Dave Viner's Weblog

LAX Brawl

While flying up to Sunnyvale this morning from Los Angeles, I witnessed a fight in the Southwest gate. Here's what happened.

First, the setup. LAX Gate 5. Approximately 9am in the morning. At Gate 5, the A line is about 25 feet away from the seating area.

The first man, let's call him Al, arrived at Gate 5 early. Al clearly didn't fly Southwest very often, because he had to ask about the whole lineup thing. But, Al had an A ticket, so he dropped his bag in the A line and went back to the seating area. There were a few people already in the A line, as is normal. However, Al put his bag about 10 feet behind the last person in line. I have no idea why... but he did.

Slowly the A line grows as the departure time nears. The second man, let's call him Bob, arrives with an A ticket as well. By this time, the A line has reached the point of Al's bag. So, Bob walks up to the bag and looks around. Bob looks across the seating area trying to make eye contact to identify the owner of the bag. Al, the bag's owner, is reading a newspaper quietly and doesn't see Bob's obvious (but unspoken) plea for information. After a minute or so, Bob moves Al's bag so that Bob is next in line.

Now, for reference, there are about 7 people in front of the Al/Bob combo. Nevertheless, Al looks up from his newspaper, sees that Bob moved his bag in line, and starts fuming. Al jumps up from his seat, face reddening, and storms over to Al. "Why did you move my bag?" Al demands. "What the hell we you thinking?" I couldn't hear exactly what Bob says here, but Al completely freaks out. He grabs the papers out of Bob's hands and throws them out into the walkway.

By this point, everyone is watching. People in the walkway have stopped, and everyone in the gate area is staring. One guy immediately called someone on his cell and started giving the play-by-play while laughing out loud.

Of course, with his papers strewn across the walkway, Bob freaks out. They grab each other by the shoulders and start throttling each other. Soon, someone else in the gate area runs to the nearest Southwest desk and gets an employee to come stop them. The employee happened to be a young, thin asian guy who was about as threatening as a teacup poodle. Somehow the simple presence of the employee calms Al and Bob enough that they stop shoving each other. Bob gathers his papers and returns to line... noteably behind Al.

Tempers cool and things settle into an uneasy calm. The rest of us are looking around, half laughing and half concerned that these two are on the plane with us! About 10 minutes after everything had settled, the LAX police appeared and started questioning the two guys. Both were very apologetic (at least to each other) and I think they just got warnings.

All in all, it was pretty damned funny. It was 9am on a Monday morning. Two men, probably in their 50s, were fighting over who was seventh and eighth in the A line. I couldn't help but laugh. They both could get any seat they wanted and somehow they felt the issue required an "Oh yeah? Well let me show you how tough I am" approach to settling the problem. I genuinely expected some Candid Camera guy to pop out of the corner at any minute.

Ah, the joys of traveling... Once the situation was over, Al kept repeating how he hated Southwest and he'd never fly them again. For me, I could really care less about waiting in line for a seat. And for the possibility of a geriatric UFC fight? man, that's just icing on the cake!

Posted by dave at May 9, 2005 09:27 PM | TrackBack