{"id":112,"date":"2004-07-15T19:24:11","date_gmt":"2004-07-16T00:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=112"},"modified":"2004-08-27T12:18:02","modified_gmt":"2004-08-27T17:18:02","slug":"passengers-good-will-turned-soldiers-trip-home-into-a-flight-of-fancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=112","title":{"rendered":"Passengers’ Good Will Turned Soldiers’ Trip Home into a Flight of Fancy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dallas Morning News is reporting a surprising display of respect for American soldiers<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It all began with a chance encounter at an airport, a glance, an offer, a quiet chat.<\/p>\n

What’s your seat number, soldier?<\/p>\n

It’s 23-B, sir, the soldier told the businessman.<\/p>\n

No, son, that’s my seat. Yours is in first class.<\/p>\n

As more soldiers boarded, similar offers quickly came from the other first-class passengers.<\/p>\n

And eight soldiers heading home from Iraq for two weeks of R&R found themselves with their officers in the big seats up front instead of the center seats in coach. <\/p>\n

That spontaneous act of good will transformed American Airlines Flight 866, from Atlanta to Chicago, on June 29.<\/p>\n

“The soldiers were very, very happy, and the whole aircraft had a different feeling,” said Lorrie Gammon, one of the Dallas-based flight attendants working the trip.<\/p>\n

“There were 14 seats in first class, and there were 12 soldiers there. The other two first-class passengers wanted to give up their seats, too, but they couldn’t find any more soldiers.”<\/p>\n

Flight attendant Candi Spradlin of Conway, Ark., said she was impressed with how passengers treated the soldiers.<\/p>\n

“If nothing else, those soldiers got a great homecoming,” she said.<\/p>\n

The soldiers were so surprised they barely knew what to do, said Ms. Gammon, who lives in Frisco.<\/p>\n

“They were so humble and thankful \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they spent the whole flight saying thank you,” she said.<\/p>\n

“But we should have been saying thank you to them for what they’re doing for us.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Almost sounds like an urban legend but, if true, this is very cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dallas Morning News is reporting a surprising display of respect for American soldiers. It all began with a chance encounter at an airport, a glance, an offer, a quiet chat. What’s your seat number, soldier? It’s 23-B, sir, the soldier told the businessman. No, son, that’s my seat. Yours is in first class. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-military","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}