LoKyBuckeye
I give up. This board is too hard to understand.
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/47702.htm
June 4, 2005 -- EXCLUSIVE
A sleepy baggage handler dozed off in an empty cargo bin in a jet on the tarmac at La Guardia airport - and woke up in Detroit.
The drowsy dope wanted to sneak a few Z's early Thursday morning while working a 3-to-11 a.m. shift, so he secreted himself in a rear baggage bin of the MD-80 used for Spirit Airlines Flight 285.
The flight departed on time at 6:10 a.m. and arrived five minutes early in Detroit, at 7:55 a.m. — with the baggage handler waiting behind the cargo doors to give his Motor City counterparts the shock of their lives.
"He's an idiot. He's lucky he didn't die," said a fellow La Guardia baggage handler who gave his name only as Javier.
But the unannounced passenger also exposed a yawning security gap. Every bin in a plane's cargo hold is supposed to be checked before takeoff — a protocol clearly ignored in this case.
"He was wrong. There's no sleeping on the job," fumed Muhammad, another La Guardia handler.
While the snoozing stowaway found his makeshift bed comfortable enough to sleep in, the flight could not have been pleasant. A Spirit Airlines spokeswoman said the temperature probably bottomed out at 32 degrees in the plane's cargo hold.
But the baggage handler was lucky — even though the flight's maximum altitude was 34,000 feet, the cargo area was pressurized, so he had oxygen to breathe.
Luckily for the sleepy luggage loader, it was only 90 minutes until the plane was on the ground in Detroit.
Nobody knew the 150-seat jet carried a stowaway until workers popped open the jetliner's cargo door and were surprised by the groggy baggage handler, said Spirit spokeswoman Rini Ader.
Police and Transportation Security Administration agents questioned the man, said Detroit airport spokesman Michael Conway.
"He cleared everything. There was no reason not to believe his story," Conway said — noting that the man had a badge that entitled him to work on the La Guardia tarmac and that he posed no security threat.
Conway declined to release the baggage handler's name, saying the airport authority had agreed to give Spirit Airlines control over releasing information about the incident.
"We are looking into the matter," said Ann Davis, a TSA spokeswoman — explaining that the incident might have been a violation of federal regulations.
The dopey baggage handler worked for Service Air, a contractor hired by Spirit to handle its baggage.
Co-workers said the handler worked for about a year for Service Air at La Guardia and had previously loaded planes for the same company at Kennedy.
Service Air declined to say whether the employee had been punished.
"All I can say is he's safe and back in New York," a company spokesman said.
