5 January 2006
Airplanes to house prisoners
Jets for joints
CHICAGO, Ill. -- In a shared press release, United Airlines and the
Federal Bureau of Prisons announced today that they have signed an
agreement to position some of the airline's inventory of unused aircraft
near federal prisons to accommodate overflow prison populations.
In a prepared statement, John MacNemerny a spokesman for the Bureau
said, "The idea of using spare planes for added incarceration was the
brainchild of Stephen Hornelly of Alamogordo, N.M. Mr. Hornelly was
reading about New Orleans reconstruction workers being lodged aboard
cruise ships off the Louisiana coast while he was, in his words, 'being
held captive for five hours in a plane on the ground at Phoenix Sky
Harbor International Airport while weather conditions prevented the use
of any of its runways.'"
"By the time his airplane was airborne," said MacNemerny, "Mr. Hornelly,
who is an executive with an aircraft leasing company, had developed a
complete business plan with which he ran. After approaching the Bureau
of Prisons and several airlines over the past couple of months, an
agreement was reached with United this week."
When contacted by Travel Fox, Mr. Hornelly said, "During my ordeal on
the ground in Phoenix, I came to realize that airliners would make ideal
jail cells. The are cramped, sealed, have limited creature comforts and
offer little more to eat than bread and water—often without the bread."
The airline-prison arrangement simultaneously solves the current problem
of prison overcrowding and airline overcapacity. The four-year agreement
calls for up to 164 airplanes to be moved between 16 federal prisons,
mostly in the Northeast and Midwest. If successful, an extension to the
agreement with United is likely. In the meantime, other airlines are
watching closely as they may chose to participate in the future in what
is being dubbed as the "Jets for Joints" program.
In a related story, six German airline passengers have filed "false
imprisonment" charges against a British Airways pilot claiming that they
were being held against their will on an aircraft stuck on a runway for hours during a snowstorm at Berlin's Tegel airport.
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Cabin theiver
- Protect yourself from in-flight rustlers
© 2006 Applied Psychology
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