Hawaii Flight 2

The narrator tells a story about his friend Greg, who was a con man but only stole from big companies. Greg figured out a system to get 100% discounts on certain airlines by collecting seat stickers from the trash. The narrator recounts a time when they were flying to Hawaii using Greg's scheme, but things went wrong when a Japanese tour group boarded the plane and the flight attendants questioned their fake tickets. However, Greg managed to print new boarding jackets without tickets and saved the day. The narrator mentions that they may face trouble when they arrive in Hawaii, but they end up being stuck there due to an air traffic controllers' strike. The story ends with the narrator teasing that there are more adventures to come. And welcome back to the Wolf World Wound-Up with yours truly, John Wolf. And I want to tell you a tale of going back to 1981. As I mentioned before, I had a friend who was a very gregarious, fun guy to be with. Brilliant man, totally miswired mentally. He would see, Greg would see the opposite of what everyone else would see with some sort of system that a company might have. And he would see all the loopholes in it, whereas the rest of us are just trying to figure out how to work it out normally. But he was kind of a con man, but like Robin Hood, he only stole from big companies. And he was very generous with everybody else and very, very careful about making sure that he didn't steal from individuals. So what the heck, it was a little fun for a while. Greg had figured out a system to get 100% discounts on certain airlines that were a little sloppy about counting how many people got on board. And for those of us over 50, you may remember there was a time when you didn't get a computerized boarding pass, but a kind of tri-fold envelope. It opened up into three sections. And the only thing inside it was a four-leaf actual ticket. And no one ever looked at it when you got on the plane. They just looked at the outside of it. And as he said to me, this looks very easy when you're sitting there. But when you're the one designing the system, which is what he had done, he said he spent whole days at the airport just studying, just studying the system and figuring out the loopholes. For instance, they would use a sheet of seat stickers and put those stickers on the outside of people's tri-fold envelopes. And at the end of boarding the plane, if there were 30 seats unsold, they would throw that sheet with the stickers on them in the trash. And then they would leave. And guess who would collect them from the trash so he could use them for another flight? And there are other details I could tell you, but let's not go into that right now. You could walk around the kiosk at the boarding gate. Nobody ever looked at you and nobody ever bothered you. If you walked around and kind of glanced over to see where the seat stickers, easy for me to say, were not taken. So meaning that those seats were still open. And he would plan his seat stickers accordingly. But once you got past the boarding gate and the flight attendant at the entrance to the plane itself, they didn't care where you were going. They're like, thank you. Hello. Yeah, back there. 400 yards back on your left. At most, at the very most. So we're heading to LAX to fly from LA to Hawaii. This is the first time I've ever done this. It's Greg, his girlfriend, who was my ex-girlfriend, and a gal that I had started dating who was a friend of theirs. We'll call her Calamity Jane because her name was Jane and she was a calamity. Often when couples would get on the plane, as Calamity and I were, they would just put two stickers on one envelope so there'd only be one boarding jacket. And Jane had ours. We get on the plane. Everything's looking fine. Greg the planner had told me. He said once they close those doors, that's it. You're safe. You're home free. So we're just about at flight time, sitting back in the middle section where they have the five seats across the middle of a wide body plane. And a Japanese tour piles on. They'd missed their flight because of a mechanical breakdown of that plane. And guess where they're coming? Right back to the center of coach towards the rear of the plane. And guess where I'm sitting? Not for long. Now on the way to the airport, Greg had said, if there's anything you absolutely need with you on the flight, keep it on you. Don't put it up overhead because you may have to get up in a moment. And I'm looking a little nervous. He goes, don't worry. This almost never happens. Almost never happens. Of course, it was destined to happen that day. The tour group comes on. I'm by myself. I'm not with any of the other three, my three cohorts. I get up and just start walking blindly towards the front of the plane. And I look over at a seat on the left and Calamity Jane is sitting there with our two seat stickers on her boarding pass. And I thought, I'd give $1,000 to have that right now. And a flight attendant approaches me and we're like an open field. I'm like the running back, no blockers. She's out there as the linebacker. And I'm like, ooh. And she goes, sir, can I see your boarding pass? And I thought at that moment, I know I'm going to say something brilliant in one second, but I have no idea what it is. And inside a sweatshirt I was carrying, I also had a quart or a qubit, whatever, of vodka. Because, you know, if I didn't like their flight prices, you know I didn't like their drink prices. So that's what I had with me as I needed to keep it on my person, as Greg had suggested. And I had no idea what to say, but something jabbed me in the back and I thought, maybe that's a clue. Nah. I reached back there and it's another boarding jacket. Greg had seen what was happening and gone into the lab on the plane and printed up new boarding jackets. This time without even fake tickets inside them, which the previous ones had had. I just thrust it towards her and she takes it. She goes, oh, you're on business class. You're in row 14J. And she takes his and she goes, oh, you're in 16I, whatever. I'm making those numbers up. And then I'm sitting there by myself. Business class was wide open. Nobody sitting there. And another flight attendant comes up to me and says, sir, can I see your ticket? I thought all of a sudden, you know, I've got a problem here, but, but if I play it like the righteous business executive that I am, maybe I can tough my way over it. So I said, here it is. And I hand her the empty boarding jacket with no ticket in it. She goes, sir, this is just a boarding jacket. There's no ticket in it. And I go, well, that's what they gave me, sweetheart. And she said, well, there's no ticket here. I need your ticket. So I stood up and I always have a bunch of garbage in my pockets, post-it notes with ideas written on them and receipts from some shirt I bought a year ago or whatever. And I just start throwing this stuff on the floor angrily, like I have some place to be angry. And then I made a mistake. I said, well, if you'd like, we can go to the back and I can get my bag, overhead bag down and we can dump that out on the floor too. Now why was my overhead bag in the back if I'm sitting in business class? She didn't catch it though. And then she goes to Greg, two rows behind me, and she gets a similar story of BS from him. And she goes, do you know this gentleman up here? And he walks over to me, looks at me, stares at my face from like a foot away, never saw him before in my life. And then he goes and sits down and she storms away and the door's closed. That's my signal that everything's great and we're going to Hawaii. And we go up into the air and as we're climbing, I turn to say something to him. He goes, don't talk to me. I said, I don't know you. All right. But then nothing happens and we end up sitting next to each other about 20 minutes later and we're chit-chatting and laughing. I said, you know, Greg, we might not have been worth holding up a half full flight to Hawaii. But they do have us as kind of captives for six hours. They can do some research now and we can't go anywhere. So we might be in trouble at the other end. I said, listen, you got me on the plane and I have no criminal record, unlike him. And I said, I'll play the heavy. I'll say that we were going to go to Hawaii. I went downstairs to the ticket counter and I was going to buy the tickets. There were about 300 a piece round trip back then. And a tour guide spotted me and asked if I was going to Hawaii. And I said yes. And he said, look, two people stiffed me. Two people stiffed me and didn't show up or pay for their tickets. I'll sell you the tickets for half price, for 150 a piece. And like a sucker, I said, I'll say I paid the guy the $300 for both of our round trip tickets. Even my dad, when I told him the story later on, said, that's pretty good. I like that. And I figured the worst we'll do is cough up $300 or $600 or whatever it was. Between the two of us. And when we got to the other end of the flight, the doors opened and two guys in uniforms get on. And fortunately, it wasn't for us. Unfortunately, that trip had a lot of different things happen. It ended up costing me a bunch of money along the way. Because for one thing, the next day, the air traffic controllers went on strike and President Reagan didn't quiver. He fired them all. For those of you who remember that time. He fired all the air traffic controllers. I guess they put in military people in their place. But there were very few flights taken off percentage wise compared to the norm. And when there are few flights, there are few open seats. So we were kind of stuck in Hawaii. Oh, I know that sounds so bad. Well, it did have its good side. But we were stuck in Hawaii with very little money. We were camping out on the backside of Oahu. But that story is for another day. And thank you for joining me with the Wolf World Wound Up.