- Bebop robot tried to get on a Southwest flight
- He had a seat and a ticket, but ran into the airline’s baggage rules.
- The flight finally took off, but arrived an hour later than planned.
Bored with menacing jobs, art, and marathon records, robots have turned their attention to the most quintessentially human pastime of all: being a hellish nuisance on public transportation.
The culprit is Bebop; The 70-pound humanoid robot was hoping to catch a Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland to San Diego, but despite having its own seat and ticket like a human passenger, its presence ended up causing an hour-long delay.
The first problem was Bebop’s aisle seat. While he had a ticket, Bebop was essentially his travel companion’s carry-on, and the fact that Bebop was so close to the aisle went against Southwest’s large carry-on policy.
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Things snowballed from here. Flight attendants had many questions for Bebop after his initial policy violation, questions they needed answers to before the plane could take off safely. This is what caused the delay, plus Bebop was moved to a window seat and had its large lithium-ion battery removed to comply with weight limits and battery regulations, similar to the reasons Bebop flew in the cockpit and not in the plane’s hold.
An unexpected travel delay
Bebop is operated by Elite Event Robotics and was traveling with employee Eily Ben-Abraham, who told People, “Our robots are designed to create engaging and memorable event experiences,” adding, “moments like this highlight both the newness of the technology and the evolving logistics that come with bringing these experiences across the country.”
I imagine that Bebop has certainly created a memorable experience for its fellow travelers, although if I were among them, it’s not an experience I would want to repeat.
Seeing the news, some, perhaps understandably, responded negatively to the press Bebop has generated, saying things like, “This is a viral marketing stunt” and “Fuck this passenger for not calling them and notifying them first and just forcing Southwest to deal with it on the spot.”
However, while generating rumors around a flying robot was likely an intended side effect of Bebop’s adventure (he was seen taking selfies with people before boarding), causing a delay does not appear to have been part of the plan, as Ben-Abraham said he had no problem escorting the robot into a plane cabin from Texas to California.
After Bebop’s misadventure, I hope we see other robots try to take a similar journey and repeat their viral fame, although I hope that’s not the case. Airline tickets are expensive and tight enough without passenger robots filling the seats.
They should stick to the other methods of transportation and let the big transportation delays be caused by red-blooded humans who want to ruin people’s travel experience the old-fashioned way, with a mix of entitlement and love of the game.
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