A prisoner designated “the worst of the worst” is rudely awakened at 4 am and is
told that he’s being shipped out of the prison where he currently resides.
This man had no idea this was coming and he is to say at least a little bit annoyed.
He’s not going anywhere close by, either, so that means he’ll be taking a trip on
America’s most notorious airline, “Con-Air”.
This prisoner won’t be the only one taking the trip.
In fact, he’s going to be flying with some of the country’s most dangerous criminals.
We are talking about murderous gangsters, prolific drug dealers, killers, criminal psychopaths,
extortionists and kidnappers.
Unfortunately, Nicholas Cage won’t be taking the flight, and so you might wonder how authorities
manage to control a plane full of such dangerous men.
Keep watching and all will be explained.
We’ll start with some of the formal details and later get around to what could possibly
go wrong when you are transporting a bunch of violent and sometimes ingenious criminals.
First of all, it’s not actually called Con-Air.
The real name is the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System, aka J-PATS.
We probably shouldn’t have to tell you this, but the word alien in this sense does not
mean a large-headed green guy from another galaxy, it’s just someone who is illegally
living in the USA.
Those people also sometimes get to fly on Con-Air.
It’s a busy airline, too, with three planes moving something like 260,000 criminals and
aliens each year.
You might wonder why they need to be moved, and there are many reasons.
Some people might be flying back to the country where they come from because they were staying
in the U.S. illegally, while others are getting extradited if they are wanted men or women
in another country.
On other occasions, such as the made-up guy we talked about in the intro, a prisoner might
just have a court date in a far-off city or he might be being moved to a different prison.
Quite a few of the prisoners have just caused too much trouble in one prison and so they
have to be flown someplace else.
These guys are obviously the passengers that pose the biggest threat.
Con-Air is actually fairly new, but that doesn’t mean criminals didn’t fly in the past, it
just means that in 1995 the Marshals Service air fleet linked up with the Immigration and
Naturalization Service and said let’s make one multi-purpose airline for wrongdoers.
Right now they have three Boeing 737s, a smaller Saab 2000 turboprop and some corporate sized
jets.
J-PATS has its base in Kansas City, Missouri, and it’s there where prisoners are allocated
a plane after a judge, a defense attorney or a magistrate has said someone needs to
be moved.
The director at the headquarters said to think of his office as a kind of travel agency,
only they aren’t sending people on vacation, but to another prison or another country.
We hate to tell you this, but the planes don’t look like the one in the ridiculous but amusing
movie “Con-Air”.
Yep, there are no cages for the most dangerous criminals on the real Con-Air.
In fact, the planes don’t look different from the passengers planes most of you have
traveled on.
They are just run of the mill jets.
What the movie gets right is the fact that some of the USA’s most dangerous people
have flown on those planes.
If someone is deemed really special, such a drug lord like the notorious Joaquín “El
Chapo” Guzmán, they will take one of the smaller planes.
That’s not to say we exaggerated at the start, in that sometimes Con-Air will indeed
be occupied by some very dangerous people.
That’s why the inmates that are moved are given no warning about the operation.
As we described in the intro, guards will come to their cell when most of the other
inmates are sleeping and just whisk the person away.
There is no chance to say goodbye to other inmates or for friends to wish them a safe
flight.
The public doesn’t get to know, either, and that’s because the authorities don’t
want the operation being sabotaged or for a disgruntled member of the public to attack
the prisoner.
You get the picture, it’s a very secret affair.
If the vehicle is just an ordinary passenger plane you’re probably thinking that it could
be a bit dangerous having a load of killers and other criminals in the air all at once.
You might also be surprised to hear that the seats are just regular plane seats and the
prisoners are not placed in them behind some kind of safety contraception that you might
find on an amusement park ride.
The only thing they can’t do is unbuckle their seat belt when the sign comes on to
say it’s safe to do so.
The reason the prisoners aren’t locked into the seat is because they’ll be wearing handcuffs,
ankle chains and waist chains.
But what if one or more of the prisoners are deemed extremely dangerous, or very clever
when it comes to escape.
Ok, let’s imagine the fictional cannibal, Hannibal Lector, had to take a trip on Con-Air.
Well, in this case he’d probably have to don a pair of mittens that would ensure his
hands couldn't be moved at all.
On top of that, the handcuff keyholes would be covered, and because the man is good with
his teeth, he’d also have to wear a mask.
Houdini wouldn’t be able to get out of that, and besides, there are armed marshals on the
plane, too.
Another matter is the seating arrangement.
Some of you will know that it can be a nightmare when the person next to you is a snorer or
keeps falling asleep on your shoulder.
On Con-Air the worst kind of nightmare is when you have two people next to each other
that are mortal enemies.
That’s why the authorities make sure that two rival gang members won’t be sitting
in seats 22 A and 22 B.
If that were the case, there’d likely be a lot of head-butting going on, or at least
some rather colorful language being spat at each other.
One prisoner who’d actually flown on Con-Air said the Bureau of Prisons takes into account
at the airport who the gangbangers are, people he said were on the “frequent flyer program.”
He said the most dangerous people will be placed far from the women, but since he wasn’t
dangerous he got to sit just in front of them – something he enjoyed since he’d been
deprived of seeing women close up for some years.
It might not come as a surprise to you that some criminals come from poor backgrounds
and have never flown before.
This is what a prisoner said about a guy who’d never flown.
The two were sat next to each other.
“Next to me, a young black kid looked like he was going to pass out the instant the plane
surged forward for takeoff.
He'd never flown before and had no idea what to expect.
His fingernails were dug into the plastic of the seat for the entire trip.”
The other guy said he didn’t mind the trip at all, and even in handcuffs and other restraints
he said he felt pretty comfortable, as comfortable as he’d ever felt traveling in coach.
Jokingly, he said that was quite an indictment on the airline industry.
That same prisoner said the funniest incident was when the plane stopped to pick up one
prisoner who boarded wearing prison black and white stripes.
Most of the other prisoners were wearing the orange uniform, which he said made this guy
look like a zebra among lions.
Well, there are a lot of marshals on board, too, so there’s a mix of colors.
The rule is, for every 200 passengers there must be 12 marshals, and all those marshals
have to know something about emergency procedures just as flight attendants do.
So, what’s it like, a trip on Con-Air?
Well, one man who once made the trip said it was the “worst plane ride I had ever
experienced.
It was worse than I could have imagined.”
He said he had no idea where he was going and all the time he was surrounded by marshals
with shotguns.
He was told where to sit, with the males sitting at the back and in the middle, and the female
prisoners getting the front seats – statistically the most dangerous place to be in a crash.
That’s some Infographics info, not what the guy said.
He said before getting on the plane he was patted down, which wasn’t so bad, but when
he needed a pee he had to do it in front of one of the marshals.
The guy said one of the worst things was all the waiting around, because the plane made
a few stops and paperwork had to be done at each stop.
He eventually got off at the third stop which was Oklahoma.
Another nugget of information for you is the fact that Oklahoma has the highest incarceration
rate per capita than anywhere on planet Earth.
Ok, back to the man’s story…well, that’s it really, he just said it was a long and
exhausting trip and peeing and pooping was a rather humiliating experience, far from
what one might expect when travelling first class.
We mention first class because what might surprise is flying Con-Air is really, really
expensive.
You’d think for the cost of the flight the prisoners would get served caviar and Dom
Pérignon champagne.
We found that in 2017, 849 inmates were flown from Hawaii to Arizona, but on separate trips.
The cost in total was $1.3 million dollars, which works out at about $1,540 per flight
per person.
That’s certainly a first class price, because if you were to book that trip in economy class
today you’d get it for about $200.
The reason for the added cost of course is all the security.
On this particular trip the inmates at least got a meal, but that can’t have been easy
to eat wearing handcuffs.
There are no movies on the flight and the tickets of course are always one way, with
the destination being: Federal Prison.
The most expensive Con-Air flight we could find was in the state of Washington, which
when returning two probation violators to Florida in 2014 paid a whopping $34,000.
They used a small state-owned plane called “King Air”, which the governor usually
travels on.
But in some cases it carries very dangerous men or mentally ill inmates.
We found another case when one of America’s notorious criminals was taken to prison by
private jet.
His name is Gary Ridgway, aka, the Green River Killer, and his trip from Colorado to Washington
cost $10,761.
You might now be thinking, well, if you’re American at least, why are my taxes going
towards these very expensive flights.
Why not just put those guys on a secured Greyhound bus like the rest of us who can’t afford
expensive flights.
The reason is security…it’s safer to get the prisoners to their destination as fast
as possible, and let’s face it, there aren’t many places to run if you manage to break
out of a moving plane at 35,000 feet.
. You’ve also got to take into account that
driving from one distant state to another means lots of meals and lodging, besides the
security risks.
So the costs also add up when travelling that way.
Another matter is moving prisoners long distances on the road has caused numerous deaths and
injuries.
In 2012, a man named Michael Dykes spent three days shackled in an Inmate Services Corporation
van.
He was already quite sick with diabetes.
He complained that his shackles were making his condition worse and also complained that
his insulin needed to be kept cold, not hot.
The stuff was actually kept on the dashboard of the van.
Because of what happened to him, both his legs had to be amputated.
So, maybe Con-Air really is a better way to move around from prison to prison.
Some marshals even said the prisoners love the view from the air, given that four walls
is what they regularly get to see.
We’d like to give you a Con-Air-the-movie story, but it seems the inmates are so restrained
mayhem just doesn’t happen.This is what an LA Times report said about the criminal
passengers: “The inmates are docile.
Some nap.
Some stare out the windows at the open spaces below.”
The only Hollywood moment we could find happened in the 1980s when three prison gang leaders
were being transported on a plane whose engines burst into flames above Nebraska.
The pilots managed to land the plane and the inmates were sent straight to the local jail.
That was prior to J-PATS, though.
We can find no instances of J-PATS planes crashing like in the movie, but we know that
if a commercial aircraft carrying a handcuffed prisoner was in trouble then if the situation
was bad enough we guess the marshal would have to remove the prisoners’ cuffs.
We had to go through a 118-page document to find the only major J-PATS incident, and that
happened in 2003 when a plane’s tire burst on landing.
It didn't say if the men were removed from their restraints, and only says they were
evacuated from the plane.
In the year the report was written, there were 11 “incidents” with passengers in
mid-air.
We guess the incidents in these cases meant air-rage.
That same year there were 23 medical issues of prisoners, but nowhere in the document
could we find what the protocol would be if something serious happened and restraints
might have to be removed.
. The document also says, “SENSITIVE INFORMATION
REDACTED” a lot so, we can’t really tell you if the mayhem of the movie Con-Air could
happen in real life.
We’ll hazard a guess and say that if a plane went down and prisoners died after not being
helped out of their restraints, the authorities would have a lot to answer for.
Most countries have their version of a Con-Air and they are not all alike.
It was reported in the UK in 2012 that the cost of sending Polish criminals and fugitives
back to Poland from the UK cost about $65 million a year, but that included holding
the criminals first and then processing them.
One flight didn’t look anywhere near as comfortable as the U.S’s Con-Air.
The criminals were just handcuffed, but it should be said that most of the people were
accused of only minor crimes.
There was also one cop for every passenger.
It seems U.S.Con-Air is certainly hardcore, but at least it’s comfortable.
We’ll stick with the skies for our next topic and this mind blowing story, “How
1 In A Billion Chance Brought Down A Whole Airplane.”
Or if that’s not to your liking, have a look at this video.
Whichever you pick, click now!