Don't Ever Sit in Seat 20A

My brother emailed me his tale of woe. I reprint it, as is, for your general amusement (and disgust).

So check this out, I have never had this happen to me before. I'm flying home out of Salt Lake City Sunday nite, and I go through Vegas to austin. I spend about 5-6 hrs in SLC airport first, because we got there early, then another 1 1/2 hrs on a plane. So then I get to Vegas and am supposed to be there for about 30 min layover before my flight to austin, leaves at 11pm. The flight is overbooked and they are asking for volunteers to go home on monday and get a free flight.

No takers tho. So then, before they board the plane, the gate agent says "whoever is in seat 20A please don't board the plane, there is a problem with your seat. I have my headphones on, so I'm like, did they just say 20A? Nah, I'm sure I just mis-heard, I'll just ask when I get in line. So a little while later they're calling the rows and I go up there and ask, did y'all say something about 20A, and the gate agent says yeah, your seat is "inoperable" but we have maintenance working on it, just have a seat out here, and we will see what we can do.

I'm like, okay, so I sit down while everyone else in the gate gets on the plane. Then the agent tells me that there is one person who hasn't shown up yet but that if she doesn't, that seat is mine.

This is when I'm like, uh, what exactly makes this seat inoperable? I mean, if the chair doesn't recline or something, hey I can deal with that.

They don't tell me at that point the real story, but just then this girl runs up and is like, Austin! Austin! So she gets on the plane.

Well, then another agent comes in from the plane and she tells me that she's going to level with me, someone who was in my seat on the previous leg took a shit all over it, and she said it is totally unusable, and I wouldn't want to sit there under any circumstances. I laugh about it, but am like, damn, I'm going to miss work on monday.

Well anyway they offer me a free ticket on US Airways and I tell her that it's pretty unusable in austin, the only places to go out of austin on that airline are phoenix or las vegas. So I ask for a check instead and they agree, and give me a check for $400 and a doubletree hotel voucher and some meal vouchers. Well by the time I get all this, go down to the hotel shuttle, get to the doubletree and check in, it's already 2am and I have to wake up at 6am to make it back to the airport. US airways put me on an american flight to DFW and then to AUS but when I get to the ticket counter, American has no record of my name anywhere, and they put me on standby for the first flight to dallas which I don't make (because the security line at McCarron airport on monday morning contains probably somewhere between 5 and 10 million disgruntled passengers) but I make a later one, spend 6 hours not getting on flights to austin, and end up getting home monday night, about 18 hours after I should have. Luckily, my snowboard and checked bag are waiting for me in austin.

Other than that, the trip was great, the snow out there is unbelievable!

So, somebody crapped all over the aisle seat 20A, during the flight, one presumes. On a full flight, there are lots of people very near to one of the most disgusting smells possible, the smell of a stranger's fresh excrement. How was that handled, one wonders? Did they have big spray bottles of disinfectant? Did the odor waft through the ducts for the first class passengers to experience as well? Were people slipping on the floor as they went to throw up in the lavatory? How long is it going to take to remove that seat? Or is US Airways so cash-starved that they planned on just changing the seat cover? What lucky soul is going to sit in Seat 20B on the flight to Austin, wondering, "did I step in something? What is that smell!"

Boy, am I looking forward to flying. At least nobody died on this flight.


(Andrew, in a photo from a few years ago)