(SelwayKid) wrote in message om...
How would you handle a situation where a paying passenger began to
manhandle the controls?
What would you do if a passenger keeps interrupting you during a
single pilot IFR approach into a very busy airport?
What would you do if your passengers lit up their marijuana in the
back of a twin?
What would you do if the passenger was so big they kept getting in the
way of control travel?
What would you do if your passenger decided to get out of the airplane
while in flight?
These are all real and all have happened to me in my 45 years of
flying. A lot more that I can't think of at the moment.
A pilot was recently faced with it when an 84 year old man decided to
unstrap and get out of the front cockpit of a biplane and plunged to
his death. The pilot was unable to stop him.
What would you do?

Well Boys N Girls
What I did was.... the pax who tried to wrestle the controls from me
did get himself smacked with the fire X that I grabbed from behind the
seat. It dazed him enough that I was able to get the airplane on the
ground. I expected a fight from him but he just rubbed his head where
I hit him and kind of stupid asked me.."Why'd y'all do theyat?"
The pax who kept kibitzing during the IFR approach was the boss in the
rear facing seat directly behind me in a Merlin II. I finally told him
to shut up or I'd declare a missed approach, take it back up to
altitude and beat **** out of him and then quit. He shut up and didn't
speak to me for a week - because he was headed for Europe after I
dropped him off at LAX. When he got back he apologized to me for the
problem and said it would never happen again - and it didn't.
When my pax lit their joints on a charter from VNY to LAS, I began to
roll the airplane, a KA90, from side to side and kept increasing the
angle of bank. The guy who asked to sit in the right seat asked me
what in hell I was doing and I told him, "Man I just LUUUUUUVVVVV that
good ****...!" He screamed back to the rear pax to put out their
joints because the pilot was getting stoned!
The big guy pax was a former race pilot who had kind of slid forward
to get comfortable and we didn't notice it until I began to flare in
the Hiller UH12E helicopter behind another helicopter on the ground.
When I realized I was running out of cyclic, I did a go around. My pax
immediately recognized the problem and began pushing himself farther
back in the seat. We did a safe landing and had a good laugh over it.
An unruly pax who was a heavyweight customer of the corporation I flew
for had been into the bar in back pretty heavy. He came forward
demanding that I get him some more scotch. When I told him the bar was
closed he got nasty and said he'd get me fired, etc, etc, (yawn) and
headed back to get off the airplane at FL250. I immediately
depressurized the cabin and he barely made it to a seat before he
passed out into a blissful sleep. When I knew he was out I ran cabin
pressure back down but he stayed asleep the rest of the flight. My
boss thought that was the neatest trick he ever heard of and asked why
I didn't do the same thing to him when he got out of line!
The only pax who scared me was a woman who undid her seat belt in a
Hiller 12E to crawl across top of me and get in the seat away from the
open door because it ruffled her hair! That was a lesson I'll never
forget! She was an absolute crazy woman.
Selway Kid