Originally Posted by
CanOnlyTakeSoMuch
You wouldn't know half of the abuse FAs go through on a daily basis. But FAs have power because it protects the airline and all rules FAs enforce are not their personal rules the FAA enforces it... And even fines the FA if she doesn't and you get your certificate that they worked trained and studied extremely hard for pulled from them aka you are fired and it can happen on the spot. Most of the time FAs are reasonable with passengers first and make deals and Then it's the passenger that brings things out of hands and raises voices. That's the case 99% of the time.
Okay. They have a hard job. Real hard. Like, customer service hard. Like, complaint desk hard.
But that doesn't mean they are automatically right, 100% of the time, completely beyond question, and totally omnicient.
Nor does having a hard job excuse poor job performance, abuse of power, or breakage of FAA regs or airline policy.
And don't try to lay blame on the captain; just because he's the final authority doesn't mean it's all his fault if the FA lied or misrepresented the facts to him. The captain places a lot of trust in the FAs, and if an FA tells him that something is serious enough to divert, somehow I doubt that he's going to hold a formal inquest to determine all relevant facts before coming to an informed decision; he's going to take the FAs at their word and divert.
However, I won't assume that either party was at fault here. Could have been the passengers' fault, could have been the FA's fault. I'll wait till there is more information before I form an actual opinion.
I will say this - the story sounds fishy based on the skimpy info so far provided. Either these guys were causing a genuine disruption which hasn't been reported, or the FAs went way overboard for innocuous behavior that is not disruptive or suspicious.
They could have been loudmouth drunks, disrupting other passengers or hitting on the FAs - but nothing like that was mentioned in any of the stories. The stories mentioned "suspicious" behavior with luggage.
The FBI took all three into custody, determined that they had broken no laws, and released them - how truly suspicious could their behavior have been if they weren't actually doing anything illegal?
NEED... MORE... DATA!!!