Recently someone said to me, “I travel on international flights all the time to visit family and I’ve noticed that the women who work for the airlines are getting older. Is this okay?”
Is this okay? Is this okay! I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or throw whatever was in my hand at the time. Instead I took a deep breath and replied, “Of course it’s okay! Women age. So do passengers.”
I mean really!
After it hit me that the man was probably a foreigner and not used to the ways of airlines in the U.S., I added, “I plan on being one of those flight attendants who use the beverage cart as a walker. Because in the United States flight attendants are allowed to age. We’re also allowed to gain weight, get married, and have children.”
Crazy, I know!
Wanna know what else flight attendants are allowed to do? Send sexy text messages. It’s true! Not that I’m a sexy text-er or anything, but if I wanted to send a sexy text I could, and I could do so without worrying about getting sent to prison for three months. Ya see here in the good ole US of A life is pretty darn nice. Especially if you’re a flight attendant.
What in the world am I talking about? In case you haven’t heard, an Emirates flight attendant and supervisor were recently sent to prison for three months for sending sexy text messages to each other. MSNBC reported that “the pair were convicted of ‘coercion to commit sin’ over messages and were initially sentenced to six months in jail”
Gulp.
MSNBC also reported that there is grave concern about the rapid growing population of foreigners in the deeply conservative area which may be threatening their social and religious identity.
So how did the sexy texts even come to light? The husband of the flight attendant. He’s been battling her for a divorce since 2007. I guess it only makes sense he would turn her in so she could be sent to jail.
Nice, eh?
Flight attendants aren’t the only ones getting thrown into the slammer for sexually related activity. “a British pair caught kissing in public in Dubai is appealing a month-long jail sentence handed down after an Emirati mother complained her child had seen their indiscretion,” Cynthia Johnston, the MSNBC correspondent covering the case, wrote in the article Airline workers face 3 months in jail over texts. Then she goes on to discuss three more cases involving British couples either going to prison or narrowly escaping prison for similar actions.
When I mentioned this story to Bob, the singing pilot, he asked, “What is considered a sexually explicit text in that part of the world?”
Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not so sure I even want to know.
Photos courtesy of Telstar Logistics and Jrodmanjr