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Con Air With Kids
The Travel Critic · November 16, 1999

Debbie Witt's flight from Honolulu to Chicago was boarded and ready for takeoff when an announcement came across the loudspeaker about some passengers with "special needs" who needed to get on the plane.

Moments later, seven prisoners were paraded down the aisle by four security guards and seated in the back. "The prisoners were squalid-looking and in shackles. They brushed up against everyone on the aisle all the way to the very back of the plane, including myself. They were seated among the other passengers," she recalls.

Witt and a few other travelers asked what was happening. "One of the flight attendants brusquely told us that they fly prisoners all the time," she says. "No information was available about the nature of their crimes. This was a very long flight. Five of the bathrooms were located directly behind these prisoners, and no one would use them, so the other coach lavatory units toward the front of the plane filled up and were rendered inoperable less than halfway through the flight ."

Although it's something of a stretch to say that there's a jailbird on every other flight, the Federal Aviation Administration does allow prisoners to be transported on commercial aircraft. Less than one percent of all flights contain prisoners who are being extradited, deported or otherwise moved - and most of the time, we're talking white-collar suspects, not violent offenders. The government requires that convicts and their escorts board before other passengers and deplane after everyone else has exited, and they must be seated in the passenger seats farthest back.

But Witt's fears aren't totally unfounded. The FAA does allows so-called "maximum risk" prisoners to fly. Duane McGray, chief of public safety at Nashville (Tenn.) International Airport and president of the Airport Law Enforcement Agencies Network, remembers when a contract killer was deported from Orlando, Fla., to San Juan, Puerto Rico, on an American Airlines flight.

"He was brought under heavy security and taken up the back steps rather than walking up through the terminal. A SWAT team covered him. The airline station manager was very concerned about how the other passengers would react," he says. Fortunately, the flight went without a hitch.

More troubling, perhaps, is where the prisoners ride: in the back, where airlines tend to stick families. Northwest Airlines offers a special "family section" toward the rear of the aircraft. Southwest Airlines used to offer family seating in the back rows but now makes going to the end of the line "voluntary" for parents with kids, according to a spokeswoman. Until recently, El Al also offered a section near the rear of its planes for families.

Apart from the prisoners, there's a good reason for keeping families in the back. Adults traveling with young children tend to take longer to board and deplane. If they're at the front of the aircraft, they could prevent the rest of the passengers from making a speedy exit. At the back, families are closer to the bathroom, where diapers can get changed and moms can nurse their infants in relative privacy. Plus, the back of the plane is thought to be the safest place during a crash.

"I don't know if any of the other airlines would direct their agents in writing to put families in the back," says Terry Trippler, a former travel agent. "Would they do it verbally? Sure. Would reservationists do it on their own? Absolutely."

The possibility that she and her children will be seated close to a convict is troubling to travelers like Ann Link, owner of a photo preservation business in Portland, Ore., and mother of four children. "You're taking the most defenseless people and putting them in harm's way," she says. "I feel as if we're discriminated against if we fly with children."

Granted, the chances of a Con Air-with-kiddies scenario is remote, but after reviewing the FAA policy on "escorted persons," I am more than a little concerned. Maybe it's time for the government to reconsider whether it's appropriate to put prisoners on commercial flights. Maybe it's time for the airlines to move youngsters out of the last few rows of planes. Kids and convicts are a bad combo.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.