Maverick politician Bob Katter, 77, causes chaos at the airport by refusing to let flight attendants search his bag, prompting Qantas staff to CHASE HIM: “I can’t let him out of my sight.”
- The Queensland MP was boarding a flight from Canberra to Sydney on Thursday.
- The Qantas staff wanted him to put his carry-on bag in the hold of the small plane.
- Mr. Katter refused because of the documents inside and marched towards the plane.
Bob Katter caused chaos at an airline check-in counter when he refused to let his suitcase go into the plane’s hold.
The independent MP was boarding a Qantas flight at 5:10pm from Canberra to Sydney on Thursday on his way back from the week-long parliamentary session.
A flight attendant told him that due to the size of the small Dash plane, his bag needed to be tagged and handed over to the ground crew for storage in the hold.
Katter, 77, refused, and after a brief back and forth, walked through the doors onto the plane.
Bob Katter caused chaos at an airline check-in counter when he refused to let his suitcase go into the plane’s hold.
The flight attendant yelled at him to stop tagging his bag, then chased after him a short distance, before giving up.
Instead, he radioed his colleagues on the tarmac telling them his bag needed to be tagged and taken to the plane, before re-boarding other passengers.
“He does this every time,” she exclaimed after returning to the counter.
Katter managed to get her suitcase into the cabin and stowed it in an overhead bin, spending most of the 55-minute flight napping.
After arriving at Sydney airport, Katter explained why he refused to allow Qantas staff to store his bag.
The maverick politician admitted that he had never been good at doing what he was told, and still wasn’t.
“The lady at the counter demanded my bag, it felt like a power play,” she said.
“I said I have confidential documents in there and I can’t let them out of my sight, but I’m not the best listener these days.”
The maverick politician admitted that he had never been good at doing what he was told, and still wasn’t.
Mr Katter is the “Father of the House” as the longest-serving MP in the lower house, having been elected to Kennedy’s north Queensland seat in 1993.
Before that, he was a member of the Queensland parliament from 1974 to 1992.