Fear of Flying and Comedy Killers

In an interesting story which I think illustrates how the attempted Christmas Day flight bomber has completely heightened anxieties around flying in general, a man who in a fit of humor and nervousness scrawled a monologue about Gilligan's Island on a customer feedback card is now facing federal criminal charges, after his note concerned the flight crew enough to turn the plane en route to Hawaii back to its origination in Portland, Oregon.

Joseph Hedlund Johnson, who apparently had flown only four times in his life, raised suspicion because he was agitated not being allowed to store his bag under his exit-row seat, and then wrote the following on a comment card:

I thought I was going to die, we were so high up. I thought to myself: I hope we don't crash and burn or worse yet landing in the ocean, living through it, only to be eaten by sharks, or worse yet, end up on some place like Gilligan's Island, stranded, or worse yet, be eaten by a tribe of headhunters, speaking of headhunters, why do they just eat outsiders, and not the family members? Strange ... and what if the plane ripped apart in mid-flight and we plumited (sic) to earth, landed on Gilligan's Island and then lived through it, and the only woman there was Mrs. Thurston Howell III? No Mary Anne (my favorite) no Ginger, just Lovey! If it were just her, I think I'd opt for the sharks, maybe the headhunters.

Johnson told investigators later that he "thought the card was going to be taken back to an office somewhere, opened, and everyone in the room would 'get a laugh' from it, and that perhaps he'd even get some frequent flyer miles out of it." I think that both the rambling note as well as the response to investigators are pretty funny, actually. I can understand heightened anxiety in light of what happened on Christmas Day, but talking about Gilligan's Island and then noting which of the women were his favorite doesn't strike me as awfully threatening. And that point about headhunters is pretty insightful, too. Unfortunately, this guy's smart-aleck act just got him in some legal hot water.

In fairness, I probably sympathize with the guy because I can be prone to being a wiseguy with feedback forms as well. I remember that for one of my business school classes, I spent at least 25% of one form breaking down how one of my professors was a dead ringer for MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, and how he ought to open his lectures with "In the best interests of the game, I've decided to..." as well as other times where I devoted a good chunk of feedback around how I liked their ties and shirts. Of course there's the upward feedback that I gave for one of my project managers in the former consulting firm I worked at that stated that he ought to consider a regular routine of the "Mr. Miyagi breathe-in, breathe-out" system because he was way too wound up and I feared he was going to have stroke someday.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that to humor and airplane flying don't mix. Unless you're watching Airplane!.