johan rebel

Heading to a D-gate this afternoon, I passed a male and female KL flight attendant standing at the top of the stairs to the waiting area. I can't be 100% sure (stopping to continue eavesdropping would not have been very polite) but they were apparently discussing their Asian colleagues. The female FA said that she much preferred the Chinese to those "kut-Japanners met hun halfvolle vluchten" (those f*cking Japanese with half-full flights).

Charming!

Johan

CyBeR

This is less "racism at ams" and more "a private conversation between people you shouldn't have been listening to and lack context for".

Worcester

johan rebel

Hey, this was at AMS, she was a KLM employee in uniform standing right at the top of the stairs leading to a gate, and the comments were of a derogatory nature. A large number of passengers (the people who pay her salary) walked straight past at a distance of not even one meter. Some of them may even have understood Dutch. That would include me. What on earth would you suggest I should have done? Put my fingers in my ears? Wear earplugs every time I pass through Schiphol?

That FA should have had the sense to shut up, or voice her opinions elsewhere. She chose to let me and everybody else who walked past know what she thought of her Japanese colleagues. I was not impressed.

Johan

caliform

Do we really need another one of these threads? The last one didn't go well. At the very least perhaps title it 'casual racism by employee' rather than dragging an entire airport into it.

Billyfergus

johan rebel

I'm 100% sure of what I heard. Hence the quotation marks.

I'm also well aware that KL's Asian FAs are not very popular with some of their Dutch colleagues. Their unions view them as competition, not colleagues, and have in the past repeatedly done their level best to keep their numbers at a minimum.

Johan

Annalisa12

Thought same thing. The post is just repetitive. Be prepared for Part VI

johan rebel

Can't change the thread title, adding a title to the first post was the best I could do for you. With pleasure, of course.

Johan

Billyfergus

irishguy28

Now, there's a statement that requires explanation and clarification.

What do you mean by "Asian FAs"?

Are we talking purely (and this has to be asked, given the title chosen for the thread) about ethnicity?

Do the "unions" not allow "Asians" to become members, seeing as they are the "competition"?

Or are we talking about staff hired from/based in countries other than the Netherlands, and hence working under different contracts [if so, why refer to the difference in terms of ethnicity]?

AJCNL

Oh for goodness sake, is this the level that this forum has sunk to now? Someone heard a snippet of other people’s conversation and rushed to enlighten us with their interpretation of it. Ooh, you’ll never guess what I overheard on the way here today…..

Apparently, somewhere in the world on the 27th of January a racist remark was made during a private conversation. Who’d have thought it? I wonder how many times that did actually happen somewhere in the world on the 27th of January. Let’s throw in sexism, homophobia, ageism, all discrimination, how many times does that occur each day? But apparently this is important enough to start a new thread and link it to AMS and KLM. How many international airports in the world have never been the setting for the utterance of a discriminatory remark during a private conversation?

And in any case what is one supposed to do with this information that was deemed so important, other than express displeasure that discriminatory remarks are made, wherever that may be in the world, in airports and not in airports, and by people who work for airlines, and people who don’t work for airlines?

AlicorporateUK

I couldn't agree more, spot on. That said, the thing I find most amusing is the people those sort of threads normally attract, users who do not contribute to the AF/KL forum(s) in normal circumstances (i.e. when it comes to discussing about miles, products and the likes, in essence what FT is actually about, dare I say), yet you would see them appearing as soon as any reference is made to politics/racism (amongst others) so that they can post their let's change the world slash finger pointing's sort-of statements (@johan rebel - this is not directed to you at all). Lastly and as a reminder to everyone, there's an OMNI's forum on FlyerTalk which could easily welcome such discussions and perhaps the moderators may want to consider transferring content and thread altogether accordingly over to that part of the world.

G

Billyfergus

AlicorporateUK

Not at all, your statement was spot on and resumed what I basically thought concerning the matter as a whole ^

G