Steven Slater in a screen grab taken from MySpace
At one point, we've all wanted to be Steven Slater. After getting into an altercation with a flyer and being hit in the head with a piece of luggage, the JetBlue flight attendant reached his breaking point: Mr. Slater made a spectacular exit from the plane - and his job - by swearing at his passengers over the plane's intercom system, grabbing a beer from the galley, and sliding down his plane's exit ramp.
Did Mr. Slater go too far? Can flight attendants be expected to endure poor treatment from customers? Has our travel culture evolved into one that's foregone common courtesy? Are flyers really that badly behaved?
Globe Life relationship columnist Lynn Coady and travel writers Bert Archer and Simona Rabinovitch joined us for this week's Wednesday Watercooler discussion on Mr. Slater's behaviour and air travel etiquette dos and don'ts. You can read the archive of the discussion below.
Simona Rabinovitch is a travel and pop culture journalist who has written for The Globe and Mail and Lonely Planet; she also writes a blog. Bert Archer writes a column about business travel, Road Work, for the Travel section of The Globe and Mail. Lynn Coady is a novelist and journalist, and writes the Group Therapy column for The Globe and Mail.