On January 15, the "Hangar Talk" thread of AVSIG, the online aviation forum, included a link to the New York Times. The story on that link was hard to believe.
Seems the writer, one Kathryn Harrison, and her two daughters recently arrived at EWR (Newark) on a Continental flight from Puerto Rico. When they arrived at baggage claim, Ms. Harrison realized her wallet was missing. Leaving her two daughters, she spent 30 minutes getting permission to return to her arrival gate. What happened there is horrifying.
Ms. Harrison found that her airplane was still at the gate, but nobody was there to help her. She pounded on the jetway door, but to no avail. In frustration, she turned the door handle and, to her amazement (and mine), the door opened. An alarm went off but, as she put it, none of the "rumpled middle-aged men" in the area paid the least bit of attention. Nobody came to arrest her, so she propped the door open with her shoe (leaving alarm screaming) and ran down the jetway to her airplane.
The airplane door was open, but nobody answered her hails. She got on board, searched her seat and surrounding area without success, then went back to the gate where the alarm still blared and middle-aged men still read newspapers. Nobody seemed interested, so she removed her shoe and left.
She reported her loss to Continental and told them exactly what she had done. She was treated with astonishment rather than kindliness, but she wasn’t detained, either.
All I can say is good goshamighty.
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