ToiletDuck

I still think it's a bunch of BS that the cuffs were arround her neck. Think about that for a moment. What possible situation could you put your arms in that would get them to neck height and that's it? I'm sitting here imagining myself with cuffs on both behind me and infront of me. There is no position I can put myself in where the cuffs would be able to strangle me. They always hold your wrist together, if anything maybe and inch or two apart, and I still can't come up with anything.

I'm guess is the media is completely wrong. Heart attack, seziure, stoke, aneurysm, etc. If she was screaming then all the sudden stopped I doubt she was sitting there twisted like a pretzel trying to get cuffs off. Be hard to scream like that.

mike734

Clearly more information is needed. Unfortunately that info will come from the police department. I wonder how long it was after she stopped screaming until they checked on her. I'm not saying they needed to jump right in after she stopped but the article makes it sound like they were right there. I doubt that. I bet she was "quiet" a long time.

rickair7777

Yeah, there's more to this story. I think the lady was probably mentally impaired... either illness or drugs. As a travel worker, I have a very low emotional tolerance for fully-grown adults who throw temper tantrums in public...if she was a spoiled rich girl who was just going to miss her spa appointment, I don't have much sympathy over the arrest. But since she didn't try harm anyone in any way, she should have been taken into custody relatively unharmed...and the authorities have a clear responsibility to keep her that way.

vagabond

This is the latest from Associated Press. Emphasis added.

NEW YORK - A woman who died after being handcuffed and detained at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport was on her way to an alcohol rehabilitation program, her family's lawyer said Monday.

"I can't confirm that she had alcoholism, but that certainly is my assumption," said Michael Manning, who was hired by Carol Anne Gotbaum's family over the weekend to monitor the police investigation.

He said it does not seem possible that Gotbaum could have strangled herself in custody.

Gotbaum, 45, became angry Friday when she was late for a flight and a gate crew did not let her on the plane. Officers handcuffed her behind her back [Now that is interesting] and took her to the holding room, where she kept screaming, authorities said.

Police spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill said officers checked on Gotbaum regularly [But no indication of exact frequency]. During one check, officers found her unconscious with her hands "pressed against her neck area," Hill said.

"We don't know why or how she did it, but you have to assume that when someone is handcuffed behind their back that most probably she brought them from underneath herself and back up high."

Manning disagreed.

"It doesn't make any sense," he said. "She was handcuffed behind her back and shackled to a table. It doesn't make sense that she could have physically managed to strangle herself."

Manning said he plans to send a representative to watch the county medical examiner's autopsy on Tuesday. He will conduct his own inquiry into whether police followed proper procedure.

Manning said the family has not decided whether it should file a lawsuit against Phoenix police.

"We're not going to jump to any conclusions without any evidence," he said. [This is what I've been saying all along.]

Hill said officers followed established policy while detaining Gotbaum.

Stormy Knight

We are way beyond the point where anyone in Amerika can pretend that they haven't been informed about the new "Dangers of Air Travel": the airplane and crew are perfectly safe, the terrorists are few and far between, but if you raise a voice of outrage to the crappy treatment you will receive at ORD,JFK,ATL, etc you are taking your life into your own hands. Not that it is usually fatal, but clearly that is one of the options. I have been both a cargo and SLF (Self-Loading Freight) pilot for 25 years, and now, we take our vacations by car or train. Our industry has become so unpleasant to its customers that I no longer fly unless it is utterly necessary.

trunk junk

I bet if this country built a competing high speed rail system many people including myself wouldnt fly the airlines at all becauase of the unpredictable nightmare airtravel has become.

mike734

Until the first bombing of the high speed train.

Spartan07

And until they overbook seats on the train and you end up getting bumped back to a later departure regularly because they refuse to build more tracks over prime real estate to support more trains... I think it would be a lot more cost effective to find a solution to the current scheduling/ground problem we have right now.

The way I see it we aren't running out of sky, we're just running out of concrete for the big shiny flying things to land on. The country just needs to bite the bullet and add a few runways here and there to alleviate the horrendous state of air travel as it is right now.

alarkyokie

If you're not the crew, what's the average delay for boarding/ departing?
Flying is getting be more like a doctor's office visit--overbooked, and hours behind...
Not the same frustration, I guess, in jump-seat class...

rickair7777

Trains won't work in the US...

- Distances MUCH greater than Europe/Japan...at 300 mph (extreme upper limit) it would take 9 hours to do a transcon. More likely, max speed would be only attainable on a few isolated stretches. A 20-25 hour stranscon would be more realistic.

- Rail Cost is VERY high for maglevs. In order to achieve top speed, the lines must be nearly straight. One Billion (yes with a B) dollars per mile would not be unreasonable through mountainous terrain. The reality is that much of the rail infrastructure could not support maximum speed...this has been proven to be the case in Europe.

- Energy Costs: I haven't done the math, but airplanes enjoy very low drag in the thin air at the flight levels...trains would be pushing a lot of sea-level air out of their way. Unless you enclosed the entire track infrastructure in a vacuum tube (yes, this has been discussed). A very long train would probably enjoy an advantage, but then you get back to the frequency problem...A380 vs. narrow-body.

- NIMBY (Not in My BackYard): The need to lay new rail lines cutting directly through anything and everything in a straight line would create huge political hurdles.

- Safety: At 300 mph the trains would pose a safety hazard that would require full physical containment of the ENTIRE line system. A cow (or even a deer) could destroy a train. Even more money.

- Security: Same bomb threat as airlines, so same TSA hassles. Actually airplanes have a significant security advantage compared to trains: Above about 5000' AGL there is about zero chance that a terrorist could harm the airplane from the ground. The train does not enjoy that advantage...it flies the entire route at 3" AGL If I were a Tango, there are a numerous things I could do to a high speed train...it wouldn't take much, a small disruption and momentum does the rest:

Climb the fence, plant a bomb on the track.
Ram the fence, park a truck on the track.
Mortar the track.

Ooops Now we need a roof and concrete walls that can withstand an artillery attack.

Not gonna happen on a large scale.