No Takeoff, but 2 Visits by the Police

For nearly four hours last Thursday night, Flight 5637, a 50-seat regional jet, was stuck on the ground by bad weather at Kennedy International Airport. The air-conditioning wasn’t working, and no one seemed to have a clue about when the plane would take off.

Flight 5637 boarded at 6 p.m., more than an hour late. Shortly after boarding, Mr. Ollila said, “the pilot announced that the air-conditioning system was broken, and it would be uncomfortable, but that we should be under way shortly.”

By 9.30 p.m., some passengers were standing in the narrow aisle and fanning themselves and children with magazines. Mr. Ollila approached the cockpit.

“I figured if I started recording and asking the pilots what was going on and why they couldn’t make a decision to get people off the plane that the police would come and take us off — and that is exactly what happened,”he said.

I’ve seen Mr. Ollila’s recording. At first the captain asks if Mr. Ollila is “recording,” to which Mr. Ollila replies that he is. Still, the captain replied to Mr. Ollila’s persistent questions for about five minutes. In his responses, the captain basically said he had no authority to release the passengers without approval from Comair’s headquarters. “He said, ‘If you keep this up I’m going to have to call the police.’ I said, ‘That’s an excellent idea,’ ” Mr. Ollila said.

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Reads like Happy Gilmore

One-eyed gator pulls golfer into pond

A man who lost his ball in a golf course pond nearly lost a limb when a nearly 11-foot alligator latched on to his arm and pulled him in the water, authorities said.

Bruce Burger, 50, was trying to retrieve his ball Monday from a pond on the sixth hole at the Lake Venice Golf Club.

The alligator latched on to Burger’s right forearm and pulled him in the pond, said Gary Morse, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Burger used his left arm to beat the reptile until it freed him.

“I saw him reach down to get his ball and he yelled” for help, said Janet Pallo, who was playing the fifth hole and ran over to drive the man to the clubhouse.

Burger, from Lenoir City, Tennessee, was taken to a hospital but was not seriously injured, Morse said Tuesday.

It took seven Fish and Wildlife officers an hour to trap the one-eyed alligator, which measured 10 feet, 11 inches, Morse said.

The pond at the sixth hole has a “Beware of Alligator” sign.

“Unfortunately, that’s part of Florida,” course general manager Rod Parry said. “There’s wildlife in these ponds.”

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