
I sit down for my 7 hour flight UX92 from New York to Madrid. I'm on the aisle
in the middle column of seats on a 3-3-3 seating plan. Across the aisle from me
is my daughter, son, and wife. When I sit down, there is a little old Spanish
lady sitting in the middle seat, and no one on the other aisle. When I say
little, I mean considerably under five feet tall. Soon after I sit down, she
turns to me and asks, in Spanish, if I can help her connect her phone to the
Wi-Fi to call her daughter to let her know that she made it to the plane okay. I
do my best, but explain that the Wi-Fi is probably a paid service, and might not
even be turned on while we're still on the ground. Ultimately, she was unable to
make the call, but I did notice the daughter has a US phone number.

A few minutes pass, and the captain announces that the door has closed. I asked
a flight attendant if there were no more passengers, and he confirmed. I
suggested, as politely as one can, to my little _amiga_ that she move over to
the other aisle seat to free up the space between us. She said that the flight
attendant had already suggested that move to her, and she moved over. We then
both proceeded to spread out, e.g. putting my headphones in the middle seat back
pocket to free up some legroom.

A few more minutes pass, and a loud, drunken British man comes barreling down
the aisle. He stops between me and my family and just stands there, speaking
loudly to someone across the plane. Awkward, but I ignore him.

Then the flight attendant comes up to me and asks if I could let the noisy brit
sit between me and little _señora_. It's one of those questions in society that
aren't really questions. What am I gonna say, "No"? So he sits down and
immediately starts talking to the little lady in English, which I'm 95% sure she
does not speak. Then he turns to me and offers a handshake, which I accept. "I'm
Gavin!", he says. I tell him my name and notice that my headphones in his seat
back pocket, and start to take them. "Those are mine!" he says, accusatorially.
I immediately recognized this as bullying behavior, where, if you show the bully
any fear, they'll laugh and say, "I was just fuckin' with you!", and therefore
have established the power dynamic. I calmly said, "No, they're mine, and put
them in my seat back pocket." I then re-donned my AirPods and looked away. He
spends the next few minutes talking loudly to someone two rows behind us.

A few minutes later, he turns to me and offers a hand and says, "Hi, I'm Gavin!"
I say, "I know, I'm Erik", and he acknowledges the embarrassment of the double
introduction. For some reason I later regret, I ask him, "What part of the UK
are you from?" He says "Colchester! Do you know it? It's considered to be the
oldest town in England." I admit that I do not, but mention that I lived near
Birmingham for a bit. His face turns. "Are you a muslim?!" A bit taken aback, I
say that I am not. He then goes on a loud racist rant about how They are
_ruining_ the entire UK and the whole country is a shithole now. I now know that
I want as little to do with this person I'm stuck next to for the next 7 hours
as possible.

Gavin turns to talk to the old lady in loud English. She nods and cowers. For
her benefit, I tap him on the shoulder and tell him that I don't think she
speaks any English. He responds, "I've been living in Spain for 9 years, and I
can tell you _THEY ALL SPEAK ENGLISH!_" I shrug and put in my AirPods. He says
something else to me, and I take out my AirPod and tell him that I'd rather
continue listening to what I'm listening to. He points a threatening finger at
me and says, "Don't you EVER tell me how to talk to anyone EVER again!" I
re-insert my AirPod and face forward.

A bit later, Gavin pulls out his phone and starts taking a video of himself with
the front-facing camera, and then turns it to look at me, saying something along
the lines of, "Got you." He then proceeds to mumble to himself, gesturing
violently towards the seatback in front of him. I'm honestly not sure if I'm
about to get punched.

<img
  src="/images/airplane-taxiing.jpg"
  width={1536}
  height={1024}
  alt="Airplane Taxiing"
/>

We finally start taxiing towards the runway, and he unbuckles his seatbelt.
"What now?", I wonder. A flight attendant notices, and tells him to buckle it.
He says he can't. Now three flight attendants have gathered, and the explain
that it's not optional, he must fasten it. He pulls up his shirt to reveal
something – scars? I coudn't see – and says that he's got a double hernia and
really needs "to go". They told him he can go to the restroom once they are at
cruising altitude, but he says, "If you don't let me go, I'm gonna piss right
here." One attendant rushes towards the cockpit. The plane stops moving, they
give him permission to go, he steps over _señora_ and comes back a few minutes
later, now able to fasten his seatbelt. We taxi again and eventually take off.
My honest guess is that his bladder was full of beer and he didn't like
following rules.

Luckily, right after the in-flight meal service, he dozes off and remains asleep
for the entire flight. I managed to avoid eye contact during the entire
disembarking procedure.

---

I'm glad it was me, and not any of my family, that was subjected to such violent
knuckleheadery. I'm writing this down a day later to remember all the details. I
have not changed his name or hometown because he doesn't deserve the anonymity.

Sadly, it reminded me of the one time
[I sat next to a rapist](https://oldblog.erikras.com/2018/12/01/i-sat-next-to-a-rapist-on-a-plane)
(old, defunct blog) in 2018.


Gavin from Colchester


Due to exhaustion and the offer of a ride, I arrived to the Alicante airport
four hours before my flight. I mostly spent it sitting around with my eyes half
closed, half listening to podcasts. When it was getting close to boarding time,
I checked the monitor and it said that my flight was delayed. This was not good
news for me because I had a very tight 50 minute layover in Madrid to catch my
next flight. The monitor said it would be 15 minutes until the next information
about my flight, so I sat back down, read some tweets, and, for some reason, put
my phone between suitcase and my backpack on top of the suitcase. A few minutes
later, got up, leaving my bags within sight to glance at the monitor again. My
flight was boarding!

I went and grabbed my suitcase and backpack and rolled it towards the gate.
After about 15 meters, the podcast audio stopped in my AirPods. Ironically, I
was listening to a podcast about the new models of iPhone that were released
last week, none of which I’d rather have than the $1,500 in my bank account. I
reached down to my pocket to grab my phone to start the podcast again, only to
find my pocket empty! Then I remembered that I had put my phone between the
bags, and I looked, and it was not there. I walked back to where I had been
sitting, checking the floor along the entire 15 meters, but the phone could not
be seen! I retraced these 15 meters about five times before I was convinced that
it was not on the floor.

I looked at my Apple Watch, and it was showing the “not connected to phone”
icon, so the Watch could not see the phone either. I cursed under my breath. My
iPhone had fallen from its precarious place between my bags, and someone had
taken it.

> My flight was boarding.

I walked towards my gate and saw a line of about 25 people scanning their
boarding passes. I looked down at my watch to see the time to get an idea of if
I would make my next flight, and…

_My watch was connected to my phone!!_

One of the most useful features on the Apple Watch is the ability to make the
iPhone it’s paired with emit a loud beeping sound, even if it is in silent mode.
I’ve lost count of the number of times it has helped me locate my phone between
the couch cushions. I quickly swiped up and hit the “Ping” button. Ears wide
open, amidst the airport bustle…

I heard nothing. _Shit!_

Then it occurred to me that my iPad might have a better Bluetooth range than the
Watch, so I pulled out my iPad (wifi only, not cellular), which I had recently
had attached to the phone’s Personal HotSpot. After a moment of searching, push
notifications started rolling in. It was connected!!

I opened up the _Find iPhone_ app, which was ironically using the wifi hotspot
of the iPhone I was searching for to hit iCloud to ask the iPhone for it’s GPS
location to pass back to me through iCloud and then through the phone’s wifi to
me. There it was, on the map, very close to me. Before searching, I tapped the
“Lost Mode” button, and it asked me to enter a phone number to display on the
device. I struggled to remember my home landline phone and typed it in.

> The search was on!

To try to orient myself on the map, I walked 10 meters in one direction, but
both the little dots were bouncing around in unpredictable ways. I turned 90º
and walked another 10 meters. The dots seemed to be closer!

I kept walking, frantically searching the crowd of anonymous faces. In the movie
version of this story, the camera would be whirling around the protagonist as he
searched the crowd for a person he couldn’t identify. You know the trope.

As I was walking in the direction that made the dots closer, an airline employee
stopped me. “Sir, you can’t go past this security checkpoint.” I explained that
I had lost my phone, but that I knew it was around here somewhere. She asked if
I’d like to report it to the police, and I expressed some doubt that I had time
for that, since I was about to board a flight, but it turned out the police had
a little kiosk very close by.

I explained the situation to the cops, and they said, have you tried to make it
ping? I said yes, but that I hadn’t heard it. They said, “Do it again.” I did,
this time via the _Find Phone_ app, which I think emits a louder ping.

> WE HEARD IT!!

The three police officers jumped out of their little kiosk and said, “Again!” I
tapped it again. It was coming from the other side of the security barrier! The
cops raced through a door through the barrier not open to the public, and I
followed.

> PING!

We turned to see a man at the front of a long queue about to board a flight,
holding my phone. “Is that it?”, asked the cop. “Yes!”, I said, as I swiped it
from the man’s hand. “I called the number it said to call!”, shrugged the
British man, in English. (I did later confirm that I had a missed call on my
landline phone from my phone at that time)

I thanked the police profusely and ran off towards my gate. I grabbed my bags
and fumbled for my boarding pass and walked down the corridor towards my plane.
_So relieved!_

But of course the corridor was full of passengers waiting to get on the bus to
take us to the plane. I started up my podcast again and breathed a long sigh.

And
[tweeted about the incident](https://twitter.com/erikras/status/1041391205542711296),
of course. 🙄

<s>1041391205542711296</s>

A few minutes later, the airline employee that had just scanned my boarding pass
came down the corridor and said the police wanted to talk to me. My face must
have expressed my concern of not making the flight, and she told me that I
needn’t worry, that the bus wasn’t leaving until she told the driver it was
okay. The cop wanted my name, address, and info, so I gave in my ID card to copy
it from. He then requested the IMEI number from the phone. Weird, but I guess he
had to write it up for his report. I didn’t quite understand if they had
detained the other guy or not, but I’m sure they pulled him out of the line to
get his details as well.

I guess the guy at least made an effort to call the owner of the phone, but he
did not do the responsible thing of turning it in to the police, like I have
done on several occasions, much to my own personal inconvenience, with phones
and wallets. I’m sure he was hoping to walk/fly away with it.

---

After some serious sprinting through the Madrid airport, my iPhone, Apple Watch,
iPad, MacBook Pro, and I _barely_ caught our next flight and made it home
safely.

---

Thank you, Apple, for adding features like these to your operating systems.

And _muchas gracias_ to the Alicante Airport police for your quick action. 🙏


Travel

Posted in Travel