“The police say that drunken unruliness by two executives of the BlackBerry maker Research in Motion forced the diversion and delay of a Toronto-to-Beijing flight on Monday,” Ian Austen and Susanne Craig report for The New York Times. “The two pleaded guilty to a criminal count of mischief and were suspended from their positions pending an investigation.”
“The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said that they were informed by Air Canada that the plane was turning around and heading to Vancouver, British Columbia, to drop off the two disruptive passengers about seven hours after the flight left Toronto,” Austen and Craig report. “Cpl. Sherrdean Turley, a spokeswoman for the police, said in an e-mail that although the two men were not brawling ‘they were intoxicated and weren’t listening to anything they were told to do/asked to do by the airline crew.'”
Austen and Craig report, “George Campbell, 45, and Paul A. Wilson, 38, both pleaded guilty in court to one count of mischief under Canadian criminal law. They were given suspended sentences and were each required to pay 35,878 Canadian dollars ($35,382) to Air Canada. They have been placed on probation for a year and may not travel on Air Canada or have contact with any of its employees.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: After being steamrolled by Apple like a deer in the headlights and confronted with the imminent end of Amateur Hour, it’s not surprising that some RIM employees are driven to drink. Use up those expense accounts while they last, boys!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Chas” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Beleaguered RIM misses its revenue forecast; takes $360 million bath to clear unsold PlayBooks; shares plummet – December 2, 2011
Apple ousts beleaguered RIM’s BlackBerry as top business smartphone – November 16, 2011
Beleaguered Sony shares sink on massive loss forecast – November 2, 2011
Beleaguered RIM’s U.S. sales cut in half last quarter as consumers abandoned BlackBerry for Apple iPhone – September 20, 2011
Apple’s iPhone 4 absolutely slaughtered beleaguered RIM’s Blackberry – September 16, 2011
Beleaguered RIM hemorrhaging market share faster than some analysts expected – September 16, 2011
Ill drink to THAT!
Tomorrow’s headline: Two more RIM execs are pushed out the door (at least the aircraft had landed by that time . . . .)
What does this have to do with “Mac News”?
If you read the NYT article, it mentions “all smartphones” in the last paragraph, thereby bringing all iPhones within its ambit . . . .
Schadenfreude. We revel in it on this site.
Uhm, it’s a chance to say, “Happy Hour is over”, a takeoff on Blackberry’s “Amateur Hour is over” ad gibe when the PlayBook launched.
Always in two come the RIM executives, the master and the apprentice?
Is that true, master?
No, just kidding, always two quarter-wits that together make a half-wit.
Two employees? Were they the CEOs?
Did you read the article?
Do you not understand sarcasm?
We revel in it on this site.
The pansy-ass employees of the worlds WORST airline, Air Canada, simply couldn’t handle a couple of drunk guys.
“They wouldn’t listen when I asked them what they wanted for dinner” Entitled, aging Air Canada employees – did these guys actually DO anything apart from drink the free drinks in Biz Class? The world has gone crazy.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard “couldn’t handle a couple of drunk guys”….
What do you know Derek from Milan?
The entire air crew all have iPhones and weren’t the least bit sympathetic towards these two rim jobs. They made a pit stop in Vancouver for pizza and shat out two turds.
Go Air Canada!
Air Canada cabin crew are comprised of gay stewards who are perpetually on the rag and very old stewardesses with a disposition just slightly worse than Nurse Rachette.
Here’s all you need to know. A gay steward, not that there’s anything wrong with that, on the Canada to somewhere in Africa run, brought the first case of AIDS to North America and manage to share it with many people before he died.
Wow – hate much?
The gist is true; the attitude isn’t warranted.
Half true. See the link in N8nNC’s post below.
Poor Derek, sounds like he is still bitter from when those Air Canada employees spurned his advances. So, if the two RIMjobbers didn’t do anything, why’d they plead guilty and agree to a $35,000 fine? Airplane Assholes are the worst of all possible assholes, because the rest of us have no escape, and, unfortunately, no access to the weapons they deserve to have used on them.
I guess RIM was wrong… Amateur hour isn’t over… its just beginning.
And then their phone batteries exploded.
Beyond RIM’s woes, seems Air Canada is also responsible here given they are the source of the free-flowing alcohol.
Maybe it was the airport lounge.
But I don’t feel that AC has the right to fine them and I would refuse to pay. It was AC who decided to turn the flight around because of a couple of stubborn drunks.
“Amateur hour is over” was a jibe at Apple? Oh, I thought it was meant as a descriptor for the Playbook development process.
Surely there is another word in the dictionary besides ‘beleaguered’. Seems this word has been used to describe RIM for many months on these posts.
Lets focus on the Apple side of technology rather than the continual ‘beleaguered’ RIM.
If you were an Apple fan in the 1990s, when the word “beleaguered” was seemingly spot-welded to any mention of Apple in the tech press, you would understand how satisfying it is to see this word being accurately and persistently applied to Apple’s competitors.
Couldn’t be said any better. : )
You prob’ly oughta go back to wearing makeup. You look like one of those gay stewards that “althegeo” was talking about.
And you look like a chalk outline.
Too easy.
I have to admit, you killed me with that comment. Ouch!
The similarity of their misbehavior suggests that they are co-managers of some co-departments within some co-divisions whose co-directors report to co-coo’s who are direct reports to the co-ceo’s, also known as co-tards.
Untrue.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misconceptions_about_HIV_and_AIDS#HIV_was_introduced_to_North_America_by_a_Canadian_flight_attendant