A recent study confirms what the airlines and the flying public has long suspected. More than 70 percent of sombreros brought aboard aircraft are left behind by people pretending to forget them.
“The explanation is simple,” says Bob Payne, spokesman for the National Association of Airlines Against the Abusive Use of Overhead Bin Space. “Owning a souvenir sombrero, especially if its purchase in some way involved margaritas, always seems like a much better idea when you are actually in Mexico than it does on the flight home.”
The result, says Payne, is not only that aircraft cleaning crews are having to spend considerable time removing the hats but the storage problem created for airline lost and found departments is reaching crisis proportions.
“They haven’t seen anything like it since 2008 when they were inundated with Obama bobble head dolls,” Payne said.
One possible solution to the sombrero crisis, Payne said, would be to have TSA agents wear the cast-off headgear, thus making airport security screening a more welcoming, festive experience, especially if it were possible to get drug-sniffing dogs involved in wearing the hats, too.
Another solution, more popular with the airlines, would be to charge a fee of $25 for the first sombrero brought onboard, and $350 for the second. “The beauty of the latter plan,” Payne said, “Is that it would sober up most of the offending passengers long before they got to their seats.”
Bob Payne is the editor in chief and occasionally fact checker for BobCarriesOn.com.
