I don’t know why she didn’t just stick it in sick bag, walk to galley or loo to dispose of and then wash hands thoroughly instead of starting a pxxxing contest with someone who could invoke an extreme response. While the reaction of FA might be OTT putting wet garbage of uncertain provenance on a food trolly seems off as well.

The cops already did most of the "two sides to the story" thing. They heard both sides, interviewed witnesses, and sent the lady on her way to board another plane. That is to say, she posed no safety threat, and didn't commit any criminal offences. Was she rude? Maybe. Maybe not. Is that a diversion/deplane/ban offence? Not on just about every other airline.

I don't think anyone should lose their job here. The FA did his/her job competently the day before. No reason to believe he/she won't be able to do it the day after. A good talking to should suffice.

That said, it does speak to a wider malaise in AC (North American?) corporate culture. How have we reached this state, where unacceptable cleanliness standards are the norm on certain airlines? Some seem to be under the impression that it's rude/impolite/aggressive to simply call out unacceptable service (failing to clean up wet garbage in a product one has paid for certainly qualifies), let alone persist with a complaint. Now service providers think it's ok to provide this type of service.

But that's only one aspect. What if this happened in J? How would the FA react? I suspect very differently. And that speaks directly to AC's corporate culture. They've spent so long convincing themselves that no standard is low enough when it comes to Y pax ( or "bottom feeders") that the entire company -top to bottom - now treats Y pax with poorly concealed contempt. They don't see Y pax as guests; merely a nuisance to be tolerated. A piece of wet garbage in J is probably unacceptable to them; in Y, it's a big "meh". I don't doubt that there's some AC employees who still understand customer service, but after years of corporate leadership denigrating Y pax, would it really surprise anyone if customer facing employees have imbibed the same attitude?

But it's not all AC. Part of the blame lies with the appeaser crowd here who'd bend over backwards to justify poor service if it meant avoiding the discomfort associated with calling a spade a spade. They rationalize poor behaviour (why didn't pax deal with it herself instead of complaining?) instead of challenging it, tacitly encouraging AC to continue as is. Truthbetold, if I was AC, and I had consumers who were too meek to complain/would make up excuses for poor service delivery on my behalf, I'd turn the screws on them too. Why not?

As an aside, what would WS do?

Ah, but am not saying AC keeps planes clean – usually filthy including the bathrooms and that’s disgusting. Including in J. Nor was I saying that in anyway throwing a senior citizen off a plane is acceptable in this case seemingly because she didn’t respond when they wanted her to.

What I WAS saying was in life you need pick your battles and battle grounds. She had asked and been turned down. She really needed to go and wash her hands anyway. Why not document and complain later once safely out of the hands of people who could throw her off a plane? . People with the power to inconvenience you sometimes do if you cross them.

Is that right? Absolutely not. Can you win the argument in those circumstances? Usually not.

Its not an AC thing. I wouldn’t personally pick a fight with immigration while in their hands however badly they behaved. Or security screening. Rather get on with life and make a formal written complaint when safely home.

Cowardly? Maybe. Pragmatic, certainly.

And my point is equally simple: the real problem here is that asking for acceptable service/pointing out shoddy service = picking a battle. I understand the pragmatism angle. The problem here is that the pragmatic approach is to suffer silently instead of asking a service provider to provide a service that has been paid for, and complain after. It should never have reached this point. In many countries, it still hasn't.

I wouldn't compare it to picking a fight with immigration (they tend to be pretty clean). After all, there is some level of democratic accountability/PR sensitivity there. A complaint will likely prompt an enquiry. With AC, unless there's threat of legal action, I doubt they care. That's why nothing changes. Pilots are still fatigued and cabins are still dirty. But record profits.

I find it interesting that in this case there are 3 versions of the story. 1-sided story from pax, with a sworn statement from another pax agreeing with them. 1-sided story from AC, and another version from the police.

Looks like police interviewed multiple witnesses who said the pax was also being loud. Not only does this contradict AC, but it also contradicts what the pax and the “star witness” said. If there were other witnesses who the police interviewed, who contradict the grandma, it is entirely possible that star witness missed other items (ie alleged kick).

I’m going to chalk this one up to mistakes being made on both sides. Now I guess I’ll have to wait for next week’s poor customer service news report.

I don’t disagree but not suggesting suffering silently. Just complaining later when not powerless and at the mercy of someone who can have you removed from plane.

The only loser here is pax. Nothing will change because of this. The planes won’t be cleaner. The pilots will still be fatigued.

If she had just written in wouldn’t have changed either. But at least she wouldn’t be stressed, upset, late (r) getting home, and out of pocket.

And immigration might be clean but give them a hard time and maybe you don’t get in country or maybe get to spend more time than you would like in an interview room.

This incident never should have gotten to this point. I have to find fault with both the passenger, the FA, and Air Canada.

Air Canada puts minimal money into cleanliness. Do they outsource this like many airlines and pay as little as possible? That would be my guess,

Passenger gets on plane and finds wet garbage. Passenger wants to put water bottle in front pocket. Passenger is sitting next to travel companion Phil.

Passenger asks FA to clean it. Now FA may be annoyed with Air Canada being so cheap with cleaning of the planes, he is not paid to do that, and may have wanted to take a stand. FA gets snippy and sounds arrogant . But honestly if something similar happened with my job would I start taking out the garbage?

Passenger hears this and yet later asks again. So the FA stopped being a flight attendant in the the interim? FA repeats himself and likely gets even more annoyed. And what the saying about doing the same thing over and expecting a different result?

At this point Passenger could have asked Phil to put her water bottle in his seat back pocket. Instead she decides to pick it up with her hands and drop it on the cart -- not in a garbage container but on top -- so this wet garbage is what -- going to be dripping over the cups and all for passengers. FA retaliates by batting it out of her hands and it lands on the floor. So what does passenger do? She kicks the garbage into the aisle.

No idea what happens to the garbage,

FA comes back and asks to speak with passenger. She closes her eyes and refuses to acknowledge him, even after FA mentions that he spoke to pilot. What I could understand is if the FA said the pilot wanted to talk to to her -- she said something like "he said he spoke to the pilot and he wanted to talk to me" -- so too many hes. A few minutes later a different flight attendant comes and passenger refuses to acknowledge, closing her eyes and turning away. At this point why not just put hands over her ears and chant la la la I cannot hear you.

Both FA report to pilot that passenger will not acknowledge them. Phil told one FA that passenger was asleep but passenger admits that she was awake and ignoring both FA -- the snippy one and one that had nothing to do with this. Pilot wonders if passenger will continue to ignore both FAs, even the one not involved in garbage-gate. Pilot likely heard an exaggerated version of the earlier event but the fact that passenger ignores second FA makes pilot decide to return to Toronto.

I am not sure how much the witness passenger could have seen about the garbage kickball as she was to the right and "diagonal", and with the cart in the aisle how well could she see what happened.

Too many airlines have lousy cleaning crews and scrimp on cleaning.

I have seen monkeys at the zoo behave better than these two and they were flinging other things at each other.