Originally Posted by
BlueMilk
You raise a couple of interesting points about crew training. Allow me to break it down a bit.
Most of this incident revolves around the interaction between mom and the crew. Mom is not disabled; she is a merely a difficult person. Properly trained FAs should be able to prevent, stabilize or resolve issues with difficult people. It is something right in their wheelhouse.
If this is not included in their training, it is very reasonable to do so. If it is included in their training, then the training failed here.
As for training on disabilities, deep knowledge of all sorts of disabilities is not required. But airlines do make accomodations for disabilities, whether by law or benevolence. It is reasonable to expect FAs to be trained in how disabilities are to be accomodated, and how they can support the caregivers.
In this case the accomodation requested (rudely or not) was to sell a leftover business class meal. If the request was reasonable, then the accomodation should have been made without fuss.
At law, the definition of reasonable becomes important. Differing duties are placed on public entities and private corporations. IMHO it's tragic if a judge needs to decide this case.
On a humanitarian level, the request wouldn't have put anyone out and would have prevented any escalation of tensions.
Here too, I'll fail UA for their training.
This is, at least, a more reasonable perspective. UA fails at customer service regularly, and it's scores show that. I have no doubt that the FA could have been more polite or sought to better understand the request.
The next question is whether better customer service would have solved the situation. I'm not sure we can answer that, but I will agree it wouldn't have made it worse.
I do think the FA tried at least a little to ease the situation, as a F meal was brought to the child. It's reasonable for the FA's first response to be that F meals weren't available. The next reaction by the mother was to make a threat. If the mother had calmly explained the situation at that point, perhaps the FA may have agreed and the incident would be over.
IMO, the mother escalated the situation, not the FA. Better customer service may have prevented the situation, but it may not have. The mother turned it into a safety issue. As soon as that happened, the FA was obligated to inform the captain. The captain deemed it a safety issue as well, which is a reasonable reason to divert and deplane a passenger.
It's certainly an unfortunate situation, and it probably could have been avoided, but the mother instigated it. If you look at just the facts, UA did nothing wrong. It doesn't mean any of us feel any better about it happening, but poor customer service is not a reason to file a lawsuit.
I just don't believe this is a training issue. Despite all the customer service training in the world, when a human being is faced with a stressful situation (howling child that had already scratched her father, demanding mother, and a threat that the child might attack other passengers), they sometimes just react.