Ok, this response is on my own personal feelings on this subject and don't at all reflect how Jetblue will or would handle the situation nor does it condone or refute the actions of the crewmembers or customers involved. It's just my own personal feelings on this and nothing more...that being said...
With bag fees being the new norm in the industry we, flight attendants, have seen a huge surge in the amount of items that customers are bringing onboard along with a lack of consideration once onboard the aircraft between customers. Basically what I am saying is that customers have taken to not listening to our boarding announcement. Now I'm not saying everybody, 99% of our customers are wonderful and take notice of our announcements and help us out. Winter is an extremely difficult time for us in the cabin. People are packing more and on top of that we see a surge in jackets, for obvious reasons. Our announcements instruct our customers to place their small bags on the floor and save the overheads for customers with rollerbags and hold on to the jackets. I like to take it a step further and allow customers to put jackets in the overhead as long as they can go on top on bags already in the bins. I know people hate holding on to them so I try to help out. Now, I'm usually in the back of the plane watching the entire boarding process go down so I get to see everything. I'll make that announcement then watch customers put a tiny backpack in the overhead along with a roller and lay their coat out taking up an entire bin for themselves. I say my announcement about bags and jackets several times mind you and a vast majority just didn't hear me the first time and happily take down their small bag or jacket the second or third time I say my speech. I'll usually make note of those that do and try to find space for them once I get everybody onboard since they are trying to help. 9 times out of 10 I can get 100 customers, I only fly the 190, and all of their carry-ons inside the cabin without having to gate check a single bag, I was a whiz at Tetris growing up and found a way to fit a square peg in a round hole. Plus flying it for almost 7 straight years I know what I can get and how to rotate all the items in the bins to maximize their contents all while still getting the bin to close. Now if I'm in the front and I don't have a strong advocate on the PA reminding people what to stow where and what to do with jackets those bins will fill in record time and we start swimming in carry-ons that need to be check. This slows us down and can delay us as we have to start denying rollers and other large bags as people come on and wait for an agent to bring gate check tags. It can get overwhelming at times, especially if people start to give us hassle about checking items.
Now I don't know the details of the OP's claims or the details from the crew. The Flight Attendant could have been having a bad day and adding all the gate checks to it just made things worse and how the OP responded to your wife was just the icing. I just don't know so I can't speak to that but here's my thoughts. If I'm having an extremely bad day I try my very hardest not to take it out on the customers. Chances are they are an innocent party in all of it so why punish you guys. However we are all human and sometimes out emotions get the better of us no matter how hard we try. If I was having a rough day and I was told by a customer I had a bad attitude, I doubt I would remove them but i'm pretty sure you wouldn't be in my good graces. I've had bad days before and customers have noticed it and the best thing tat they did for me was make a joke. It lightens the mood and drops the tension. I'll usually joke back and that will release some of the pressre and get me motivated again. However if somebody told me I had a bad attitude then refused to talk to me, I still don't think I would have them removed but I think they would be further down on my graces list. In 7 years at Jetblue I have only had 3 people removed. One guy was extremely intoxicated and falling over and the other 2 threatened personal violence against me. So as you can see it takes a lot to force me to remove somebody. I can usually handle any situation.
I'm not blaming the OP here either. It seems like a systematic failure by almost every party involved. Again i'm only speaking for myself but should the flight attendant and captain had the OP removed? I can't say as I wasn't there so to speak on that would be only my opinion. Should the OP have said what he said? Maybe, maybe not, again I wasn't there. The one thing that I can say is that a good attitude and a sense of humor and understanding can go a long way. Both crews and customers can live by this. Flying can be extremely difficult some times. Security, delays, missed flights, crews on short rest, crews having a rough day and a million other things that can go wrong can put us down the wrong path. I think we call can benefit from remembering that we all have bad days and try putting ourselves in the other person's shoes.
Ok that's my $.02 on the subject, feel free to flame away at me
