California woman arrested in nail-painting incident on Southwest flight

According to CBS Los Angeles, a California woman was arrested in late February for painting her nails on a Southwest flight bound for Houston. The woman, identified as Jeanie Daniels, was on her way to visit her boyfriend and claims that the passengers seated next to her agreed to let her do her nails.

But one of the flight attendants reportedly objected, so Daniels retreated to the bathroom to finish the job. When she got out of the bathroom, she got into a verbal altercation with two flight attendants and claims she was detained by law enforcement officials at the Houston airport for more than 10 hours before a judge charged her with profane and abusive language.

The CBS story essentially reports Daniels’ side of the story along with an anodyne statement from Southwest, so it’s hard to know if the flight attendants could have diffused the situation or if Daniels was the instigator.I’ve actually never seen someone paint their nails on a flight but I wouldn’t be surprised if some flight attendants are becoming increasingly intolerant of obnoxious passengers. These days it’s not that uncommon to see passengers watching videos without headphones (especially kids), loudly chattering on mobile phones on the runway, and generally acting as though they were in their living rooms. On Monday, Gadling will begin a new March Madness series that will allow our readers to vote on which airline annoyances are the most egregious.

Do you think that these Southwest flight attendants were right in showing zero tolerance for the California nail-painter, or does it sound like they overreacted?

[Photo via Borispumps on Flickr]