Could have been avoided by having a few empty seats in case of situations like that, too, for what that's worth. Kinda' seems like the comments regarding the flight being over booked is 'cause of something like that. Can't recall if I remember a bit of flex seating (or whatever it'd be called) being a normal practice or not, now that I think about it...
Might have been the case a while back, but I haven't been on a flight in the last 3 years that wasn't completely full. Airlines are getting creative about putting a butt in every seat. They will move prices around, sell at below cost (because even a below cost ticket is still making more than an empty seat). They'll cancel half full flights and consolidate with other half full flights. Code share means they can do this even amongst other airlines.
10 years ago I flew on plenty of half full planes. 5 years ago it was a non-insubstantial chance I might be able to plan it right to have an empty seat next to me. Now it's always crammed in tighter than sardines.
It's the cost of keeping airline prices as low as they are.
this is just blowing up because it happened to a finely dressed guy in a respected profession and was recorded.
Dude was in sweatpants and a t-shirt like half the other discount airline bums flying these days.
There is something very Star-Trek about this explanation. I understand what their intent is, that the high heat will render the gas inert, but seriously, CNN/CBS could have used slightly different phrasing.
It's a dumb explanation, but a quick wikipedia browse (that might have landed me on some kind of watch list) suggests that dispersal of sarin gas is done with a two part liquid. One is the primary chemical with a long name and basically no other use, usually considered the thing we need to worry about and the other is usually
hydrogen peroxide(EDIT: I was apparently mistaken here, it's isopropyl alcohol must have just stuck in my mind as "that stuff in the cabinet what I pour on my cuts." My mistake, sorry.). A fairly common chemical with a wide range of uses. These are kept seperate as liquids within the weapon and only mixed at the detonation site.
While I still probably wouldn't want to breathe a burning vat of that "primary" chemical. it's not actually sarin gas until it's mixed with the secondary chemical and thus pretty safe to blow up.
Security could have handled it better, but dude shouldn't have refused to leave the plane when asked either.
Why him? If (as they seem to do, the way airlines gamble to avoid flying empty and unpaying seats at any timr) they have excess people and are willing to compensate at ever higher prices, how is "You're volunteering. Get off this flight!" in any way a sensible escalation?
Ignore the actions of Security (for now... as I'm going to assume they got a message about a 'difficult' passenger, as sometimes happens assumed a drunken and rowdy one who was making threats of violence and geared up their response accordingly), there was clearly something else that stopped any other solution1 happening and them ending up scribbling over the whole definition of "volunteer"...
There's doubtless more to the story, and probably not what any of us are thinking.
And then the guy escapes his Security escort and gets back into the plane cabin, if I read it correctly... That'd be worrying if it were the only worrying thing in the whole debacle, but it isn't.
1 Ask for (say) five more people willing to play Rock-Paper-Scissors in a tournament fashion, the least successful player to get the (compensated!) push off of the flight, the winner to get their food and drink free, just as an incentive to get players to commit to this 'high stakes'2 gambit. Wouldn't have cost them much more to do (less than adding a hundred dollars to the compensation offer),and it'd have been a fun conversation starter for all involved, for at least a couple of months of dining with friends and relatives and random joes who just happened to be in the same bar on any given night
2 Or, for the winner, 'high steaks'! Unless he chose to have the vegetable lasagne...
Airline is the authority here. You don't get to bargain with them when they say "get off my plane." You can be compensated after the fact, sure.
As I said before.(Edit: Said before somewhere else, doh.) They pick people at random. If you start accepting excuses or "alternate choosing methods" you're wasting everyone's time and their money. Everyone can come up with an excuse for why they shouldn't be "it".
As for the guy escaping his escort and making it back on the plane, I want to say that looks like they agreed to let him board again to get his stuff(just a complete guess here, but the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for why they'd let him back on), at which point he refused to get off again and the plane was evacuated to deal with him and clean up. He might have in fact just ran away from security, I don't know.