I am not a fan of flight attendants on power trips, though I do also try to understand the concept that we often don’t hear the complete story when a passenger takes to social media with their version. After all, it’s only human nature for passengers to want to paint themselves in the best light possible and downplay anything that they might have done before the cameras started rolling.
I read a report over in USA Today about 5 passengers (including a child) kicked off of a Delta plane leaving from Fort Wayne Indiana. The source comes from one of the affected passenger’s Instagram account
I question whether this was truly “racism” as the passenger alleges, but I do believe that there are certainly cases where white people can get away with things that people of color can not (though it’s unclear whether this is one such case)
“Safety issues”
I understand that flight attendants have extremely broad power to remove passengers from flights for safety issues, and I support them in that – we all want our flights to be safe.
I just feel like we as a society need to start addressing the fact that most of these stories do not qualify as “safety” issues. At least in what I saw, there was no safety issue whatsoever. Unless you’re trying to say that a phone not put in airplane mode is going to crash the plane, in which case we probably would have had millions of planes crash by now 🙂
I mean at the end of the Instagram video, you can hear the flight attendant telling the second passenger (seated behind the original passenger) that “everyone with an attitude is getting off” after he calmly gives his side of the story. I feel like “attitude” would have to be ATTITUDE (!) before it would be a safety issue
What do you think? Should Delta have removed these 5 passengers? Leave your notes in the comments
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In my opinion your words: “Unless you’re trying to say that a phone not put in airplane mode is going to crash the plane” are poorly chosen.
I think the larger safety issue is non-compliance. How would that passenger react if there was a safety issue? Could you be sure they could comply with a more complex request, or are they going to ignore the request of the cabin crew.
I am sure multiple PAs were made about cellphones and airplane mode, but this passenger seemingly refused to comply … and on this day, its back to the gate for her.
I think you didn’t watch the videos, go watch them
I think some of these flights attendants have had long days and difficult passengers and are at a point where they will not take it any longer, even if it is something like the above video. If the FA are at a breaking point and about to lose it, they need to step aside. Coming clean, I was thrown off a plane (and I had just stepped inside) by a Delta FA because of a comment I made while in the concourse. Luckily for me the pilot overheard the conversation, came out to the gate to apologize and ask me to re-board and to make a complaint about the FA. We need to get some common sense back into our lives and some civility. There was no need to remove these passengers.
I’d love to hear that story!
Flight attendants have bad days, just like everyone else. The thing is though a flight attendant really is in the customer service role. Yes, they are there for safety but they deal with the customers directly, and for extended periods of time. Someone who works in that type of role needs to know how to handle the public/customers and needs to know that even when they are having a bad day, just pause, take a step back and diffuse. Don’t get all uppity and start tossing passengers. In this case, it’s probably a bit of both sides being “wrong” but lets be real, if the story this person is giving is even 75% true, the FA overreacted and needs “additional training”.
Like Dan, I usually I wonder what happened before the camera started rolling. The flight attendant’s attitude, however, makes me confident in my opinion that she was on a power trip. I’m convinced of this because of how she addressed the gentleman behind the woman who calmly stated the passenger was complying and he was right behind her and heard/saw everything. The flight attendant immediately threatens to throw him off because she doesn’t need “attitude.” Also, that face. Holy moly, she has the nastiest expression on her face and all that was happening was someone disagreed with her version of events.
Yeah the 2nd picture on the Instagram feed with the flight attendant’s face is epic
Remove the adults if she “must” but to make the child get off… That is a power trip, attitude and just pain mean. Talk about abuse of power. How was the child a safety issue? If you are having a bad day at work and we all have them we have to remember the people we are serving/helping/working with. She should have just walked away but it appears she wanted to take her anger out any and everyone including the child. Not sure if race played a rule since I don’t see everyone who is removed but if they were all black and brown defending the original passenger I think she felt “threatened/ganged up on” and didn’t want to deal with it for the flight. That’s where the abuse of power really is too much.
I assume the child was traveling with one of the adults and couldn’t be left on when the adult was removed
1. The pax indicates in her tweet the plane was no longer at the gate.
2. How would a flight attendant know a phone was not in airplane mode? Only one way – the pax was talking on the phone.
3. If we ever hear the true story it will be probably be that the pax was talking on the phone after the plane left the gate. The flight attendant made an another announcement reminding everyone to switch to airplane mode. The pax continued to talk and the flight attendant approached her.
I think a better approach would have been to have the pilot stop the plane. Come over the speaker and give a safety talk and say apparently the person in 15C, or whatever the seat, believes she is smarter than the engineers that design the plane and does not believe in the safety rules. Shame does a good thing.
Why does every possible thing that doesn’t go quite like we’d prefer have to end up on social media and become a big issue? Life isn’t perfect. People make mistakes or do things they shouldn’t. If they aren’t that big of a deal, why the need for detraction?
It reminds me of a number of instances lately where people of color are suspect in ways white people never would be. I didn’t watch the video. But if a person of color is a little bit sassy, many white people feel “unsafe”. Get over it! You are in the customer service business
Yes Judy – that was my thought too. I think (in my totally made up world that has no basis in the facts because who knows what REALLY happened), it was less likely to be overt racism in that the flight attendant thinks “man I hate black people” but more just a matter of “white people can get away with things that POC can not”. For instance, as a white man, even if I am dressed super casually, I feel like I can just wander around wherever I want, doing whatever I want, as long as I act like I belong there. Whereas I would imagine that someone who was not a white man would be much more likely to be questioned (or have the cops called on them)