This is sad.

A fellow had a ticket to fly Southwest for his uncle’s funeral.

Fellow weighs 400 pounds. He said he could fit in the seat, that he flies “all the time” and said he’d even sit with his arms crossed over his chest to avoid bothering anyone.

Southwest said no, that he was just too big, and said he’d have to buy a second seat. The guy says, fine. Problem: there is no second seat. The flight is booked. Man misses funeral.

A lot of flights are booked solid these days, particularly during holiday periods. Here’s what the man should have done, according to Southwest’s “guidelines for customers of size“: he should have pro-actively booked two seats in advance. Guess he’ll know next time.

The guy says Southwest is giving him a refund. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I guess.

A passenger on a domestic Vietnam Airlines flight said he had $11,192 in his carryon, which he stowed in an overhead bin. Big mistake – I’d put it on my person or cradle that bag in my arms.

Sure enough, when the plane landed in Dong Hoi, he looked for the money, but it had disappeared.

Happy ending, though – flight attendants searched for the money as the plane continued onto another destination, and found it stashed under a seat (not the one the guy had been sitting in). The money was returned in full to its rightful owner.

Three flight attendants – presumably not the ones that discovered the hidden cash – have since been suspended, and an investigation is continuing.

True, airline fees have gone up and nobody’s giving away those cans of Pringles, but still –$11 thousand dollars?? You were kind of asking for it, buddy…

Gotta love this all-forgiving reporter from the New York Times – he sits next to a man who insults him, repeatedly stomps on his feet, snores loudly, and – the coup de grace – he grabs a flight attendant and knocks her to the floor. And yet our reporter winds up calling him, “one of the nicest guys I ever met.”

Apparently, the foot stomper suffered from an intense fear of flying, and was going to the flight attendant for help when he keeled over on her, and had to be revived with “smelling salts” (who knew that stuff actually existed?).

BTW, he was allowed to continue the flight.

Now, if this was you or me – we would have been booted off, pronto. Very strange…

No, Plant fans, it’s not what you think – we are saying happy birthday to the zeppelin aircraft – you know, the blimp.

And the reason is, it carried the first paying passengers in the air back in 1909 so it officially gets credit for being the first air travel conveyance – plus, because it is now 2009, that means all this happened 100 years ago which is a nice, round anniversary-type number – so you, dear readers, get a post out of it.

By the way, this was not cheap travel: a jaunt from Duesseldorf to Lucerne set one back about $1,860 in today’s dollars, but that wouldn’t have been a problem for that lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold.

Maybe you saw this: Guy Laliberte, the rich fellow who founded (and owns most of) Cirque de Soleil, went into space to Wednesday aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule.

Cost of his ticket: $35 million.

Fortunately for Mr. Laliberte, he is worth about $2.5 billion. Boy, those flexible folks who make the cirque soar can really pull it in, can’t they?

Now, where’s my check book?

Just read a killer article by Brendan Ross for Wired.

For those that don’t know, Brian is on assignment for Wired, flying all over on his JetBlue “All You Can Jet” pass and blogging about it. He seems to be having a pretty good time – or was.

Then sat next to “Shauna”.

Clearly, Shauna (fake name) was full of surprises. One of the first things she did was, inquire if Brendan was allegoric to dogs, as she proceeded to pull a pop-eyed little mutt out of her purse.

Then she insisted that Brendan entertain her for the whole trip (the TV wasn’t working); she also announced her bathroom visits to one and all (“I have to PEE!”); she also discussed her former career as a Hooters waitress.

My only objection to the article is that Brendan never asked me if I required an alias.

Saw this on Channel 2 out of Chicago…

A 6 foot, 350 pound man is not happy with Southwest Airlines. Apparently the airline allowed Emery Orto to fly from Midway to Las Vegas, no problem, but stopped him as he was boarding the flight home and asked, “Can you put the armrests down when seated?”

He said he could, but Southwest ultimately grounded him anyway. Orto called this “humiliating” (but apparently it was not so humiliating that he passed up a chance to go on TV).

His main complaint: Southwest never “tested” him on the “putting-the-armrests-down” trick, but there’s more to the “passenger of size” rule at Southwest and other airlines – a policy that’s been around for years. Orto seemed to suggest that he wasn’t familiar with it – and in his defense, he was allowed to fly to Las Vegas.

Southwest told Ch. 2 that was a “mistake”. But they also said, the real issue with Orto was “anger” – that he was arguing with an “elevated voice” in a belligerent tone, and that other passengers weren’t comfortable flying with Orto after watching him lose his temper.

Orto meanwhile is talking about his “pain and suffering” and we all know where that’s going. Meanwhile, maybe the airlines better just suck it up and come out with specific height/weight/size charts – and no more guessing games.

A 50 year old man from Anaheim, California was convicted last week of interfering with a flight crew. But the guy was very lucky — the federal jury deadlocked on the charge of assaulting a crew member.

The passenger in question was aboard a United flight from Hong Kong to LAX when he got “unruly” (love that word). According an LA Times report, prosecutors said the man “had been drinking and was so belligerent and verbally abusive that crew members, a passenger and [an] off-duty pilot restrained his hands with plastic handcuffs.”

Which didn’t prevent him from punching the off-duty pilot in the neck when the pilot tried put his hand on the guy’s shoulder to try and keep the raging fellow in his seat. That’s when he was duct taped to his seat. When he started chewing his way out of the duct tape, they brought out metal handcuffs which did the trick.

He could face 20 years, but prosecutors say he’ll likely get less time — sentencing is in the fall.

Don’t drink and fly.

It starts off like a real hoo-hah – a passenger onboard a US Airways flight from Charlotte to Los Angeles- a 50 year old man from the Bronx – decides to take his clothes off. Every stitch.

This is where one would normally make a reference to Air New Zealand’s TV ad featuring crew members wearing nothing more than a coat of paint.

However…it seems pretty clear this guy was mentally ill. He later told the FBI in Albuquerque (where the plane diverted because the fellow would not put his clothes back on) that he hadn’t taken his medication, and he had no memory of anything he’d done on the flight.

Something else to consider: before the flight took off from Charlotte, a “flight service supervisor” with US Airways saw this man “dancing in a crowded boarding area” but determined he had not been drinking, ergo he was good to go on the flight.

I realize flight crews/gate agents are not trained psychologists, but I might dig a little deeper if I saw some poor guy dancing (and presumably making a spectacle of himself) in public. Should he have flown? Clearly not. But who was watching out for this guy? No one.

Well, would you be happy?

As Gadling tells it, 70 passengers “refused to board their Thomas Cook plane in Mallorca, Spain this week because the airline had asked them to all sit in the back of the plane.”

Essentially, they were to act as ballast – a counterweight, if you will, for all the luggage that was stacked up in the front of the cabin. Why was it stacked there? Because the workers on the ground couldn’t get the rear cargo door open. I guess they lost the manual.

I suppose I would have been disturbed, too – but these folks then paid hundreds of dollars to fly other airlines home. Now that would have given me pause.