ilovetofly

I certainly don't expect the captain to convene what you called a kangaroo court but I do hope when a written warning was issued, there had been accounts from other crew members as well.

formeraa

The captain of the flight acted properly. They must take the work of the FA's about cabin security. However, there must be AA representatives available upon landing to take statements from the parties involved (assuming that a plane is landing at a hub or major airport).

I agree that AA dropped the PR ball. These days, you can post on any number of websites, call media outlets, use Social Media, etc. AA should have been ahead of this story.

If the facts stand as stated, the FA should be fired or, minimally, suspended, be put on short-term disability and required to undergo counseling for 90 days.

Blumie

I continue to be amazed at how easily people jump to conclusions with such limited facts. Clearly AA would prefer that this episode never had happened -- and from that perspective it's a PR failure. But based on what we know, what should they have done differently?

MM983

Learned from United's lesson. Investigate it early. If it turns out to be nothing, then move on. Instead, they blew it off because they are a large corporation and think nothing bad could possibly happen. The guy's blog even said that he called AA about this and they wouldn't not refund or do anything to make the situation better.

Blumie

How do we know this? Certainly, it might be true, but how do we know. Also, keep in mind the volume of flights AA operates each day, the volume passengers AA transports each day, and the number of incidents that certainly must occur each day. You'd hope that AA would have in place some sort of policy for which incidents require further investigation/action, but no such policy is gonna be perfect. Nevertheless, we can speculate all we want, but we don't have enough information to reach the conclusions that people on this board so flippantly jump to.

One last point: I hope people don't view me as defending the FA. I have no reason to defened her -- and agree that she should be disciplined if the facts are as they appear -- but I also refuse to jump to conclusions based on the limited information, almost all of which has been supplied by the alleged victim -- that currently is available to us.

MM983

From the gentleman's blog:


Do incidents happen every day on AA? No doubt. But I think this falls into the "extremely out of the ordinary" category.

I agree that both sides have the right to tell their story, Helen included. However I am writing about the aspect of AA as a whole just ignoring this event until now. Policy failure all over; in how the captain issued the paper, how Helen acted, how the rest of the crew did nothing, and how the AA rep on the phone wouldn't take action to see what was going on. This only surfaced because people stepped up and got the word out both on the internet and, now, what seems to be on television.

I understand where you're coming from about witholding judgement until more details are out. But it seems that multiple people on that flight provided details and others confirmed that they have had run-ins with Helen before and agreed that she has a problem. There have been more accounts on this than just the one individual that did have the problem. Could all of these statements be incorrect? Perhaps, however..

"If it looks like a chicken and smells like a chicken..........."

SocietyFlyGirl

Blumie, AA has stated earlier that they actively monitor Internet blogs. The orange juice incident has been all over several Internet blogs since it was posted on Consumerist. AA could have announced that they were investigating earlier.

They get ^ for announcing their investigation before it reached the UA guitar incident infamy, but for not announcing their investigation earlier.

Non-NonRev

Disagreements between passengers and flight attendants can take many forms. Although the details of the current incident differ greatly from the following story, I think there are some interesting points made in the accounts of this incident involving internationally-renowned opera soprano Jessye Norman about ten years ago on the old TWA. Editorial opinions were those of the original author - the only changes I have made are to insert a few paragraph breaks:


This thread on famous attitudes in everyday situations reminds me of an
article a friend passed along to me from a New York law newspaper.
Apparently about a year ago, Ms. Jessye Norman was late for a direct
flight from New York to St. Louis. She had bought herself two first class
tickets and the airline placed her on the next available flight, which had
a stopover in Ohio. The irate Madame Norman boarded the plane and tried
to use her seat back telephone to inform her host in St. Louis that she
would be late, but found that the phone did not work. She then informed
the flight attendant that he would have to use the cockpit radio to
contact St. Louis and inform them of her predicament. The attendant
informed Ms. Norman that the cockpit radio was not used for such matters,
she suggested that it should in this matter, and the attendant left to see
what he could do about the issue. The attendant passed by a few minutes
later and Ms. Norman asked if he had radioed St. Louis for her. The
attendant said no, Norman got angry, and the attendant said he would
return when she had calmed down to which Norman replied "don't bother."


This is where teh story gets interesting: The attendant then
returned to Ms. Norman's seat without solicitation or provocation and
hissed that she would be more appropriately accomodated by a Greyhound bus
for her travels. Ms. Norman responded by calling the attendant a "silly
fool" or a "stupid fool" (the trial record is unclear on this matter) and
there was no contact between the two until the plane landed in Ohio.

In Ohio, Ms. Norman deplaned to use the telephone and call St.
Louis herself and the flight attendant informed the pilot that Ms. Norman
should not be allowed to reboard the plane. However, the cockpit crew
changed and no one noticed Ms. Norman retake her seat. Upon finding her
again on the plane, the attendant informed the pilot that he would not
work that flight so long as Ms. Norman remained on the plane. The pilot
tried unsuccessfully to find a replacement for the attendant, and, given
the storm brewing to the West, needing to find a rapid resolution to the
problem, asked Madame Norman to apologize to the attendant for her
behavior.

In an event which should be certified by the Catholic church as a
miracle, Jessye Norman met the flight attendant in the airplane entryway
and apologized for her rudeness. However, the attendant did not deem her
apology sincere, and insisted that she would not be on the plane. Given
the bad weather and the absence of any other available attendants to meet
FAA regulations for flight staffing, the pilot had no choice but to leave
Ms. Jessye Norman at the gate.

The issue was reported because Ms. Norman then filed a lawsuit
against TWA, the pilot, and the flight attendant for claims including
discrimination and emotional distress. Her claims were dismissed and she
was awarded only a refund on the purchase price of her ticket.

The story is amazing first for the audacity of an opera singer
demanding use of the cockpit radio to call her chauffeur, but then for the
flight attendant's grossly unprofessional behavior. Although he did what
almost anyone who has ever been employed in customer service dreams of, I
personally thought that the man should have been fired for his behavior.

Blumie

I agree with you -- it doesn't look good -- but I don't see any value in jumping on the "burn her, she's a witch" bandwaggon without the benefit of all the facts.

inyourvillages

That's the 'witness,' not the person who was yelled at. Why on earth would you deserve a reward for witnessing someone else's poor behavior?

Doghound

Ok, so the guys asked for a refund because he had a bad flight? That doesn't make sense; not in the slightest. He flew the route and got from point A to point B... so a refund for the flight is ridiculous.

Now, a few thousand miles should be in order here. Or some eVIPs. Or something like that.

MM983

Based off of what I copied from the blog, it's difficult to say if he wanted a full refund or partial. If he requested a partial amount, whatever that may be, I don't think that's out of the question due to the nature of the events (if they turn out to be 100% correct).

Needs to be more than a few thousand.. you get few thousand for writing to AA about a broken armrest. eVIPs would be a start.

emma dog

Interesting point, but I think you're missing my point.

The mods have made multiple posts in recent days about the proliferation of threads and the stability of the website as a whole. Assuming they are being forthcoming about this, I would rather have fewer "-est" threads and reduce the burden on the servers to ensure one of my favorite websites remains operational.

But the other issue I have and you get a flavor of it on other threads (like the "accident at CLT" thread, 2nd or 3rd post) is that speculation threads serve little purpose. And when it's cross posted across 3 different threads in 3 different fora then again there's dilution of purpose. Assuming people's comments serve a purpose (I'd like to think so), we are all better off concentrating a discussion into one thread so everything you could ever want to read is immediately accessible.

And no, you can't just avoid topics altogether. For example, at this moment there's a thread titled "Terrible Service/I just want service." What's this about??? Oh, PDB's. So in addition to walking on a trodden trail in some other thread, the OP chose to start a new thread with a non-descriptive thread title. I can promise you that I don't read the PDB thread.

Anyway, I suspect the frustration others may be feeling have to do more with new folks understanding the structure and purpose of FT. And that each forum has it's own culture and feeling. People on CO like to chit-chat more. People on UA have a lot of armchair-CEO conversations. People on Hilton tend to deal more with property questions. The AA forum has historically tended to have fewer speculation and "-est" and speculation threads when compared to other forums... which is one reason it has had appeal to me.

MrPink

Honestly, this story doesn't sound anywhere near as embellished as many of the consumerist-type posts sound, nor does it reek of DYKWIA like a lot of other stories do.

Yes, it's got a tinge of sensationalism and a tinge of dykwia, but all in all the accounts presented so far have been fairly balanced and calm.

AA definitely could have done more to publicly take care of this story, though it does seem that it has at least tried to take care of things behind the scenes up to this point. My guess is it was hoping this was a matter that could be resolved internally through normal processes, hence the delay, but their senses were way off if they thought that would work.

emma dog

AWESOME post! ^