cmd320

Absolutely agree. It sounds like a case of a snarky FA approaching the situation with the company AAttitude and getting called on it. Of course slurs aren't acceptable but by no means should that get one removed from the flight. In that situation the FA needs to be the bigger person, smooth things out, and move along.

lobo411

They absolutely should, and I suspect where one comes down on this issue comes down to whose ox is being gored.

lobo411

What was the content of this snarky comment? And what transpired in the 3-5 mins that preceded it? Ask your friend. I bet he's an honest guy who will honestly say "I don't know."

Dave Noble

I am treating them equally as hearsay

There is no video of the relevent event


Have no sympathy for any attacks of that nature - would not expect that to be accepted in any workplace - with the aeroplane still at the gate and door open, no reason not to eject .

As it stands , there are not enough facts for me to have a view on whether the FA was in the right or unreasonable

lobo411

<redacted>

The mob's reaction is no proof of right or wrong.

cmd320

There needs to be a line somewhere. Flight attendants belong to the customer service industry. In such a role, the employee is expected to get beaten up a bit (figuratively of course) from time to time by the customer, and is expected to handle the situation as professionally and politely as possible. Ask any bartender, waitress, cashier, etc. and they will tell you plenty of stories of having to handle rude, ignorant, and abusive customers with dignity and grace and without making a scene. The same holds true for flight attendants. Unless the customer was a clear danger to the safety of the flight, they should not have been deplaned.

Clearly you seem to be very knowledgeable on what did happen so perhaps you could enlighten us? Or are you being equally speculative..?

judolphin

When would a plane full of passengers ever side with a pain in the arse/disruptive pax over a calm FA just doing his job?

You, as a frequent flyer, know damn well the answer to that question is "never".

elitetraveler

<redacted>

You, as a frequent flyer, know damn well the answer to that question is "never".[/QUOTE]

Having worked in restaurants serving, you need to have a thick skin and mitigate not escalate. Having dated a FA and known others, they are on the front lines of rudeness and poor behavior.

My take is there are always wait staff and FAs who are looking for the opportunity to be irritated and they have no problem finding people who they can brand as instigators. The good ones know when to smile and walk away or turn a negative encounter into a detente. In my restaurant experience it was 98.9% of the time the same servers who ended up in customer conflicts.

judolphin

When people make assumptions despite the paucity of objective facts.[/QUOTE]

The pax was not sufficiently disruptive for the EYEWITNESSES to side with the FA, but was disruptive enough to be ejected? Not a chance. That is damning for the FA.

lobo411

It's safe to assume that something happened before the pax dropped whatever words she dropped on the FA. People generally don' go around insulting random people without some triggering event. We don't know what that triggering event was. We'll probably never know.

I was not there. And if I had been there, I probably wouldn't have been paying close enough attention to the entire encounter to know the whole story. And if I was paying close enough attention, I probably wouldn't have been in a physical position where I would be privy to the entire encounter.

I know enough about this encounter to say that I don't know what really happened. Just because others are in a rush to lynch people doesn't make it logical.

FWAAA

It's unfortunate that the videographer didn't record the entire encounter, as I can't really tell what happened.

Basically, what we do know is that the passenger was ejected, the crowd appeared to side with the passenger and then the passenger was rebooked on the next flight. Typically, there's some bad behaviour by both the passenger and the flight attendant.

elitetraveler

- Rebooking the pax on the next flight is an indicator that AA couldn't determine bad behavior by the pax

- As I mentioned upstream, good service professionals recognize they are likely to encounter "bad behavior" ongoing and know how to diffuse it or let it run by without escalating a situation.

judolphin

One more thing... this flight was to PDX -- Portland, OR.

The most compelling defense of the FA I've heard involved the assumption that at least some people from Portland, OR were siding with a homophobe.

The mental gymnastics I'm seeing here are impressive.

I'm not one to call for or participate in a lynch mob. I don't want to know the FA's name and I don't want it released.

This was clearly a case of the FA abusing his power. The circumstantial evidence is simply too strong.

Dave Noble

You mean all of the zero evidence of the actual encounter

Maybe the FA was in the right, maybe the FA was in the wrong

Lynch mobbing is not the appropriate procedure to determine it

Circumstantial evidence requires that the fact offered requires that is the only reasonable inferrence of what it is claiming

That some people booed, does not prove anything other than that some people booed and it cannot , I posit, be determined what the only possible event could be to lead to it

elitetraveler

Whatever happened, AA booked the lady on the next flight.