Chapter 1: What story does Phoebe share about an uncooperative plane passenger?
Hi, it's Phoebe. Today we're sharing this week's new episode of Criminal Plus with all of our listeners. We put these out twice a month, and our Criminal Plus members seem to really enjoy them. They're very different than our regular Criminal episodes, but we hope you'll enjoy listening in.
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I'm Phoebe Judge. I'm Lauren Sporer. And Lauren, I have been wearing a jacket and long underwear all day today. In North Carolina. The heat has been broken in my house for the past five days. I don't think that I have, my body temperature has gotten above 72 in a week. I'm freezing cold. Where's the repair?
I feel like when a state that isn't prepared for cold weather has a spell of cold weather, crisis and chaos pops up at every corner. And to get someone here, it's like you're asking someone to build the Empire State Building. We're trying to get someone here, but it is freezing cold, which is why I have been wearing a jacket for a week. Lauren, I can't believe I didn't tell you about this story.
I believe that I did document this in kind of real time as it was happening when I was on the airplane, but I never actually got to tell you what happened. No, I never heard. We have been hearing, I would say, since the end of the pandemic about airline passengers getting unruly in ways that I had never heard before. Do you agree with that? Yes. Brawls.
Dragged off.
Brawls breaking out. on airplanes. And I hadn't really seen any of this behavior until a couple of weeks ago. I was sitting on an airplane, and I really couldn't afford for the plane to take off too late. So I was trying to get somewhere, and if the plane was going to be too late, I might as well just scrap the whole trip.
So I'm sitting on an airplane, and just like you, I am at all attention at all times during a flight. You are at a ā your attention is piqued for another reason, which is just complete fear. Keep the plane in the air. Keep the plane ā fear and panic. Mine is just curiosity. I want to know what's going on. Because you and I travel an awful lot, and I have been a Delta loyalist for 25 years.
I have very high status on Delta, diamond status, which has now ā You are not diamond. I have been diamond since 2023. Oh, my God. But I'm not anymore. I just got kicked down to platinum. That's a whole other story. But anyway, so I'm diamond status. And if you have a high status on- What are the perks? Upgrades.
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Chapter 2: What are the challenges of dealing with unruly airline passengers?
So he got like a present. I don't think they said what seat you could choose to. I think they said you're going to have to move to an empty seat. And he just said, well, then I'm going right here, you know. He kept saying I paid for an extra room seat, which was exit row, you know, you pay for a preferred.
So he sits down and the flight attendant comes back to the lead flight attendant and says, okay, he's moved seats. And the lead flight attendant says to this other flight attendant, the captain says he's off the flight. And the flight attendant says, well, he's already moved. Like, he's not going to get off the flight.
And the lead flight attendant says, well, if he won't get off the flight, then we'll have to call the police. And then the gate agent comes on the plane. And the gate agent says, well, you know, if we call the police, we have to deboard the whole entire plane. Oh, my God. The minute the cops come onto the plane, everyone has to get off. And I'm thinking, this is, what do I do?
So they go back to the man and they say, excuse me, sir, you actually have to get off the plane. Like, you can't take this flight. The man comes right up to the front there, you know, the little area, and says, I'm not leaving. I pay for this. He said, let me talk to the pilot. I want to talk to the pilot. And I am right there. I'm 1C. I'm right there.
And I'm thinking, this is maybe a little wild to me, but I'm thinking if things do start getting heated, I could get an elbow in the eye. I didn't know what to think. I was ready. So I think he's going to kind of storm the cockpit now. The pilot comes out as very, he's this Austrian.
The pilot agrees to speak with him. Fascinating.
He's this Australian, young Australian man, the pilot, and he said, the man said, you tell me why I have to get off. I bought this ticket. I'm not getting off this plane. I am not getting off this plane. And the pilot said, I'm very sorry, sir, but that's my decision, and we need people to comply, and that is my decision. You're going to have to leave the flight.
Did you know the pilots had this kind of power?
I didn't, but it was very interesting.
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Chapter 3: How does the pilot handle a non-compliant passenger on a flight?
It's more kind of feeling the spirit of something. The idea of ecstatic dancing makes me want to have a heart attack. It's that type of a situation.
All right. Question number two, what are you reading?
Well, boy, I just finished that wonderful book about the winter. I am reading, which I haven't gotten to talk to you about yet, which is kind of a giveaway because I really am thinking we should do this for criminal. I am reading a book about murderers in Greensboro, North Carolina called Bitter Blood. The crimes we've never talked about before? We've never talked about them before.
This is a book that came out in 1988 by a newspaper reporter in Greensboro, North Carolina, Jerry Bledsoe. And it's detailing this rash of murders in wealthy Southern families. I have no idea why we haven't come across this. The book is about 1,000 pages long. And I have been told that it is riveting and the writing is fantastic. And I just started it last night. Where did you get it?
A friend brought it over. He had read it. He had a cold and read it in three days. I think it's out of print and brought it over. And I just thought it looked interesting. I picked it up.
This is what we need. We need to return to our roots of basing episodes on old out-of-print books. Well, I've got a lot of that at the beginning. I remember I used to volunteer at the library and all the old ladies would set aside the most...
terrifying crime books and give them to me and we would usually not use them but sometimes we did I I'm back I've got one for you it's a thousand pages but I'm really it's a little sometimes around here we use the we say cultural center but we also say it's a little people.com you know what I mean it's a little people.com in a good way so that is what I mean the thing is everything that's people.com doesn't have to be done like people.com that's right yeah
All right. Question number three. Whose work makes you the most jealous? Lauren Spohr.
Oh, Phoebe. Wow. Didn't even miss a beat. Tip of my tongue.
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Chapter 4: What is the process for removing a passenger from a flight?
They're putting them out once a week. And I realized they put this show out Thursdays at 9 p.m. It comes every week. It's the same exact time that ER was put out, was aired. 9 o'clock Central, so 10 o'clock Eastern, every Thursday night it would come out. For years, that's when ER came out, and now that's what The Pit is doing too. 9 o'clock Thursday nights.
I thought that was kind of a nice, I mean, maybe I'm making this up, that it's just a coincidence, but I don't think so.
It's weirding me out that during our childhoods, our destination television watching times would not have been the same.
I know. I always thought to myself, isn't that people on the East Coast? Isn't that odd? Like, they have to stay up so late. It was always... And now that I live on the East Coast and I'm East Coast time, it is very strange. I still think about that. You know what also dated maybe you and me?
We were in a pitch meeting the other day, and I brought up... I've been thinking about the Tylenol murders and how we wanted to do that story forever and that the...
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Chapter 5: What feelings arise when witnessing a passenger being removed?
The crime was interesting, I guess, but what was really interesting was the panic and how people changed people's, you know, shopping habits, changed how pill bottles, everything, the fallout of the crime. And I started thinking about Jack in the Box. Do you remember the Jack in the Box outbreak, the E. coli, that many people died?
And we were in this meeting, pitch meeting, and I said, I think it'd be really interesting to do something about Jack in the Box and how even to this day I would never go to Jack in the Box. And I was shocked at how few people on the team knew about Jack in the Box.
You mean knew about the brand at all?
Or just the big Jack in the Box story, which I feel is like seared into my mind.
To this day, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. And also, just what a terrible brand.
Like a sort of nightmarish? Yeah. Yes. I've never been, so I don't know how the food is. But I think we may try to do a Jack in the Box story, again, focusing on, yes, the cover-up that the company tried to do, but also the fallout that happened.
You think about people just stopped going to this major, major chain because they didn't know, and they didn't know the mystery of why people were getting sick.
When was that? Okay, wait, let me see. 1993, a major corporate crisis from an E. coli outbreak. Wow, the largest and deadliest food crisis associated with restaurants to this day. It resulted in the deaths of four children, and it made more than 700 people sick in multiple states.
I think we're going to do the story. I think there's so many different interesting angles for that story. So we haven't recorded no interviews for that. And I just brought it up in a pitch meeting yesterday, but I would like to do some research and digging on Jack in the Box.
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