American Airlines incident (employee challenges passenger to a fight)

[Ducay]

Outrage culture

[Northendzone]

Originally Posted by ToewsFan

He picked a fight with a paying customer. If you work in the customer service industry, you NEVER pick fights with your customers. I personally hope to loses his job. How many times has he done this, and gotten away with it, one wonders...

What if it was only once? Would you change your opinion?

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Originally Posted by ToewsFan

If you work in the customer service industry, you NEVER pick fights with your customers.

How delightfully naive. Some customers are just a-holes.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Handsome B. Wonderful

How delightfully naive. Some customers are just a-holes.

Spent over 20 years in the customer service industry and can't remember ever picking a fight with a customer and that includes all the a holes. That was clearly amateur hour when that flight attendant challenged the passenger to a fight. He failed class 101 on customer service.

[STeeLy]

Originally Posted by Handsome B. Wonderful

How delightfully naive. Some customers are just a-holes.

There's standing your ground and then there's threatening to fight a customer, big difference.

It's ok to stand your ground.

[DiracSpike]

How is the attendant picking a fight? He walks into the plane and first class guy starts in on him right away and threatens him. Then the attendant just stands his ground and calls the guy out on his fake tough guy bullcrap.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

How is the attendant picking a fight? He walks into the plane and first class guy starts in on him right away and threatens him. Then the attendant just stands his ground and calls the guy out on his fake tough guy bullcrap.

He had a choice in how to respond and chose to escalate the situation with his comment.

You tell the passenger to kindly take his seat and if he continues with his threatening remarks you will have him removed from the plane.

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

How is the attendant picking a fight? He walks into the plane and first class guy starts in on him right away and threatens him. Then the attendant just stands his ground and calls the guy out on his fake tough guy bullcrap.

His job isn't to call out a passenger. If you were the CEO would you like to see an employee say 'bring it on!' to a customer? I don't think so.

Maybe he didn't pick the fight, but he has to use much better judgement than what we saw. He obviously shouldn't be in the customer service industry.

[DiracSpike]

Sure, that's not the desired response even if the guy threatened him with violence. I'm just not sure how the attendant picks the fight when it's first class guy that yells at him and then goes through seats to get in his face.

[snootchiebootchies]

On our most recent trip with two toddlers, our flight was delayed for three hours because of weather. We were delayed not only on the ground but we were also in a holding pattern in the air above our destination because of weather. There were countless people who exhibited patience and understanding with us. I'm talking about the flight crew and border agents and those security screening folks. There was one lady at the rental car agency who brought me a dolly/cart in the pouring rain when she saw me try to lug all this gear out of the shuttle bus. Encountered lots of kind people along the way and I am always appreciative. Not making excuses for the AA employee but I think these incidents are rare exceptions.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

Sure, that's not the desired response even if the guy threatened him with violence. I'm just not sure how the attendant picks the fight when it's first class guy that yells at him and then goes through seats to get in his face.

KFF did a better job of explaining the point I was trying to make.

I stand corrected in the fact the employee didn't start the fight.

[Acey]

When I was ground crew for WestJet, the number of times I've seen near brawls and crying flight attendants over strollers and gate checked bags is ridiculous. It's just now after the dragging incident everybody is immediately filming and sharing it to social media. And yes, even the geriatric Air Canada flight attendants are ready to throw down. Dunno where I'm going with this, except to say that no airline is immune and anybody who thinks their airline of choice has 100% of their employees making good decisions 100% of the time... they're horribly mistaken.

[GullFoss]

Nothing to see here folks; just a couple more angry middle aged men and another hysterical moms with kids. *yawn*

[STeeLy]

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

How is the attendant picking a fight? He walks into the plane and first class guy starts in on him right away and threatens him. Then the attendant just stands his ground and calls the guy out on his fake tough guy bullcrap.

How? By responding with "Bring it on"

Sure, he didn't start it, but basically egging on the passenger to go at him to me is just as much as picking a fight instead of trying to de-escalate the situation.

[JonDuke]

Originally Posted by Acey

When I was ground crew for WestJet, the number of times I've seen near brawls and crying flight attendants over strollers and gate checked bags is ridiculous. It's just now after the dragging incident everybody is immediately filming and sharing it to social media. And yes, even the geriatric Air Canada flight attendants are ready to throw down. Dunno where I'm going with this, except to say that no airline is immune and anybody who thinks their airline of choice has 100% of their employees making good decisions 100% of the time... they're horribly mistaken.

Help me understand this one a little more. As ground crew, you would have spent very limited time near cabin crew, usually while going up to the bridge for strollers and gate checked items or while in line at Tim's, and you've still managed to see numerous crew members crying and multiple near brawls?
I love your aviation insights on here. I'm not calling BS or saying you haven't seen what you've just said, but I find it extremely unlikely and maybe a bit exaggerated?

Here's how you and I both know it happens:
Pax brings a stroller or large bag or an item, like a guitar, down to the plane. Usually, those items are already tagged by gate agents as to be gate checked, but many times, pax will try to bring them on the aircraft anyway.
Lead FA sees the item and says "that can't come on, please put your that over by the bridge door and we'll have it gate checked.". Pax complies. Sometimes unhappily, but I've never once, in 7 years of being an FA, seen or heard of another FA crying or coming remotely close to being in a brawl with passengers. On a FB post about this exact incident, I've seen numerous FA and front end friends say this is an almost unheard of occurrence. I've seen a few near-brawls in my day, but that only happened on the bridge after CPS had been forced to remove a pax from a plane.

And yeah, that FA who called the passenger out was in the wrong. His job is to diffuse the situation, not escalate it. I know how stressful the gig can be sometimes, so I wouldn't call for his job, but he does need to brush up on his "unruly passengers" training.

[woob]

What I want to know is what moron parent tries to bring a stroller ON the plane? Even before I became a parent, I knew you gate checked that crap. And if I'm a single parent flying with two kids, then I'm going to politely ask for and enlist the assistance of the ground crew/FA crew to help get me and my kids on the plane and not try to bulldoze my kid related crap on the plane. Being a dad/mom with kids doesn't automatically give someone carte blanche to ignore generally accepted "rules" that apply to all humans when flying. Ugh.

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by woob

What I want to know is what moron parent tries to bring a stroller ON the plane? Even before I became a parent, I knew you gate checked that crap. And if I'm a single parent flying with two kids, then I'm going to politely ask for and enlist the assistance of the ground crew/FA crew to help get me and my kids on the plane and not try to bulldoze my kid related crap on the plane. Being a dad/mom with kids doesn't automatically give someone carte blanche to ignore generally accepted "rules" that apply to all humans when flying. Ugh.

The only scenario I could see would be something like this:

Cx - Hello. As you can see, I have twins with me and I'm traveling as the sole adult. Can I stroller them to our seats, unload, and bring the stroller back to be checked?

FA - No problem, ma'am. Do you require any other further help? Not at this time? Great, just let me know if that changes. Thank you!

[peter12]

I am just going to start using ships.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by JonDuke

I find it extremely unlikely and maybe a bit exaggerated?

Spent a lot of time near cabin crew and at the podium.

It's reasonable to assume I'm exaggerating, but 90% of the incidents were in Edmonton after the McMurray fire where tensions were high, planes were full, pets were getting bumped, and rules were being fudged so people could get their stuff home. I'll clarify that it wasn't "near brawls" but passengers threatening gate agents and supervisors with violence, and several times the response was akin to "if you hit me, you'll regret it". To be fair, the implication I generally got was that there would be legal repercussions for any such violence upon an employee, as opposed to them actually trying to start a fight.

The fire was obviously an extreme situation, but yeah you're right that it's exceedingly rare under normal circumstances.

[Jordan!]

It's sad that the corporation can't stand up for its employees. People need to respect the rules.

Mom is an idiot