Yikes. The other pax is way out of line, but that response by the AA agent is not a good look. Guess it's AA's turn in the box.

http://jalopnik.com/american-airlines-e ... 1794552514

I read the article and watched the video. The biggest problem is that we have no idea what happened before the filming started. We don't know how the woman was treating the crew members beforehand and vice versa.

Also, if you pay attention to the video, things seem to be de-escalating and getting resolved until Mr. "I'm a badass alpha male" decides to get up from his seat and cause a scene. The woman had stopped crying but then him yelling at the guy started up the waterworks all over again. Why do so many grown males think they can make things better by yelling? It almost always has the exact opposite effect.

[quote="KentB27"The biggest problem is that we have no idea what happened before the filming started. [/quote]

Agreed. I said the same thing about the UA incident.

Problem here is that the gate agent didn't need to respond the way he did. He's the one who took it to the other level by even engaging the passenger. "Hit me" is not the appropriate response.

God its like High School. One of the worst thing about the internet is the offended outraged jump to conclusion with no real evidence, look at me crowd that has birthed from it. I hate with these kind of treads and wish they would go right over to Flyer talk. So A-net could maybe still be a place where aviation enthusiast can gather and discuss are hobby and not a place of Tabloid Jr high like drama half reported treads.

There's gotta be a full moon somewhere.


There was so much United bashing last week that i felt compelled to defend United and took a lot of abuse here on this board.


.so with that said. I'm probably going to get slammed again. BUT, Nobody knows how hard their job is, unless you have their job, this video is very one sided we are only seeing the aftermath of a completely unknown situation. There are always two sides to every story and only one is being shown.

DLFREEBIRD wrote:

There's gotta be a full moon somewhere.


There was so much United bashing last week that i felt compelled to defend United and took a lot of abuse here on this board.


.so with that said. I'm probably going to get slammed again. BUT, Nobody knows how hard their job is, unless you have their job, this video is very one sided we are only seeing the aftermath of a completely unknown situation. There are always two sides to every story and only one is being shown.

Its the half jumping to conclusions with little to no evidence. Its a bunch of Chickens picking at a sore. I left or don't visit Flyer talk much because of the negativeness of it.

I just can't. There are children drowning in the Mediterranean trying to flee to safety. This dude gets up in arms over having to gate check a stroller. We need to get our priorities in order.

AA statement;



https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9_EemEXgAEyhSk.jpg

thegoldenargosy wrote:

I just can't. There are children drowning in the Mediterranean trying to flee to safety. This dude gets up in arms over having to gate check a stroller. We need to get our priorities in order.

C'mon now, you know that wasn't what the issue was. The issue was he allegedly hit the woman with the stroller. Listening to the other passengers it's clear something happened in the way he took the stroller from her.

Sorry, some people are cut out for that kind of job and some are not. If you are not, you should not be in that line of work, regardless of how "hard" you say it is. I personally could not be a flight attendant, therefore I am not.

DLFREEBIRD wrote:

There's gotta be a full moon somewhere.
.so with that said. I'm probably going to get slammed again. BUT, Nobody knows how hard their job is, unless you have their job, this video is very one sided we are only seeing the aftermath of a completely unknown situation. There are always two sides to every story and only one is being shown.

The alpha-male wannabe passenger was out of line for escalating things, but for the love of God, what was that AA gate agent thinking by escalating it even further?!? If I'm seeing this and I'm his manager, he's being withheld from service pending an investigation, as his behavior is simply inexcusable, period. Not sure what led us to that point, and frankly, I don't care what led us to that point - he has no business interacting with a customer in that manner.

EDIT - I just saw AA's response, and I'm glad to see the agent was withheld from service while they sort this out. That sort of behavior cannot be condoned, period.

KentB27 wrote:

I read the article and watched the video. The biggest problem is that we have no idea what happened before the filming started. We don't know how the woman was treating the crew members beforehand and vice versa.

Also, if you pay attention to the video, things seem to be de-escalating and getting resolved until Mr. "I'm a badass alpha male" decides to get up from his seat and cause a scene. The woman had stopped crying but then him yelling at the guy started up the waterworks all over again. Why do so many grown males think they can make things better by yelling? It almost always has the exact opposite effect.

I agree with you. We do not know the full story. Maybe the AA employees were in the wrong, or maybe they weren't. The male passenger made a difficult situation much worse then what it was. If I had been an AA employee I would have immediately had him ejected from the flight and turned him over to law enforcement. I think the male passenger may have been looking for a payday.

jeffrey1970 wrote:

KentB27 wrote:

I read the article and watched the video. The biggest problem is that we have no idea what happened before the filming started. We don't know how the woman was treating the crew members beforehand and vice versa.

Also, if you pay attention to the video, things seem to be de-escalating and getting resolved until Mr. "I'm a badass alpha male" decides to get up from his seat and cause a scene. The woman had stopped crying but then him yelling at the guy started up the waterworks all over again. Why do so many grown males think they can make things better by yelling? It almost always has the exact opposite effect.

I agree with you. We do not know the full story. Maybe the AA employees were in the wrong, or maybe they weren't. The male passenger made a difficult situation much worse then what it was. If I had been an AA employee I would have immediately had him ejected from the flight and turned him over to law enforcement. I think the male passenger may have been looking for a payday.

Jeff do you think the AA Employee charging towards the passenger and telling him to "hit me" did not put the AA Employee in the wrong?

Generally whenever things such as this occur I cringe at everybody involved, this incident is no exception. I've watched the video a few times and read an account from somebody on the flight from reddit. I'd just like to share a few thoughts on this.

1. The AA gate agents shouldn't have let her down the jetway with her stroller to begin with.
2. The male flight attendant involved was out of line in the way he dealt with the passenger. Under no circumstances should you EVER lose your cool or assert any sort of forceful behavior towards a passenger unless they're an obvious security threat.
3. Although the flight attendants behavior and initial tone was apparently aggressive, the woman should not have put up an argument over something as minute as having to check a stroller, something that is routine when flying.
4. The male passenger who intervened in the video should've just sat down and shut up, no need to get involved although I guess for personalities such as his would be seemingly impossible.

RL777 wrote:

Generally whenever things such as this occur I cringe at everybody involved, this incident is no exception. I've watched the video a few times and read an account from somebody on the flight from reddit. I'd just like to share a few thoughts on this.

1. The AA gate agents shouldn't have let her down the jetway with her stroller to begin with.
2. The male flight attendant involved was out of line in the way he dealt with the passenger. Under no circumstances should you EVER lose your cool or assert any sort of forceful behavior towards a passenger unless they're an obvious security threat.
3. Although the flight attendants behavior and initial tone was apparently aggressive, the woman should not have put up an argument over something as minute as having to check a stroller, something that is routine when flying.
4. The male passenger who intervened in the video should've just sat down and shut up, no need to get involved although I guess for personalities such as his would be seemingly impossible.

I couldn't agree more on every single point.

I think AA's response was excellent; it clearly learned from the train wreck that was UAL's response to its incident. It de-escalated the matter successfully. There are some lessons that do need to be learned, however, and one would be the actions (or inactions) of the captain. He seemed to be just a bystander in all of this, almost to the end and maybe he could have acted a little more quickly to de-escalate.

The woman with the baby deserves an oscar!

That male passenger trying to be the white knight riding on his horse to save the day and just intervene like that was just so unnecessary.

A lot of over-reacting all round - apart from the Captain, whose facial expression probably summed up the rest of those on board - "I really don't need this, can we just get going please".

kaitak wrote:

I think AA's response was excellent; it clearly learned from the train wreck that was UAL's response to its incident. It de-escalated the matter successfully. There are some lessons that do need to be learned, however, and one would be the actions (or inactions) of the captain. He seemed to be just a bystander in all of this, almost to the end and maybe he could have acted a little more quickly to de-escalate.

Spot on. Kudos to AA they have handled it very well. United take note !

The message that goes to the traveling public is this: Find a reason to whine, put on a show and you get upgraded. It works! Not to mention you give a lesson to the employee who dared cross you...

I don't know. If the gate agent did indeed hit the lady passenger with a stroller, coming closing to hitting the infant, I would probably have been twitching in my seat. When the agent then comes back with an attitude, I would not have sat idle by whilst he exercised his 'powers' over the lady passenger. Call it alpha male, all it all-school chivalry, call it whatever you fancy, but I cannot sit idly be whilst a women and child are being harassed.

If the gate agent hit the woman with the stroller, he had everything coming. He should be glad he got not beaten up and put into hospital. Where do you guys do creep out of your holes to defend such behaviour?

B777LRF wrote:

I don't know. If the gate agent did indeed hit the lady passenger with a stroller, coming closing to hitting the infant, I would probably have been twitching in my seat. When the agent then comes back with an attitude, I would not have sat idle by whilst he exercised his 'powers' over the lady passenger. Call it alpha male, all it all-school chivalry, call it whatever you fancy, but I cannot sit idly be whilst a women and child are being harassed.

So your solution is to make things worse?

Just speculation....
Generally strollers are allowed up to the airplane and then they get checked.
A) there was probably a disagreement about where the stroller could go after that. The lady assumed the stroller could go in the overhead, while the flight attendant/ gate agent insisted it could not. In the ensuing disagreement, I guess the flight attendant/ gate agent prevented the stroller from being boarded on the aircraft by force.


Gate agents are under a lot of stress, I don't envy their jobs. If you've been around airports the last 2 weeks every passenger is taking out their frustration in air travel on the gate agents. That gate agent just snapped when the male passenger decided to lecture him. The gate agents rarely gets a thank you, and always having to deal with people who are upset. Not giving the gate agent an excuse, but he probably needed a couple days off to blow off some steam.

Thanks B777LRF, you're probably the first response posted by someone who has kids or is old enough to be empathetic to a mother traveling alone with a young child. To everything else judging those who got involved and jumped to her defense -- were you there? Did you actually see and hear what happened? I didn't, but I'm certain that a woman traveling alone with a small child wanted her travel experience to be completely stress free.

Clearly, there is a whole chain of individual events that culminated in the escalation of what we see on this video. The "alpha-male" pax was took it to far, but I laud his reaction to stand up for this woman. We've lost our way as a society if we're unable to show compassion and empathy. The FA was clearly having a bad day and maybe he just snapped, who knows. If it's true that he hit her with the stroller, nearly missing the infant in the process, then he should be fired.

AA's response was quick and a textbook example of how to confront and diffuse the situation in the court of public opinion -- obviously something United failed at so profoundly last week.

picarus wrote:

but I'm certain that a woman traveling alone with a small child wanted her travel experience to be completely stress free.

Sure. And I totally agree with you that without being there, and knowing all the context, it's impossible to know for sure what happened. In any event, it seems quite clear - at a minimum - that there as behavior exhibited by AA employees that was completely unacceptable and uncalled for, even if this incident was causing a delay, etc. And thus, of course, AA's response.

But all of that said - if (critical word) it does come out that the root cause of the whole thing was the mother refusing to check a stroller, then that clearly will have contributed to the escalating turn of events. Strollers get checked, not put in the overhead bin - seen it a thousand times, and it's not up for negotiation. For the parent's own convenience, gate agents often let them take it down the jet bridge, step to the side to pull their stuff out of it, and then leave it there to be taken down to the ramp.

picarus wrote:

AA's response was quick and a textbook example of how to confront and diffuse the situation in the court of public opinion -- obviously something United failed at so profoundly last week.

I think AA's response was very much informed and shaped by what happened at United. Let's see if it does, indeed, diffuse some of the outrage.

People are acting as if the woman should have known the stroller doesn't go in the bin. If this is her first trip with a baby, she probably didn't know if nobody explained it, and found out at the door. They might not have explained that it comes back to her at the door on landing either (rather than gate checking a bag which comes out at baggage claim.)

Something tells me it was a failure of AA customer service long before it got to this point.

ikramerica wrote:

People are acting as if the woman should have known the stroller doesn't go in the bin. If this is her first trip with a baby, she probably didn't know if nobody explained it, and found out at the door. They might not have explained that it comes back to her at the door on landing either (rather than gate checking a bag which comes out at baggage claim.)

Something tells me it was a failure of AA customer service long before it got to this point.

Well, first off, I do think the woman should have know strollers don't go in the bin. And just based on what I've seen a thousand times before, I find it very hard to believe that the gate agent would have let anyone roll past the EGR and enter the jet bridge without tagging the stroller to be checked. News reports interviewing those on the plane stated that she got all the way to the back of Y with it, so maybe. But either way, clearly someone told her that the stroller had to be checked - thus the entire event that unfolded.

gzm wrote:

The message that goes to the traveling public is this: Find a reason to whine, put on a show and you get upgraded. It works! Not to mention you give a lesson to the employee who dared cross you...

The message to airline employees is the customers pays their salary, and they need to be flexible, ,reasonable and transparent when enforcing any rules.
Time to drop the it's my plane,my rules attitude.

AirbusCanada wrote:

they need to be flexible, ,reasonable and transparent when enforcing any rules.

Indeed. And not lose their cool. No question about it.

But it can be a tricky situation. Because before the iPhone camera starts rolling - what if an employee is being "reasonable and transparent" (flexibility isn't really in option in this case, as the rule is fairly black-and-white) about gate-checking a stroller and someone simply refuses to comply?

anstar wrote:

The woman with the baby deserves an oscar!

And the award for crass post of the week goes to...

AVFCdownunder wrote:

A lot of over-reacting all round - apart from the Captain, whose facial expression probably summed up the rest of those on board - "I really don't need this, can we just get going please".

It's a shame he didn't use his authority to defuse the situation.

gzm wrote:

The message that goes to the traveling public is this: Find a reason to whine, put on a show and you get upgraded. It works! Not to mention you give a lesson to the employee who dared cross you...

Seriously?

The message is clear - airlines and their staff can no longer get away with treating their customers badly and expect no comeback. You're really OK with Mr. Hit Me's attitude?

picarus wrote:

Thanks B777LRF, you're probably the first response posted by someone who has kids or is old enough to be empathetic to a mother traveling alone with a young child. To everything else judging those who got involved and jumped to her defense -- were you there? Did you actually see and hear what happened? I didn't, but I'm certain that a woman traveling alone with a small child wanted her travel experience to be completely stress free.

Travelling with small kids is never stress free (been there, etc.). The last thing you need in a stressful situation is someone who's supposed to be helping you who turns out to be a first-class douchebag.

scbriml wrote:

You're really OK with Mr. Hit Me's attitude?

No - definitely not. Inexcusable behavior, especially on the part of a uniformed, customer-facing employee of any company.

But if (again, key word) this woman was told - as literally thousands of women and men are told every week - that she couldn't keep the stroller in the cabin with her, and she refused to give it up, then I'm not okay with her attitude, either.

Rules and regulations exist for a reason. As said previously, employees have a responsibility to enforce them fairly and transparently. But passengers have a responsibility to follow them.

picarus wrote:

The last thing you need in a stressful situation is someone who's supposed to be helping you who turns out to be a first-class douchebag.

Okay, but again, the stroller should have been checked. It's as simple as that. Thousands of people do it every week without incident. This employee was clearly a jerk - and behaved ridiculously. He should be fired, and in the meantime I'm glad AA has suspended him. But this could have all been avoided if the stroller had simply been checked.

thegoldenargosy wrote:

I just can't. There are children drowning in the Mediterranean trying to flee to safety. This dude gets up in arms over having to gate check a stroller. We need to get our priorities in order.

And that, right there, is what's wrong with society today.

*Let me start off with a disclaimer that I'm not excusing either parties behavior and that I am a flight attendant for a major US carrier.*

We don't know all of the information...

The AA employee's behavior is completely uncalled for no matter what happened, HOWEVER, I can completely see how someone could eventually be pushed to react that way. After enough stressors are put on a person, eventually they can snap a bit like this. We also don't know how long all of this was going on. Just imagine you started your day with a fight with your spouse on the phone after not getting enough rest, then had a 12-13 hour work day (your 5th in a row) with delays and people complaining about such delays, then if you accidentally hit someone and have multiple people yelling at you, THEN multiple authority figures (captain, first officer, gate agent, other flight attendants) asking you to explain what happened multiple times, while someone is crying and blaming you, and finally some intimidating guy (not blaming him for his standing up for the woman) comes at you saying he's going to hit you.......

24,000 flights a day with hundreds of cameras on every flight, stories like this are bound to happen. Again, not excusing the actions of the employee, but the perfect storm of delays, long stressful days, stuff going on at home, some not so great behavior of both employees and customers and you will have conflicts every once in a while. In my 11 years of my flying career I can honestly say I've been short maybe 4-5 times with a customer (not yelling or overtly rude, just curt with them) and it was usually not directly because of them but because of many factors and their impatience or something they said was the "straw that broke my back". So after pleasantly interacting with over 750,000 passengers in my career, 4-5 negative interactions are bound to happen no matter how patient I may be. But again, this AA employee snapped.... not good.... he may well be a miserable person and if so then hope he finds another career he enjoys.

What we really need more of in the world is understanding, compassion, civility from everyone. Basically the golden rule of treat others how you want to be treated. This is especially true in stressful setting like airports, hospitals, and the workplace. I recently took an international flight as a passenger and tried my best to look the crew in the eye, smile, and use please and thank you (because I know I like this too) and she was so courteous and pleasant. At the end of the flight I made sure to compliment her on her hospitality and she responded "it helps to have such nice passengers such as yourself, it was contagious." Not that it should require me being nice to be pleasant, but if we were all kinder to one another it sure would make the world a better place to be.

By the way, we shouldn't ONLY focus on the male employee. The female flight attendant seems like she is really trying to de-escalate and console the woman in a calm way. This is how it ALL should have been handled.

my thoughts are that this couldn't possibly be about what the article is alleging. look at the video she had twin babies and she was traveling alone.. We do know that she was denied boarding and was waiting for them to retrieve her stroller. that had apparently been gate checked by the agent earlier. There is a FAA rule that if you have twin babies, you can't sit both on your lap. What more than likely happened is that the staff realized that she was traveling alone and planning to sit both babies on her lap. which she can't do because each row only has one extra oxygen mask. This is a FAA regulation. They would have no choice but to deny her boarding. Shes not going to let a complete stranger hold her baby in another row. She's going to have to get off the plane. buy a ticket for the other infant and have a car seat for them to sit in, that way they will all have their own oxygen masks.

another reason might be, that she did buy a extra ticket for one of the twins but forgot to bring a car seat and just realized it at the last minute.
they would still have to deny her boarding for safety reasons because you just can't buckle a baby into a seat, you are required to have a car seat for the infant to sit in, maybe she forgot about bringing a car seat. or maybe the car seat was attached to the stroller and the gate agent
nor her could get it to come off the stroller due to a malfunction. There is many things that could of happened than the employee allegedly hitting her with her own stroller.

Why would she be denied boarding if she had been accidentally or intentionally hit with her own stroller? She wouldn't be. There's more to this.
i suspect the gate agent didn't want to embarrass her by explaining the situation to this jerk who was making assumptions about her situation.

regardless, this will be investigated and dealt with by the airline rest assured.

"Hit her with the stroller" will probably turn out to be an accidental contact when she unwillingly handed over the the stroller and then it went from there....

But it seems to become a trend in the US to reject requests by the airline staff in hope of creating an conflict and getting a reward.

Do Americans have some sort of a deficiency in manners and common sense? Utterly pathetic the past few weeks and tarnishing the reputation of airliners.

[photoid][/photoid]

ZeeZoo wrote:

Do Americans have some sort of a deficiency in manners and common sense? Utterly pathetic the past few weeks and tarnishing the reputation of airliners.

No, 99% of passengers are quite pleasant and most employees do their job well. Unfortunately we have an obsession with the 1% of negativity and shock news.

"It's a shame he didn't use his authority to defuse the situation".

To be fair, the Skipper probably didn't know what was going on and was probably exercising a degree of self-restraint to prevent the situation escalating further.

Ah the joys of calculated misery.

After watching the video, I agree it is unfortunate that there really isn't any indication of what happened prior to boarding. The situation may have begun before boarding and the passenger with the child may have been informed that the stroller needed to be gate checked.(After traveling with small children, it is much easier to do that that lug it on board), but refused when she went down the jetway. This happens a lot, especially with young parents who somehow feel the need to be waited on because they have a child. I saw no evidence of getting hit with a stroller. She may have even been a non rev and had every right to be taken off.
The guy interfering threatened the gate agent first and was totally out of line, and in my opinion should have been removed, clearly he has a hair trigger temper, his wife or traveling companion wanted him to stay out of it as well.
Gate agents and flight attendants put up with so much more than people who work in other industries and I have personally seen circumstances where situations out of their control are put on their shoulders sometimes violently by passengers. This was illustrated by the white knight, in my opinion based on that threat he should be barred from AA flights. Airline employees have a very tough job and they have bad days as well and sometimes lash out without realizing it. I'm not making excuses, just going by my personal observations, and I've flown over 500,000 miles a year at times.
There are so many facts we don't know so we need to make sure we don't jump to conclusions, I feel the same way about the United incident.

Just to note, flight attendants and gate agents can and have been fined by FAA inspectors for allowing non regulation items on board. Not defending this F/A just some background. Just like the FAA has fined F/As for exiting the a/c to inquire about a seat dup (if we go below min staff)
In this case IF the f/a was checking bags in the jetway and the f/a staff went below min with him exiting, then he also could be fined.

cokepopper wrote:

Just to note, flight attendants and gate agents can and have been fined by FAA inspectors for allowing non regulation items on board. Not defending this F/A just some background. Just like the FAA has fined F/As for exiting the a/c to inquire about a seat dup (if we go below min staff)
In this case IF the f/a was checking bags in the jetway and the f/a staff went below min with him exiting, then he also could be fined.

Right. But it's the way it's done. The way this employee acted was ridiculous - regardless of whether or not it should ever have even gotten to that point, once it did, he should never have behaved that way.

I suspect where this is all heading is that in the future, rather than risk escalation or a confrontation, with cell phone cameras recording, front-line employees will be instructed to simply call the manager on duty and the two of them will then calmly inform the passenger that the flight will be delayed or cancelled as a result of their refusal to comply with the rules. Rather than even attempting to "negotiate" with the passenger, the choice will essentially be "follow the rules" or "we'll all sit here until you do." A big part of what drives the stress on the part of employees is the constant pressure to get the plane out on time because of how prominent on-time statistics have become. But my guess is that corporate policies will change to allow an exception for situations like this, removing the "blame" for taking a delay from the agent or FA based on the premise that accepting a delay is better than risking these types of P.R. incidents.

commavia wrote:

cokepopper wrote:

Just to note, flight attendants and gate agents can and have been fined by FAA inspectors for allowing non regulation items on board. Not defending this F/A just some background. Just like the FAA has fined F/As for exiting the a/c to inquire about a seat dup (if we go below min staff)
In this case IF the f/a was checking bags in the jetway and the f/a staff went below min with him exiting, then he also could be fined.

Right. But it's the way it's done. The way this employee acted was ridiculous - regardless of whether or not it should ever have even gotten to that point, once it did, he should never have behaved that way.

I suspect where this is all heading is that in the future, rather than risk escalation or a confrontation, with cell phone cameras recording, front-line employees will be instructed to simply call the manager on duty and the two of them will then calmly inform the passenger that the flight will be delayed or cancelled as a result of their refusal to comply with the rules. Rather than even attempting to "negotiate" with the passenger, the choice will essentially be "follow the rules" or "we'll all sit here until you do." A big part of what drives the stress on the part of employees is the constant pressure to get the plane out on time because of how prominent on-time statistics have become. But my guess is that corporate policies will change to allow an exception for situations like this, removing the "blame" for taking a delay from the agent or FA based on the premise that accepting a delay is better than risking these types of P.R. incidents.

Agree 100%

1) Mom doesn't even get a nomination for academy award; terrible acting TRYING to cry. 2) Mr hormone male should have been taken off the flight for threatening a crew member. 3) AA had the advantage of the UA response last week. If the 1st hardened UA response had gone over, AA would have done same thing yesterday. It didn't so AA got to take the softer, "We can't be leave this happened" approach. 4) Gonna be a long summer...Hey DL your turn.

Well... it's American Airlines turn.

The situation is much worse in my opinion. UA employees didn't lay a hand on the pax and instead security dragged him. On the contrary, AA employees physically touched/hit the pax, which makes the airline liable for a law suit.

The response of the airlines, AA reacted way better than UA and Oscar Muñoz by a long shot.

As I said before, it could be worse for AA in the long run, mostly for potential law suits.

I blame the new AA uniforms

Time to outfit flight attendants with body cams.