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!
