Flight
attendant loses rag with passengers
June 29, 2012, 2:32 pmYahoo! New Zealand
A flight attendant fed up with dealing
with passengers' complaints after a delay told them to get off the plane if
they had "the balls" to do it.
A flight attendant fed up with dealing
with passengers' complaints after a delay told them to get off the plane if
they had "the balls" to do it.
American Eagle flight attendant Jose
Serrano was rostered on a flight from New York destined for North Carolina on
Monday.
Poor weather meant the flight was delayed
and passengers couldn't board until 4pm - nearly three hours after its
scheduled departure, the New York Post reports.
Then, as the plane was taxiing towards the
runway, it got stuck behind 20 others. It waited there for 40 minutes before
heading back to the gate to refuel.
Passengers were told to disembark and it
was 6pm before they could get back on. But again there were delays and tempers
started to flare.
"People were getting really amped up
at this point," passenger Jon Wurster told the Post.
"It took forever to get back on the
plane. The fuses were getting pretty low."
A frustrated Serrano then confronted
complaining passengers saying: "I don't want to hear anything."
Asked if people could get off, he said:
"If you have balls."
Passengers told the Post he said: "I
don't care anymore. This is probably my last flight."
One passenger, David Abels, told the Post
he was "abusive verbally" and made his daughter cry.
Three families are believed to have left
the plane, refusing to fly with the flight attendant on board.
Airport police were called in and the
Federal Aviation Administration is also investigating the incident.
The flight was eventually cancelled at
8pm. The Post reports this is because Serrano was taken off the plane for
questioning.
No arrests were made.
Peter’s Comment
The flight attendant does not fly the
aircraft, make the safety rules, or create the weather and traffic delays.
Furthermore, flight attendants are subject to the same frustrations as
passengers. So what on earth got into the heads of these passengers?
There was a time when employers taught
their employees that the customer was always right. That was good advice but
there is often an exception to the rule and it seems that in this case the
customers were all shite.
No employee should ever be subjected to
this kind of abuse and intimidation.
American Eagle should rename this part of
the aircraft Cattle Class.
Watch a video about the
incident here: