You Smell: Get off the Plane

February 19th, 2010. By AbiK

We’ve all been there. Someone walks by and you catch a whiff. Maybe it’s Giorgio or Red Door layered on a little too thick…that distinct left-the-bar-at-dawn smell…or pure and simple B.O. It’s off-putting, but thankfully not lingering. Unless you’re sittin’ next to it. On a plane.

So as this story goes, regional airliner Jazz Air out of Canada “deplaned” a man for his “strong body odor”. One passenger on the Feb. 6th flight described the smell as “brutal” according to a cnn.com report. The flight was only to be about 2 hours, 21 minutes from Charlottetown to Montreal. But still. Seat back forward, baby, please return that tray table to its upright and locked position. You’re outta here.

This marks what appears to be a new rationale for deplaning a passenger—it used to be that a passenger needed to be a) drunk, b) unruly/belligerent, c) with screaming child in tow, or d) a terrorist suspect to get booted from a plane. Perhaps, too, on an overbooked flight there may have been an occasion where a double-occupancy physique couldn’t squeeze into a single-occupancy seat (hello, Kevin Smith). But for the most part, those were your options for getting kicked off the plane.

Now, I can tell you, if you’ve never experienced “brutal” bodily aromas while being held captive, you really can’t call what happened on Jazz Air either shameful or ridiculous. I’ve been there—while in a hospital bed (captive enough?)—and I can tell you it was so bad I marched my rolling I.V. stand right out to that nurses station with that pee-uw look on my face and my nose clipped shut clothespin-style with my fingers and requested a complete fumigation of the room and something for nausea. It. Was. Bad. So my sympathies lie with the other passengers on this one. But it does raise the question of just what exactly are grounds to kick someone off a plane they’ve no doubt spent hundreds—possibly thousands—to be riding the friendly skies in?

And I question what grounds may follow…halitosis? snoring? smelly feet? excessive dandruff? chatty Cathy? Sounds like a new day dawning in discrimination litigation…

Tags: Airline Passenger Rights, Jazz Air

This was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Airlines . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.