A crazed JetBlue flight attendant who grabbed a six-pack and slid down an emergency chute onto the airport tarmac has become an overnight Internet sensation.
By August 10, 12:47PM PST, over 35,000 Facebook members had expressed their undying admiration for Steven Slater, a 20+ year airline veteran.
Slater gained national fame after confronting a passenger who inadvertently hit him in the head with a carry on suitcase.
“To the f—–g a–hole who told me to f–k off, it’s been a good 28 years,” he allegedly announced on the plane’s PA seconds before his unceremonious departure.
“I’ve had it. That’s it.”
The flight attendant was later arrested by police who found Slater in a passionate embrace with his boyfriend at a beachfront home in the Rockaways with a porch overlooking a tranquil Atlantic Ocean.
“I wish we could all quit our jobs like that,” passenger Phil Catelinet, 36, of Brooklyn, told the New York Daily News.
“He seemed kind of happy about it. He was like, ‘I just quit my job. [So], we just looked at each other and said, ‘What the heck was that about?’I thought, ‘Let me get off the plane before they stop us or something.’
“[So yeah], it’s pretty much the craziest thing I’ve ever seen on a plane.”
But a JetBlue co-worker who was on the flight called Slater a regular “working-class” hero.
“It’s [certainly] something we all fantasize about. [Still], we have kids and a mortgage or are just too chicken – or sane – to go through with [it].”
