. They're like, not our fault. Wow.

Lower ribs, I guess? Yeah, lower ribs. I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world. It just meant I couldn't work out for a little bit and I was uncomfortable sitting most of the time. Ribs is terrible. Breathing hurts. And because I had that crazy cough that I suspected was COVID, it also didn't make it feel better because I was like hacking. Oh, sure.

Did they ever explain what happened to the aircraft that caused the emergency landing? This is my armchair theory, I will say, because I was going to fly to visit my dad. And so he was like tracking my flight because we just went off the grid for like half an hour. And so he was worried, but he was saying every other flight was landing in Ottawa. It wasn't like there was actually some big weather problem. So I think it might just not have been a very good pilot.

I think she like tried and things didn't go well. She was tired. She needed to sleep. Clearly. She got her sleep. She got a big sleep. But I don't know the reasoning. And people were generally pretty chill about it. Like nobody caused a fuss, but it was definitely unpleasant. They couldn't have had any customs workers at the Burlington Vermont airport. It's not an international airport under normal circumstances, right? I think it technically.

Technically is because they have like one flight every other day to Montreal. Oh, okay. Last question. When planes get crazy in movies, everyone screams, but it sounds like everyone got really calm. I don't know calm, but everyone got very quiet. Like, I feel like you almost have to keep to yourself to be like, this isn't happening. This isn't happening. Whereas if you start to talk to people or I was also traveling alone. So I don't know, you know, people who are in couples or in families, but it sounded very quiet. And I think everyone was just like,

Pretend it's not happening. Pretend it's not happening. Oof. I do not like that. 2020 was not a good year. It was wild. I think maybe my bad energy. The whole thing. That one flight was a butterfly effect. When you told your mom this is going to be a bad flight, your computer had already been ruined. I, too, have had a couple things go wrong. I think we've even been traveling at some point. I'll get weird.

Where I'm like, God, I keep getting signal after signal. Like I'm forcing myself to make this flight or I'm forcing this situation. That's the only time I get really kind of spooked. Well. I'm like, am I ignoring these signals? I feel bad because I've done it a few times where I've canceled flights really last minute because I'm like. Oh, because of that feeling? Well, it's like I don't feel that good. Maybe it's the world trying to tell me not to fly. Like I've done it a couple of times, which.

That's bad too. Yeah, you've been answering that call and responding. I haven't. And we're both alive. Right. So we learn nothing. And you're alive too. Yeah, we are all alive.

I think it's that weird thing where it's like anxiety versus intuition. Hard to know. Probably a bit of both. We were one time in Chicago. We went to the wrong airport maybe and we were fucking racing. Yeah, we were with Bob. And I was like driving down all these arterial roads at a million miles an hour to get us there. Midway Airport. Yeah, and I was like, am I supposed to just accept the will of God right now? But that, and then we had shows. We had shows. We had to die. Even if we knew we were going to die. For the listeners.

You guys are dedicated to your craft. I appreciate it. Well, thank you so much. Well, Shivani, lovely meeting you. Thanks so much. And I know everyone says this, but I've been listening since the very beginning. I loved Parenthood. My mom, who's actually been sitting here listening in. Oh, hi.

We watched Parenthood together every single week when I was younger. So you're a big part of our lives. Well, tell her Crosby says hi and I love you. Crosby says hi. All right. Well, wonderful meeting you. And thanks so much for telling us that story. Enjoy Muskoka, you brat. I'm so jealous. Brat summer. All right. Bye.

Oh, hi. Hello. Where are you, Aubrey? I'm in San Francisco. Oh, wonderful. And are you a native to San Francisco? I'm from Palo Alto and then moved to San Francisco. Okay, okay. Do you love it? I love it. I was in LA for college and couldn't get out of LA quick enough.

Okay, great. So I darted back up to the bay. What college did you go to? USC. Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure. Trojan. Yeah, fight on. We're enemies. You guys are big enemies. Yeah, we're big enemies. Frenemies. Frenemies. Can you tell us what you do in San Francisco? I do commercial real estate. That seems like a good place to do it. Pretty pricey up there. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so you have a crazy airplane story. I do have a crazy airplane story.

My fiance, boyfriend at the time, and I were at a wedding in Seattle and we're on a Sunday night, 8 p.m. flight. It was a smaller airport. It was Paine Field. So 30 minutes before we're boarding, he gets a text on his phone that he's been upgraded to first class seat 1A. And he's like, you take it. And we're being polite. And I'm like, no, you take it. Ha ha.

I end up boarding the plane first to make sure he takes that seat. So don't come for him when I say he was in seat 1A and I was in the second to last row of the plane. I'm not going to come for him because this has happened to me. And I go, I'm so much bigger than you. It makes sense for me. So I've been very selfish. That's bad what you did, Dax.

This guy seems nice. He's really trying to give you the seat. I know, he's a much better person than me. Yeah, I leverage my size in this situation to get the seat. Yeah, so he's better than me. I'll remember that. 30 minutes into the flight, everything's totally normal. We're in the air and the flight attendant gets on the PA system. And I've never heard a flight attendant so frantic in her life. She says, we have an emergency situation. Everyone prepare for an emergency landing. And I just feel the plane just turn and dart down and unhook.

I saw my life flash before my eyes. I was like, we're going down. This was right at the beginning of everything happening in the Middle East. I was like, there's an attack. And my boyfriend is at the front of the plane and I'm going to die alone back here. How big of a plane was it? It was like a big plane, two by two. And then he was sitting alone. Okay. So one seat on the left and first. Yeah. Not small and completely full. So she gets on and...

And we don't hear from her again for 20 minutes. But it was so frantic that I was like, something is terribly wrong right now. This is how I go. So I'm texting my boyfriend and I'm like, what the hell is happening? This is the end. Are you OK? And he's not replying to me. So I start gaslighting myself. I'm like, maybe I'm dramatic. I'm

What? Oh.

She's talking him like, we're going to get you down. I'm feeling like an asshole. I'm like, oh God, maybe something happened with this guy. And she gets back on the PA system and she's like, we have a medical emergency. It's just for one passenger. Everything's going to be okay. But you can still hear she's like terrified in her voice. Oh my Lord. I can't gauge what's happening. But as we're about to touch down, I get a text back from my boyfriend and he's like, wait, where are we? And I was like, bruh. He was out cold. He was asleep.

The entire time. Oh, good for him. We touch down, the doors open, and five cops, like, fully armed, rush onto the plane and, like, sprint to the back where I'm sitting and...

escort this guy who just looks dead in the eyes off the plane. Oh my God. Same guy that got handcuffed? Yeah. So he was kind of by you this whole time? Yeah, I was peeping. I was getting all the tea. That's when the whispers start and we're like, what happened? He had the employee badges on, so he worked for the airline.

Which is why when he was out of his seat, I was like, maybe he's allowed to be. At that point, it's midnight. We need to get on another flight. Well, really quick, did you land at the airport you were destined for or have you stopped short of there? We were in Oregon. We were supposed to be in San Francisco. Okay, okay, okay. We get off and my teeth are like fully chattering. I'm not recovered from the situation. And my boyfriend who was asleep at the time was just holding me.

while I was profusely shaking. And I was like, sorry if I'm being dramatic. I just feel like that could have gone really badly. I don't know what happened. They book us on the next flight. The new flight attendant's trying to get the scoop from us. And she's like, I heard he might have had a knife. Oh. Rumors were flying and she was like...

Like, I don't know what I would have done in that situation. And we're like, ma'am, that's your job. You're supposed to know what to do in that situation. We land in San Francisco. It's 2 a.m. We're delirious. We go to bed. We wake up to 30 text messages from our friends and family to this news article. And the headline says...

Off-duty pilot charged with 83 counts of attempted murder. What? This pilot, who was off-duty hitching a ride from Seattle to San Francisco, was sitting in the jump seat. He had taken shrooms two days prior and never snapped out of it. What? He thought he was having a bad dream and he reached for the emergency levers, which shut off the plane entirely. Oh my goodness. What?

So he successfully pulled them. What you have to do is pull and then twist. But the two pilots flying the plane managed to wrestle him and like push them back in so that the engines didn't entirely shut off. And your boyfriend was front row to all this and missed it. Thank you for recognizing that. Yeah, he missed a scuffle. And it was a big scuffle because we lost like 15,000 feet of altitude during the scuffle. Oh my God. Whoa.

And he was asleep with his noise-canceling headphones and missed the entire thing. Oh, my Lord. And so I'm assuming the pilots helped restrain him while the flight attendant put the cuffs on? No. So the flight attendants were in the back of the plane. Oh. The pilots fully wrestled him, like full MMA match in the cockpit, pushed him out, locked the door behind him, and then he like kind of snapped into it, I guess.

and walked himself all the way to the back of the plane and told the flight attendant, if you don't zip tie me right now, this is going to be really bad. Oh my. Because she was saying to him, don't worry, right? Like we're going to get you. We're going to get you help. Yeah. That's how we survived an attempted hijacking. Whoa, by a delusional,

The shrooms part of the story does not make sense to me. I don't like that. I don't know if he's using that as some reason, but there's no way shrooms are lasting for two days. That feels crazy. Yeah, there's got to be something else going on. He must have just done the shrooms. Yeah, and said they were from two days ago. Yeah. I don't know. I took them two days ago. Yeah. He's still a pilot. He's not supposed to be taking shrooms at all. That's so scary that that person flies planes. Best not to think about that aspect.

But I wonder what happened, because there's no way it's going to hold up to charge him with the attempted murder of 35 people. 83. 83, sorry. Did you ever get any updates beyond that of what ended up happening? Yeah, I mean, we were contacted by the FBI. We were supposed to be part of a lawsuit. We were on CNN at one point. Like, it was a whole thing. And where's the guy at now? He's home. I guess they validated his shroom story. I mean, the poor guy, he has a family and all that. Oh.

I'm happy that he told them to restrain him. He knew enough to know somebody has to stop me. After he got beat up by the pilots. I hate hearing a story like that. It's a very 80s propaganda show. Drug war. Yeah, someone taking acid and trying to fly. I know. I guess it does happen. Or maybe he had way more stuff going on. I don't know. Also, why do they let him up there? Like, he should just sit in the regular seats. Well, I think they changed that whole law and

And now they don't have off-duty people in the cockpit. Oof. Oh, man. That's a crazy story. That's kind of my dream, of course. Knock on wood. Okay, I'll knock on wood. I just hope I get called on to restrain somebody that's a threat, you know? I don't want anyone to be in danger, but if someone has to be in danger, I want to be a part of that team that takes them down. Okay. Okay.

I learned that I was no use in a terrorist situation. Yeah, maybe it was a blessing that your boyfriend fell asleep because maybe he wouldn't have responded and then he would have felt guilty that he wasn't in the mix. Who knows? Can I bring him in to say hi? Yeah, sure. Hey.

Hey. Wow, I can't believe you missed such an exciting thing. I know, I was having great dreams. Were you also on shrooms? I plead the fifth on that one. Now, let me ask you this. Had you been awake and you saw the scuffle, would your instinct have been to ignore it or get involved? I'd like to think, like you, Dax, I would jump in there and do something, maybe even fly the plane if I could. Yes, ideally. I might have just watched it go down.

You never know. Hard to know until you're in the situation and you're awake. I have a little fun fact. I've actually been in your attic before. How? What? That's scary. Yeah, when you were sleeping. Yeah, yeah. I work for Dr. Michael Gervais, and then when you had Pete Carroll on, I came in and took photos. No way! That was a very fun episode. I remember it well. So fun.

How crazy. You should have saved that for the prompt. You could actually give us behind the scenes because my theory on that interview is that Pete Carroll was being told the whole time, like, you should go do this. And he was like, what the fuck is this? And then he got here and he's like, oh, my God, this is someone's attic.

And then about midway through, he started really enjoying it and liking it. I count him as one of the people we won over. But I do think leading up to it, he was like, what the fuck is this? He had a preseason game like two hours after. He was probably like, what is going on? I'm in an attic. I can't blame him. But he was great. Well, nice meeting both of you. And I'm glad you survived. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Have a great rest of your day. Fly next to each other in the future. That's what we learned. We do now. No more headphones. Be on high alert. All right. Take care. Thanks, guys.

You really cock-blocked a joke. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. What were you going to say? Say it now. I started to say you should have saved it for the prompt and then you started talking. But the rest of the sentence was, tell us what time you were in our attic.

Oh, that would be a scary prompt. Let's talk to Neil. Maybe you'll remember. Neil, my brother. Your brother's on. It says Neil P. Does it really? Oh my God. Is this the time where he accidentally snuck in a box cutter? Oh, that could be one. He could be the problem. Yep.

Hey, back to Monica. It's so great to meet you guys. Yes, how are you, Neil? I'm great. Wonderful. Where are you? Atlanta. What part? In Decatur, so like 15 minutes east of downtown. It's turned into such a cool spot. It's very cool. Really nice restaurant. And did you grow up in Decatur? I grew up in East Point, which is south.

And it's kind of a rough area and moved to Decatur when I went to school. Okay. What high school? I went to all Catholic high school. So I was raised Catholic, hardcore. Not Catholic anymore, of course, but I feel like everyone goes through Catholic school and then they realize how crazy it is. Are you Italian? Italian. Italian style. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So Neil, you have a crazy airplane story. Yeah. So it actually happened about nine years ago. My wife was about to have...

our first kid. She would do like a week later. Oh, wow. You're not supposed to be flying, right? You were cutting it close. Yeah. Exactly. But it was a work trip and my boss, basically, I mean, he's a narcissist. He's just an absolute crazy person. When you have crazy bosses, Meg, I'll apply for that one. That's a good idea. Crazy bosses. We were going to fly into Pennsylvania. He's a pilot. So we were in a private plane. I don't know if you know a Cirrus style plane. Yeah. Like a single

crop. And so we're going to see this client about vanilla. We were in the vanilla business. Oh, interesting. Vanilla extract. We imported vanilla from Madagascar. I was a purchaser. And so like I spent a lot of time in Madagascar. So we were going to visit a client that buys the beans from us and they extract it. That sounds tasty. Yeah, really quick because I'm curious. So I wouldn't have even known that. So vanilla is a bean and you would travel around Madagascar in search of the most delicious. Yeah.

Vanilla. And then how do you qualify it? How do you tell if it's good or not? Do you smell it or you crush it up and eat it? What do you do? When I would go to Madagascar, the main thing was to protect our money. Honestly, that's the main goal. Because you have to pay like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in advance. And you're there to like...

watch the guys make sure they don't steal all your money. Oh. I know a lot about vanilla, but your guys on the ground are the ones that are qualifying everything. Got it. Really, vanilla extract is actually like the shittiest bean. It's the industrial grade. Oh, so is there really high-end, beautiful vanilla we're not getting? Yes. Forme beans are what your chefs are using to make creme brulee. That's the greatest. And that's when they're...

scraping the seeds out of the vanilla beans and putting it in the actual dish. That's the premium stuff. Okay. I want ice cream. You want ice cream now? Okay. I want bananas foster. Would that work? But yeah, so we were flying from Atlanta to Pennsylvania. The trip didn't start out good because the console in the middle is missing. My boss's name is Rich. I'm like, Rich, where's the computer? And he's like, oh, don't worry. It's getting repaired. Oh, oh my God. But he's like that. He does have the other instruments, the manual instruments.

I'm already like a little scared. I've been with him flying before. So it's not like my first time. And then we take off and right away I hear this really loud noise. And I'm like, what is that noise? And he's like, shit, the door's open. To the plate? What the fuck? Come on, dude.

is it just you and rich on this plane it's just me fuck this okay he's like okay we gotta land and close the door i'm like okay great yeah i'd love to close the door so we land close the door we take off again about 30 minutes passes we're flying i'm trying to calm myself down and so i'm like hey man you want to put some music on i got the new mom friggin son's album it's really good and he's like yeah we

We start playing it. I know Rish really well. It's a very interesting relationship with him. I hate him to death, but it's also like he's my father figure kind of thing. My dad died when I was young. It's a complicated relationship. So he knows my body language. He's like, you okay, man? And I'm like, no, I'm really nervous. And he's like, just watch this gauge. As long as it doesn't go below this level, we're good. Oh my God.

So I'm just watching the gauge. 15 more minutes goes by. And then all of a sudden, the gauge goes below whatever it is, 20, I think. And I'm like, Rish. Then all of a sudden, he's like doing something in his head, trying to figure out what's going on. I learned later that he's got these steps to follow when you have an issue. And at the same time, you start to hear the engine like, you know, when a lawnmower runs out of gas, it's like, ka-ka-ka, ka-ka-ka. Fuel starvation, yeah. And then it just...

Oh, the engine quits. It's okay because this is a glide plane. We're not like just crashing. He can land. Assuming he can find some nice stretch of something. Right. I don't really know all this at the time, but later he's like, it's a glide plane. We're going to land. So he's kind of calming me down. We're not like screaming. I'm a silent panic thing. We're now over the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. He finds a small airport in the middle of the mountain. This is the one time where it gets panicky. He's like, Neil, where's the airport?

I need you to look for it. And I'm like, okay, I don't see it. And he's like, look for the apple. I'm like, I don't see it. And I'm like, okay. So then we just circling and circling. And the most emotional I got was my son is about to be born. The thought in my head was like,

fuck, my son is going to be brought up without a dad. And that was the thing that hurt the most. Well, and you just said your dad died when you were young. You're having a kid to heal this thing and now you're doing the same thing. Exactly. Anyways, we start going down and down. And as we get closer, the wind is super strong. The plane is going like sideways, back and forth, and it's pushing us down. And we don't have an engine, right? There's no throttle. There's nothing to get us back in the air. And the way the runway is on a

And then as you're coming in, it's like a valley below it. So if you don't have enough altitude, the plane's going to run straight into the side of the mountain. So as we're getting closer and closer, Rish starts to kind of get a little panicky. And eventually he says, Neil, we're going to have to pull the chute. Oh my goodness. What's amazing about this airplane is it has a parachute. He pulls this thing, kind of like an explosion goes off. Like you could feel it catch you. And then all of a sudden the plane starts to tilt forward. Wow.

Oh. You're just watching the ground come closer at you. Really?

Really? Like nothing happened. We got out of the plane. I just screamed like a monkey in the middle of a horse pasture. It's like a beautiful day. We are in Appalachia. It's gorgeous. How far away are you from the airport? We were pretty close after they picked us up. It was like a 10 minute drive. I wonder how frequently planes land in this farmer's pasture. I know.

That was it. My son was born a week later and I named him after my dad. Really quick. Did that slow Rich's aviation dreams down at all? Or was he right back up in the skies? Bro, he wanted to fly home. Yeah. That's the kind of person he is. And I said, fuck you. Go ahead. I'm driving home. He's like, Neil, you idiot. It's still more dangerous to go in a car. I don't know.

I mean, it is a little bit like get back on that horse. If you're him. If you're into flying a plane, which I can't relate to on any level, but I guess if that is something you like doing, you probably do have to do it quickly or you'll probably never do it again. I got to tread lightly here because there's a lot of amateur pilots and they do a great job and I don't want to offend anyone. But yeah, I've had some friends that fly and they're like, come up. And I'm like, absolutely not. I want to be with the person who flew in the military 20,000 hours, then flew commercially,

for another 40,000 hours. I don't need someone an hour 250 dealing with the engine going out. I've been with friends who are pilots and I watch them go through the checklist and clearly shut the door has got to be really high up on the list. So you got to wonder if Rich missed that one. Like what other part of the checklist did he miss? Agree. I presume you don't work for him anymore. I have my own business now. Okay. No, I don't. What an experience.

- I cannot imagine nose diving. - I only had a much tinier experience with just Ryan and I hitting this jump in the sand dunes in this razor over and over again. It's great every time. We hit it one last time and yeah, at the peak of the trajectory, the front end just tilted down.

And yeah, we just came smashing down to Earth face first. It's quite an experience to watch the Earth close in quickly through the front windshield. Then again, at the same time, if everyone could experience it and live, it's a great thing to have that happen and survive. Wow.

Thank you. Appreciate everything. When you guys ultimately got to Pennsylvania, you had a great story to tell the client. Yeah. You know, he never got that business, though. Oh, he didn't. Okay. We risked our life for nothing. All for naught. Wow. What a story. Yeah, Neil, I'm glad you made it. That's harrowing. All right. Thanks, guys. It was awesome to meet you guys. Yeah, nice meeting you too, brother. Take care. Wow. Very positive. I'd be so mad at that person. Oh, I know. I will say. Go ahead.

I'm kind of impressed he landed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm glad he chose to pull the chute. Yeah, he did do some things right at the end there, it seems. Thank God they put parachutes on those small airplanes. What a cool... Advancement. Yeah, thank you. Advancement. Also, I have made a delicious vanilla rice pudding.

With shaving? With scraping the beans from the inside of the vanilla bean. Yeah. That sounds very tedious. It is. It's so tedious. But you love it. You love tedium. You're a fiend for tedium. Tedium fiend. Yeah, well, it's definitely rewarding when it tastes so good. I've probably been in a restaurant that was nice enough to have that. But I'm now feeling like I need to try really premium vanilla. Yeah, it's so good. Ooh. Ooh. Let's talk to Jamie.

Hi. Hello. Is this Jamie? It's Jamie. How are you? Hi, Jamie. Good. Where are you? I'm in Atlanta. We just spoke to another Atlanta. Decatur. Big airport here. Well, that is true. Huge hub. Huge hub. You are right. Where in Atlanta are you? I'm south of the city. So I'm actually, it's so funny. I was listening to the Monday fact check while I was getting ready. And Monica, you said you filmed Drop Dead Divas in Peachtree City. That's where I live. Oh,

Did they shoot Walking Dead there or close to there? So Walking Dead was filmed at Senoi, which is 10 minutes down the road from me. Oh, okay. Was that the biggest thing to hit the area? I mean, that show was huge. For sure. Like, they still do tours. I get my hair done in Senoi, and they will still have people walking around in, like, zombies.

costume. Oh, wow. They go in character. Cool. Yeah. I've never seen the show and it's the cutest little town. If you go down to a bottom level, there's a huge museum with like the clothes from the show and stuff. Oh, wow. They really leaned in. I like that. They really leaned in. Yeah. We have Trillith now too, which is like a huge movie studio. So we have a lot of stuff filming around here these days. Yeah. A lot of good filming. Unforeseen.

Like if my hometown of Milford became a hotbed of filming, that'd be the weirdest thing to me. I grew up here. It is very strange that like all of a sudden we have stuff to do in the evenings and it's becoming this cool little place because of all this. Okay, so you have a crazy airplane story. I do. So this was in probably 2016. I will preface by saying I'm a flight attendant. Oh!

Oh, great. This should be good. Any party I'm at, people are like, oh, what's the craziest thing that's ever happened to you on a plane? And I have a lot, but this is like the safest one to share on a public forum, I think. But we also want dangerous. And quickly though, you can maybe hit us with three or four stories if you want, but how many flights do you think you've been on? Do you know? Thousands.

I don't know. My dad's also a pilot. So I grew up flying everywhere. And then now with this, when I first started, I would work 16, 17 days a month flying four flights a day. Wow. Oh my gosh.

That's 60 a month right there. I've been flying now almost 10 years. So now I just do day trips and stuff. I have kids now, so things have changed. So then this was early in your career. This was nine years ago. Yeah, I had only been flying for a couple months. So I was working a trip to Cancun. Caribbean flights are just crazy. People are going on vacation. And so that's just a thing as a flight attendant. You know, if you're going to Florida or the Caribbean, you're in for an interesting crowd. On boarding, I had a

man who came on board in first class with a sombrero that was so large it wouldn't fit in the overhead bin so i had to put his sombrero in the closet where our wheelchairs are supposed to be stowed that's just the type of flight that we're on we called these flights turns that means you just go to the city you turn around you come right back home so it's just a one-day trip

We had already flown into Cancun and dropped off those passengers and got new passengers. And we were flying back to base from Cancun. And really quick, just tell me the shift in vibe, because when people are going there, they're so excited. They may be a little drunk before they get on the plane. They coming home, they're just completely wrung out. There's sunburn. What's the vibe? Yeah, that's exactly right. Like it's the same as working Vegas going to you're running out of liquor.

your drawers are like empty, you're going back to the carts. You know, it's the same with the Caribbean. And then coming home, everyone's like, I need more water. Please just get me water, like water, coffee, not serving drinks. You need to keep electrolytes on those flights for sure. Yes, that would be very helpful. Okay, so we are in the phase of flight where it's 10,000 feet and the captain gives us the double ding. So we go to stand up to set up our carts. We're setting up our carts in the back galley.

And all of a sudden, this passenger collapses backwards out of the lap. So we hadn't seen him go in. He had, but we were just setting up the carts and stuff. He was luckily fully clothed, like a gentleman, probably in his mid to late 60s and kind of bigger guy. And he just fell out of the lap into the galley floor. What a thing to witness, by the way, a body flying through that door. I feel like that would be very comedic.

I'm new. You just get out of training with all this experience. And they always tell you like anything that can happen on the ground can happen on the plane. So like our medical training, it has to be pretty decent. But I obviously like lose all of it. The only thing I can remember is like they tell me to say, my name's Jamie. I'm a flight attendant. And he's not coming to. Oh.

He is breathing. He's just unconscious. And so flight attendant who's with me, she leaves to go get medical equipment, which is her role in this situation. And she tells flight attendant up front who's been communicating with the pilot.

which is all of our procedure, to let them know we're having a medical emergency. But I'm just in the back with this guy. Reminding him of your name every few seconds. Yeah, just trying to check on him. Also, there's one detail I need clarification on. If you guys were just setting up when this happened, clearly he got up before the double ding. Like he needed to get to the bathroom as soon as you took off. That's right. So they call for a doctor.

And I'm still just like kneeling next to this guy on the floor of the galley. And thank God, this barefooted man comes running down the aisle to me. And I'm like, oh my gosh, a doctor. Thank you. And I'm looking at him. And he's the man who had come on board with the sombrero. Oh!

And he's barefoot? Are you sure you're a doctor? But beggars can't be choosers. I was just so grateful to have company. He could have been like anybody. And so he kneels at this guy's head and he's checking for a pulse. And slowly this guy is like coming back too. So a minute or so into this, his wife comes back. So I guess she realized, oh, he got up to go to the bathroom. They called for a doctor. Oh.

He's still not back. So she comes back and she's like, oh no. And she said, oh, he's had Montezuma's and he's been vomiting for days. And so I think that he has fainted. He's not been able to keep anything down. And so the doctor's like, oh, okay, okay. Montezuma's. The doctor's having me get him stuff, you know, like an orange juice and some galley wipes. This guy's pretty sweaty and it's just like a lot of moisture and

and he's having me get a trash bag. And I'm sitting there and it's getting increasingly more stinky. Okay, so it had started out getting smelly. And I had been like, okay, you know, he fell out of the bathroom, whatever. Pfft.

But it's just getting worse and it's getting worse. Oh. And I look at the doctor and he looks at me and he kind of nods like, yeah, what you're thinking is what's happened. And as that happens, the passenger looks up at me and he says, ma'am, I thought I've been passing gas, but I think that more has been coming out. Oh.

That's the most delicate way to say I've shit myself. I thought I was passing gas, but I do believe there was more. So I am kneeling and have been kneeling at this guy's torso for the last 10 minutes. And I realized the thing that I thought was moisture from this sweaty man is diarrhea. Oh, no. And I am just sitting. Hold on. Hold on. No, you're sitting in it. It's leaked out of his pants and you were kneeling in it? I was in a puddle of his diarrhea. No. Oh, fuck.

And you don't have like mops on board or anything, right? I mean, where do we start? Or a change of clothes, probably. Oh my God. Yes. So I am sitting in this man's poop and he realizes it and I realize it and the doctor realizes it. We're all just having this moment. The wife's like, oh no. And he looks up at me and he's scared.

so embarrassed and he goes i am so sorry and i just looked and i said you know what worse things have happened to me and in my head i'm thinking literally nothing worse has ever happened to me like this is the worst thing that's ever happened but i'm trying so hard to make sure that he's feeling okay kind white lie it was oh you should have seen my last flight

Yeah. This happens all the time. Just poop everywhere. So I'm sitting in this man's poo. So I go to stand up and I look down and I'm in pantyhose. And from knee to ankle, it's just so it's covered in this man's diarrhea. The

The doctor looks at the wife and is like, do you guys have a change of clothes on board? And she's like, I think he has his swimsuit and his book bag. And the doctor's like, yes, please go get that swimsuit. So he goes and gets it. And the doctor's like, can we use this space? I'm going to get him cleaned up. I'm like, okay. And as he's pushing me kind of into the aisle and closing the galley curtain, he looks at me and he says, don't.

touch anything. So I'm just standing there and there's all these passengers trying to get to the lab, trying to use the restroom. I don't want to tell them that I'm covered in this man's poop. You know, I don't want to embarrass this man. And I know I smell. The whole plane's probably starting to smell. Of course. Yeah. And so the guy gets cleaned up and he goes back to his seat and the doctor calls me back and he's like, are you comfortable with me helping you get cleaned up? And I'm like,

please, I would let anyone help me get cleaned up at this point. So we closed the curtain and he's like, do you have a change of clothes? I'm a brand new flight attendant on this day trip. So I just brought a tote bag. Now I will never ever go anywhere without at least two changes. And that's just like a good rule of thumb, you know, delays and reroutes. Things can happen. Here I was.

So naive. Never thinking I was going to get pooped on that day. So I had nothing. I just had my uniform. Luckily, we wear flats on the airplane and we wear high heels in the concourse. So we have our onboard shoes and our concourse shoes. And so I had my concourse shoes. So I take off the flats. We throw those away. I put on my heels. I take off my pantyhose. And this guy looks at me and he's like, get all the vodka.

you can find so i'm going in all the carts and pulling out the mini bottles of vodka and he just starts pouring vodka down my hands down my arms good he's scrubbing my legs like my skin is raw is this all running on the floor you guys are just like fuck it we gotta make a mess back here oh yeah i mean at that point we're grateful to have the vodka that's running onto the poop

because it's like all in the same space, you know, like the puddle of diarrhea. And the doctor had so graciously tried to clean that up. This wasn't his first time getting pooped on probably. Right. At one point we hit turbulence in the middle of this. That was pretty moderate. And I'm looking at this guy. I knew it. So I keep thinking, Oh,

oh no, I'm going to get in trouble. The seatbelt sign is on and this guy's out of his seat. And he actually told me he used to be a flight doctor. Like his job had been on helicopters, transporting patients after car accidents and stuff. So he was like, this is nothing. I am always in turbulence. He got me all cleaned up. But this whole thing had happened like at the first 20 minutes of the flight, as it was happening, like I had been kneeling in it. So like it was on my hands and I had gotten an orange juice and I got pipped out like the

whole galley I had touched with my poop hands. At one point he was like, can he have some pretzels? I don't know what cart, what bin. My poop hands have touched everything. And so I'm like trying to explain to the flight attendants why there's no possible way we can do a service. And when he had first fallen out, like we still had carts out. We had like pushed those back in. And then we have passengers who are like mad at us because we're not going to make a PA. Like, hey, someone pooped all over. Yeah.

our supplies for today. So we borrowed water from the front. I didn't. I was disgusting. I was covered in poop. And so I had to go into hiding. So we had been keeping the captain up to date on all of this the whole time. And when we landed back to base, I'm the last one to get off because I'm like in the back alley and I'd waited for everybody. Even as I'm getting off, like the flight attendant, they're all like keeping their distance, which is the worst feeling. And I turned the corner to the jet bridge

And there's a man standing there in a full hazmat suit. He's there to escort me through customs because I'm a biohazard. I'm covered in poop. And so they have to take me through a special line. It was an out-of-body experience. I don't even remember. How long is the flight from Cancun to Atlanta? Two hours.

Two hours. Okay. It must have smelled terrible. What are the other flight attendants doing to mitigate the smell? They didn't want to be involved in it. I don't blame them. But we have kits because people vomit on airplanes. That part does happen frequently. So we do have ways to clean it up and we do have supplies for that. We had been able to Clorox it and all that. It was mostly me. Like I was the only one who hadn't been cleaned. Oh.

Just my dress covered in poop. It's also kind of comforting to know that there's a team on the ground ready to respond to a duty like that. There's already people with hazmats. What's the turnaround on cleaning up that plane? Like they got to take it out of commission for a minute. They have like a team that will come in when something like that happens.

in full outfits they did a very good job but at some point you need to remove the walls and stuff like there needs to be a refurbishing like get the carpet yeah pull the carpet up put new carpet down

You know, we just walk around like we're super civilized. And then every now and then, you know, like, well, we're still animals. And the whole system just goes haywire on us animals sometimes. Well, and it's like people who walk to the lab without shoes on. You're just like, what are you thinking? You know, like you don't even know. Have you ever seen any fistfights on board? No fistfights. I've seen someone get physical with a flight attendant who got arrested. But that was on the ground. Thank God. And then I had someone get arrested one time for threatening my life on it.

Really? His timing was just bad. He just said it as he was getting up. There was already police meeting the flight for his behavior, like on board the flight the whole time. And as he was walking off the plane, he happened to look at the captain and say like, you're lucky I didn't choke out your flight. So now it's going to kill her. But the police were right there. And if you do it on the airplane, had he said on the Jeopardy, she would have been fine. But you can't threaten a crew member on board an aircraft. Oh.

Is the main thing you're having to deal with is people intoxicated? Is that like the number one? A hundred percent. And also people take like Ambien while they're flying and they get crazy. They take something, they're nervous. They don't realize they mix it with maybe the amount they would normally drink and they don't realize. Flying is hard. You lose all of your control. You have to listen to these flight attendants and pilots. And I get it. It's a complete loss of control. But that sometimes brings up.

the worst in people. I'm impressed. You're a hero. How often out of like a hundred flights, you identify someone before you take off as being way too hammered and kick them off a flight. Is that pretty regular or one in a hundred, one in a thousand? Not that regular. You know, there's a lot of like steps they get through to get to us. TSA should be like the first line of noticing. And then if not, then the gate agent. And there's been times where like the gate agent comes. I had this happen like a month ago where the gate agent's like, hey,

this guy i'm not sure it's always a guy probably mostly no you'd be surprised girls get wild too i always say it's such a good job because you just collect stories not stress even if it's horrible in the moment like you never see those people again even if you don't like the flight attendant you're working with you never have to fly with them again like we don't fly with the same people you just kind of collect these crazy stories and occasionally you get pooped on oh

I've been talked to. I was on a flight where I was like, I had gotten up and I was talking to someone else and I was pretty tipsy. And they said like, you got to sit down. You're starting to make people nervous. And I was like, oh, the tone. Like I was drunk, but I was like, oh, this is the tone right before you get thrown off a flight. Did you get defensive or did you? No, no, I cooperated. I knew it was. I'm like, oh, wow, they're talking to me like I've seen them talk to people. Right, right, right. Uh-oh.

Yeah. It's hard to navigate, too. You just don't know what people's limits are, how they're going to act or respond. Wow. I'm putting you up in the category of nurses because I'm regularly like watching. Our last dust up was me like getting kind of protective over a flight attendant. And the guy was acting like he didn't know what dark chicken was and all that. I know, but he was just being a little rude. I remember you telling that story and I was so proud of you. I was like, yes.

There's also so much time that we don't have a say in the things they're mad at us about. I can't control that they've asked me to do these things or that the weather is bad. The people that will yell at you because we're like not taking off because of weather. I don't want to take off in bad weather. Exactly. You're like, I'm a person too. He was a bad person, probably. Like he was not nice. But it would have been way worse to have a huge altercation in the middle of the first class cabin. Yeah.

For her, too. It would have been worse. I want to add a theme to the story, which was also don't judge a book by its cover. When I heard about the guy with the sombrero, I'm like, this guy's a turkey. Who fucking wears a hat too big and everyone has to worry about stowing it for him? And then he's the...

a hero. I know, and he was my hero. And he was so nice. And he had his shoes off, because I often look at someone taking their shoes off. I'm like, you can't keep those on for another hour and a half. Yeah. He was having a good flight. He had had a good time in Cancun, I'm sure. Oh, yeah. Sounds like he deserved it. Yeah.

Oh, Jamie, that was great. I'm so grateful to be here. I have to say my sister, the first time she listened to your podcast, like the very first one, she called me immediately after and she was like, you have to listen to this podcast. Zach's interviewed Kristen and it's so good. And so we've been listening since day one because of my job. I'm always like in a different place and with different people. And I swear I was an armchair ambassador at the beginning. I'd be like any crew, any jump seat I was in, like

Have you guys heard of this podcast? It's called Armchair Expert. It's really great. And it's been really cool because now you're...

You're on our in-flight entertainment. I was on a flight the other day and you guys are there. And I just thought, oh my gosh, like this is so full circle. I have loved you guys from the beginning. And so I'm really proud of you guys and proud to like be a part of that experience. Oh, thank you. Keep proselytizing. Urge people to check it out. I've seen it on a flight and it makes me really, really proud. I'm like, yeah, you guys should listen to that one. Oh, well, Jamie, what a pleasure getting to meet you. We appreciate you. And great story. Thank you so much. Thank you guys. Have a great day. All right. Take care.

Oh, wow. A lot of stuff happens up in those friendly skies. Sure does. God, when you poop yourself up there, that's the worst. I feel bad for him. I'm lucky that didn't happen to me on that flight home from Qatar, or rather Kuwait, that I didn't fall out of the bathroom because I was bending over and sitting down and bending over and sitting down. I could have easily. Awful, awful. I was passing gas and I think more came. Oh.

Poor guy. And it makes it worse that he's in his 60s, I think. I know. And there's like pretty young girls sitting in your diarrhea, your hauntus. Oh, if you're in your 20s, you're like, I'm sorry, I'm a mess. But yeah, 60s, you're supposed to have your shit together, figuratively and literally. All right. Well, that was a good time. I love you. Love you. Do you want to sing a tune or something? We know a theme song.

Okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions, and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the flyer, I'm dish. On the flyer, I'm dish. Enjoy. Enjoy.