A few years back when I flew a Jetstream 32 (no cockpit door) we were taxing out to the runway and had a passenger come up front and tap me pretty hard on my shoulder; she actually startled the crap out of me and my copilot while I was taxing (~ a year after 9/11)...

This was in ATL, I stopped and applied the brakes thinking what the heck is going on? I took my headset off and the (very large) lady pointed her finger in my face and said something like "hello! do I have to be reminding you one of your engines is not working?!" ..and she rolled her eyes as in - 'those pilots are morons for not realizing that!'

I grabbed the intercom so others could hear and said something like "folks, some of you seem to be nervous over the fact we use only one engine while taxing. I would like to assure you that's a perfectly safe and a normal procedure at our airline! We normally operate the right engine when flying to our destination and switch to the left one on the way back... - this saves us a lot of gas..."

The vast majority of our passengers on that route were regulars we saw day in and day out and most of them were laughing pretty hard in the back. The lady who 'punched me' said "oh, I didn't realize that" and went back to her seat... Memories...




JayDee - Eye hop eye speiled it all wright four u...