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In-flight bathroom emergency leads to felony charge

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big dog1

Well-known member
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Oct 28, 2002
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By BILL RANKIN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, April 07, 2009

It’s a felony charge brought on by Montezuma’s revenge.
It was 30 minutes after takeoff. Joao Correa had to use the bathroom. Right away.

Joao Correa

The last meal the Philips Healthcare marketing manager ate at a restaurant in Honduras wasn’t sitting well. He looked down the single aisle of the Delta 737. A beverage cart blocked his way.

Correa, 43, asked the flight attendant if he could use the lavatory in business class. No, she said.
Correa returned to his seat. He waited for the cart to move. A few minutes passed. Desperation overcame him.
What happened next on the March 28 flight depends on who is talking.

Correa said he ran straight to the business class bathroom. “I had no choice,” he said in a telephone interview.

Correa said flight attendant Stephanie Scott put up her arm and blocked his entry into business class, according to an FBI affidavit. Correa then grabbed her arm to keep his balance.

Scott, however, said Correa stormed up the aisle and insisted to use the bathroom. She said she lightly placed her arm on his shoulder and asked him to move back. Correa then grabbed her right arm, pulled it downward and twisted it, she told an FBI agent.

Correa refused to return to his seat. Scott called the pilot who talked to Correa. The pilot let Correa use the bathroom in business class. Correa did and returned to his seat, where he stayed for the rest of the three-hour flight.

Still, Scott’s statement and corroboration from a witness who was a pilot for another airline gave the FBI probable cause to charge Correa with assault.

After Delta Flight 406 touched down in Atlanta, Correa was told he could not make his connection to his home in Concord, Ohio. He was arrested that Saturday and jailed for two nights. The following Monday, he appeared before a U.S. magistrate in federal court in Atlanta and was granted bond.

Often, Correa said, his job requires him to travel. He was in Central America to conduct sales training in Panama and to visit customers in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras. Before March 28, he said, he had never had any trouble on a flight.

“I’m devastated,” said Correa, who has a wife and two children. “I’m so traumatized emotionally. It’s been really, really hard on me. I’ve never had any event with the police in my life.”

Delta spokeswoman Susan Elliott said flight crews do all they can to ensure the safety and security of passengers.

Delta is cooperating with authorities in the investigation of the incident. The airline also strictly follows Federal Aviation Administration policy, which calls for passengers on international flights to use the lavatory in their seating class, Elliott said.

A preliminary hearing, in which federal prosecutors must lay out their case against Correa, has been scheduled for April 17.
 
The aisle nazi's strike again. They enforce the seatbelt policy like its the most important rule in the world.
 
Another flight attendant out to save the world.
 
I like to think I would try to put the flight attendant on the same side of the problem instead in an oppositional stance. After I explained the basic problem [I've really gotta go now.] I would ask which of the following the flight attendant were do if in my shoes:
1. Use the business class lav
2. Clear the path between me and the coach lav.
3. Dump in my seat causing a big clean up problem for the crew to deal with and making the surrounding area very unpleasant for other paying passengers as well.

So....which should we do?
 
TSA, not FAA

The FAA actually has a rule or policy about which lav a passenger can use???

A correction was issued:

While the FAA doesn’t have a policy requiring international passengers to use the restrooms in their own seating class, a Delta spokesman clarified, saying the carrier was following “TSA guidelines requiring passengers to use the lavatory in their class of service on flights arriving into the United States.”
The TSA does indeed have such a directive, according to an e-mail from Lauren Gaches, a spokeswoman for the agency. She declined to elaborate on the TSA policy, writing “the security directive is sensitive security information. The directive was put in place in 2006 to address security concerns resulting from credible intelligence.”
--WSJ online
 
She declined to elaborate on the TSA policy, writing “the security directive is sensitive security information. The directive was put in place in 2006 to address security concerns resulting from credible intelligence.”

What would happen if an aircraft only had one class of seating? Does United have lavs specifically for the "economy plus" section?
 

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