Family Friday – sit down impatient boy!

Stewardess on Air India just said, “Impatient Boy!” to me. I guess I can cross that off my bucket list. — Billy Soistmann (@soysauce357) May 20, 2010

Several weeks ago, I promised a friend a funny story about our family’s only experience with Air India a few years ago.

Billy was sixteen and he was going to fly to Germany with two of his classmates for an exchange program. Naturally, we tasked Billy with finding the least expensive flight he could find. He found Air India.

The other two students were girls so we all, unofficially, expected Billy to keep an eye on them. We had put considerable effort into buying the tickets together and calling to arrange seating assignments together, etc.

We travelled to the airport, escorted Billy as far as we are allowed post 9/11,  and decided to hang out at a restaurant with the parents of one of the other students. We all figured that staying at the airport at least until the plane took off made sense. We were worried and the other parents were freaking out a little bit.

That’s when the texts and tweets started. Billy’s friend was texting her mom, and Billy was tweeting the story.

I don’t remember all the details, but apparently a woman boarded the plane with a sprained/broken foot/ankle/leg and needed a particular seat. The seat Billy was sitting in. Billy and his friends tried to explain that they went through a lot of trouble to sit together, that they were flying alone to another country, etc. Didn’t matter!

If you know my son, you’ll know he likes to argue. He won several “best attorney” gavels in high school mock trial competition, even scoring “best attorney” in the state one year. But he is usually respectful to adults. I wasn’t on the plane, but he tells us he was as nice as he could be.

At first, we laughed about it at the restaurant. “They don’t know who they are dealing with in there. Ha Ha” but then we started to worry Billy was going to be in big trouble.

I decided to see if I could talk some sense into someone at Air India. I hunted down the office, which turned out to be about 8 by 12 feet and there must have been 25 people working in that room. I couldn’t believe it. They didn’t seem to get it either. They kept going back to the fact that Billy was sixteen, and both of the girls were seventeen. According to airlines, they are not minors. No special treatment, etc. etc.

Billy and his friends put their negotiation skills to work on other passengers, but they were being told not to talk, which made the task difficult.

I don’t remember what happened exactly, but eventually another set of passengers stepped in to help them and all was well.

Billy has been to Germany twice on his own, and he flew to Oxford for his interviews, and to San Francisco to visit Skywalker Ranch. All by himself, but never again on Air India.