The dumbest airline in the world… Ajira
Forgive me if I rant a little… All in good fun…
The people at Ajira air have to be the most obtuse employees in the world.
The airline computer system has to be completely impotent in terms of security not to have red flagged Kate Austen. Kate, another of the internationally infamous Oceanic Six, is on a ten year probation that prohibits her from leaving the state of California by any means. This raises many many questions. The Oceanic counter is just across from the Ajira counter. You would think SOMEONE in the terminal would recognize her and wonder what she is doing there. This assuming she is travelling under an illegal fake passport and an Alias so that the Ajira booking system would not flag her name. Those sun glasses worn indoors are one fine disguise, girl!
Jack Shephard is suspiciously distracted and un-interested when asked about arrangements for pickup of a dead body at the other end of the flight. Given the un-usual circumstances, and again, the notoriety of the passenger, I would have at least called over my supervisor, if not homeland security. This is a guy, who last time when he tried to ship a dead body overseas CRASHED A FRIGGIN’ AIRPLANE! I would have had that coffin inspected VERY VERY VERY carefully if I had been the rep. from Ajira.
Then you have the two middle-eastern gentlemen in first class, one in hand-cuffs. One of them also associated with the disapearance of a major airliner. All right, perhaps you would want to avoid accusations of racial profiling, but for crying out loud!
A major airline flying out of LAX has a passenger buy out 78 seats. The passenger is infamous locally for having a) won 160 million dollars in a lottery b) been one of only six passengers to survive a major airline disaster and been on the news all over the world for said feat. c) been on the local news channels constantly for the past three days wanted for committing 3 murders after escaping from a mental institution.
Will that be all Mr. Reyes? Smoking or Non-smoking? No problem, we do not subscribe to the usual FAA rules of conduct or security. Go right ahead and use cell phones, laptop computers and any other eletronic, electromagnetic or microwave devices… The guitar case? No problem if it does not fit under your seat. After all you booked 78 first class places. Just throw it down anywhere? Open it up? Don’t bother, I’m sure there’s a valid reason you are carrying a Thompson Machine gun in there or security would have caught it.
To complete the deadly poker hand you have Sun-Soo Paik-Kwon. I do not work for the airline industry, but I would think that seeing FIVE of the infamous Oceanic Six on the same flight in the same terminal in a city like L.A. would cause at least a mild Paparazzi feeding frenzy!
Another thing that really surprised me. The usual practice for every airline I have flown with (I have travelled quite a bit for work) is to have handicapped, elderly and FIRST CLASS passengers board FIRST followed by the other classes of passengers. In this case the first class passengers seem to be the last ones who board the aircraft.
Easy, Ben hired/paid off the airline emloyees to allow the airport process move smoothly for him and the O6.
But seriously, you pose a great argument.
I just love rants!
If this airplane did not crash on ‘the island’ as some people have speculated, I want to know WHO did fly that plane the rest of the way to Guam.
Kate at least, likely had false identification. Sorry, I didn’t pay close attention to that.
The only person with questionable behaviour in this scenario, was Hurley, IMO.
Purchasing all 78 seats, should have been the ultimate, ‘red flag’ for anyone!
I didn’t see Jack’s attention being side tracked, at all unusual to warrant calling attention to security!
I think I posted it in another thread, but I’m pretty sure that every mass-passenger airplane has 2 pilots, if not a senior and junior/assistant pilot. Therefore at least 2 capable fliers. Once Lapidus disappears, Pilot B freaks out for a sec, then takes over.
Look, Ben is a rich…wait, wealthy man. Obviously someone planted the fake 815, so why couldnt he or Widmore be the owners of 2 very odd named airlines, given the circumstanes.
Widmore planted the real and fake 815. The real one on the bottom of the sea, and the real one was I guess not faked, but being he was on the island, probably knows whats going on, it would make perfect sense to begin tracking 815, find at least a general direction it went, then use the freighter team, along with the help of hia unknowing Daughter, found the island again.
Ben just needed to be where Old Lady Hawking told him to be. Its an airport. The airlines do not have everything to do with the security. Ben set up the whole thing…the WHOLE thing.
But his cockiness may have gotten in the way this time. Are we really to believe that Widmore just let Des go and find Hawking without using him to find Ben, to save Penny?
I feel that he at least cares for one of those two things..his daughter or the island. Hell, Maybe Charles laid it on Benjamin, causing his bumps and bruises. Yeah, it could ahve been Desmond, but who knows. Just trying to get outside the box a little…sometimes i tip the box over and crush it in the process ;]
Not to mention they are trying to fly a Boeing 737 from LAX to Guam. A 737 NG can make it to Hawai’i with barely enough fuel for an alternate landing, let alone travel over the islands, and reach Guam. White flash or not, that plane was never going to reach Guam. If they had not flashed off the plane, they would have dithed into the ocean after running out of fuel.
I don’t know what kind of Pilot Lepedis is, but the guy always seems to have trouble with figuring out his fuel.
Ha! Good one!
Gotta love ol’ Frank tho…
‘What kind of a pilot do you think I am ?’
The fuel thing just reinforces my suspicion that Ajira is run by some people who are a few cards light in the deck…
Or just a wealthy cheapskate who knows the planes going down anyway and is just trying to save a buck on gas :]
I hadn’t re-read these until now. Very funny stuff.
BUT NOTHING so far has done anything to dispel my suspicions that this is a stupidly or under-written episode.
In a later episode we find out that the co-pilot recognized Hurley, but none of the others. He is glib about it.
Ilana and Bram are plants. This may or may not suggest that all the other passengers are also set-ups of some kind. Speculation is still rampant about who is behind the Shadows. And if they are behind it, why would they let Ben Linus aboard?
If there are weapons or explosives in the mysterious box they checked in as freight that will cinch it that the whole thing was arranged as AES speculates.
We do see Widmore is powerful enough to have Sun sequestered in a London airport while he speaks to her. Does his influence extend to L.A.?
We will have to wait and see the Hurley episode in which he brings an oversized and empty (?) guitar case aboard. He has been (wrongfully) arrested as a drug dealer in the past… Maybe some sharp customs lackey will ask a few pointed questions about it.
‘Anything to declare?’
‘Umm, no just this empty guitar case.’
‘Why are you bringing an empty guitar case to Guam?’
‘Oh, no reason. My dead friend told me I had to’.
‘Dead friend?’
‘Uh, yeah. That’s not illegal, is it?’
‘Nnnooo, just a little odd.’
A supervisor walks by.
‘Hey, leave that guy alone. Didn’t you get the memo?’
‘What memo?’
‘The three monkeys memo… see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil…’
hahahaha I was wondering exactly the same thing….this could just be a little bit of glossing over for the sake of television…
or an indication that there’s more to ajira airlines than meets the eye?
either way, I’m really glad that someone else noticed this.
re-reading old posts looking for questions that were never answered to my satisfaction.
strange bit tied to this episode was the scene in a later ep. in which Eloise sets up the flight by showing Jack a list of flights over the pacific. She tells there happens to be one that will fly over the island at just the right time.
A.E.S suggests above that Ben or Widmore own Oceanic and Ajira. In view of the Eloise scene I find it hard to believe that one of those two could happen to own a controling interest in an airline that happens to have a flight going over the island at the time needed to crash-land Jack and co. on the island.
All very odd.
Saw on the internet a 5 part mockumentary on Dharma that tried to answer some of the questions posed by fans. How Dharma had recruited some of the pricipals (esp. Phil from s5 and Olivia from s3)
You get a sort of feeling of how powerful and far reaching Dharma can be. Maybe a partial answer to the Ajira question?