Stunning.
So my story is from the maybe, mid to late 1980s?
My folks used to go to Yuma, AZ for the winter months...it's pretty close to the border.
I was going out of Phoenix to Yuma on Skywest Airlines, on a standby travel "pass" (ya, free). The aircraft at the time was a Swearingen Metroliner and seated about 19 passengers. So, the flight is "wide open"...if I remember well over half of the seats were available. Myself and another person on a pass, started talking and were happy that we would get on.
No less than 15 minutes before departure (agent was just ready to board...it would have taken 5 minutes for the 7 or 8 of us to walk to the plane), Immigration shows up with, yup, at least 10 or 11 guys that were caught up in a sweep in Phoenix. They were there to fly them to Yuma and then drive them to the border and tell them to go back to Mexico. Needless to say, the other person and I were SWEATING about getting on...yes, we got the 2 last seats.
I've never forgotten that. I asked many a person about this and found that it was a daily thing and many times (at the time), on multiple flights per day.
The biggest laugh, some folks told me that those guys would be back in Phoenix by the next morning.
The p.s.....
So this aircraft had two pilots only and just a curtain over the cockpit opening...one of the pilots would read a quicky safety "demo" for the plane. The other pass rider and I were sitting in the back row (3 seats across the back bulkhead I believe) and during taxi out (and let me tell you the plane was LOUD! It was really hard to hear anyone!), one of the guys being shipped out was sitting at a window exit. The exit simply had a metal handle, exposed, that you would pull to open. So the guy is hanging on to the handle with both hands and we can see the handle pulling in slightly, slightly, slighty...we knew that we had to act fast, so we started hitting people in front of us on the shoulder, pointing, and doing the slash-across-the-throat and pointing. It was like the wave as each row did the same until it got to the guy behind the exit row...he semi stood up, took the guys hands off the handle, with his fist, banged the handle back into place...and we took off. The pilots never even knew. It's one of those Tales to Tell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bearskin_Metroliner_Winnipeg.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Metroliner_interior.JPG
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