Vegas and the Quake (Terror in the Skies and on the Ground)

Vegas and the Quake (Terror in the Skies and on the Ground) was Originally Posted on August 24, 2011 by lavarock

It is interesting when two items in the last blog have a new meaning after the fact.

In the last blog I mentioned being in Vegas at the Star Trek convention and seeing people in uniform, much like my military school years. The earthquake that hit the east cost was centered about 15 miles from that militry school.

Also, when coming back from Vegas, our plane made an unscheduled stop at a different gate. Rather than rewrite the info, I will cut and paste it here. This was posted in FlyerTalk.Com by me.

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HA 7 Incident 8/18/11

Yesterday, there was an incident on Hawaiian flight 7 from LAS to HNL. I am going to omit seat numbers.

We are 45 minutes late and they have already told us where to go to make interisland connections. I am a resident and need to make to make a connecting flight with no delay.

I was in the bulkhead seat just behind 1st and I could see one guy who may not have been a frequent flyer I’ll call him Mr Baker. Nothing much happened until about 10 minutes to landing in Honolulu. We were putting up tray taables and stowing items when I saw Mr Baker lean down perhaps to move his carryon items under the seat in front of him.

All of a sudden the guy beside him (Mr Adams) jumps up and hollers “What are you doing to my bag?” or words to that effect. Adams stands and grabs Bakers shoulder and I suspect there will be a fist fight. Baker looks to have no clue what is happening and the commotion continues. My first reaction is that Adams had been drinking and Baker accidently touched his bag, however I could not see Adams during the flight.

No crew is there yet and I unbuckle my seat belt and start heading to Baker to see if I can encourage him to the aisle until a stewardess can get there. Just as I rise, help comes. The stewardess talks to both of them for a minute and they sit down. Baker turns to Adams and seems to appologize and then looks to the side away from the guy for a minute, then turns again to say someting. I’m saying to my seatmate that Baker needs to just keep quiet and let Adams cool down.

We knew it was coming and sure enough “Attention Ladies and Gentlemen, there has been a gate change.” We wait a minute or two and sure enough, “and when we land, we will be using only the front exit and please remain in your seats even after the airplane door has been opened”.

Within a minute or two the 1st class door opens and in come a number of Police Officers (I believe Honolulu Police). As Adams and Baker stand up, I notice that now Adams has a badge on and I suspect he may be a regular plain-clothes officer or perhaps a Marshall. I now suspect there was a gun in the bag in question.

Whether Adams over-reacted or made the commotion to alert flight crew I don’t know. I was one of the first off the plane and police and the two were in the waiting area discussing things.

I ran to the interisland and was able to catch my connecting flight to Kona just as they closed the doors.

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Remember the blog entry a while ago about how people see the same event differently, I suggest you read the entry from a fellow flyer on the same flight. That is located here: http://tinyurl.com/3lbt7sw

My original account was posted here (with comments) http://tinyurl.com/3zddbct

Note the different treatment of my post and another flyers post by members of the forums.

Anyway, we posted what we saw.