Video has emerged of the aftermath of another incident on airplane involving a passenger and airline employees.
On a flight from San Francisco to Dallas, a woman was allegedly struck in the head while she held her baby by an American Airlines flight attendant who was trying to wrestle a stroller away from her. Video below shows what happened in the immediate wake of the incident which includes another passenger telling the airline employee that “you do that to me and I’ll knock you flat”. From there the employee begins to point at the male passenger telling him to “stay out of it” before the passenger emerges from his seat to confront the employee who challenges the passenger to hit him.
Christ…
There’s no video of what happened between the woman and employee right before what see above however based on the reactions of the woman and other passengers some serious shit occurred just prior.
Here’s an eyewitness account via Q13 Fox:
Olivia Morgan was standing in the doorway of the aircraft with her 8-year-old daughter waiting to board when the altercation happened.
“The flight attendant wrestled the stroller away from the woman, who was sobbing, holding one baby with the second baby in a car seat on the ground next to her,” she said.
Morgan said the flight attendant was “violent” when taking the metal stroller from the woman and nearly hit the baby with the stroller.
“He stormed by me with the stroller and I said something like, ‘What are you doing? You almost hit that baby!’ And he yelled at me to ‘stay out of it!’ just like he does in the video,” she said.
Morgan said she talked to the woman about the incident. The woman said a female flight attendant told her she could look for space to store the stroller because it folds up very small, but if there was no available space, she would need to check it at the gate.
“She was looking for space when the male attendant tried to take it away from her… and she said she told him the other attendant had told her it was okay to look,” she said.
The plane eventually departed an hour after its scheduled time (1 PM local) and American Airlines has suspended the employee pending an investigation into the matter. The woman and her children were also compensated and upgraded to first class for the remainder of their trip.
Speaking of the woman, I don’t want to totally let her off the hook. Based on the eyewitness accounts and information gathered afterwards she clearly helped escalate the situation when she refused to check the stroller at the gate – which is pretty painless process when traveling with children, I’ve had to do it myself – and then again refusing to give up the stroller when asked to by the airline employees.
Likewise the airline employee acted like an incredibly unprofessional douche-bag and is really one of the pinnacles of what’s wrong with the airline industry in the United States. Seriously getting into a tug-of-war match with a passenger over a stroller, allegedly hitting her in the head and ALMOST striking the baby in the process? Then challenging another passenger to hit him? And all of this taking place after the United incident? Hell I’d figure carriers in the United States would be offering up free back rubs and not engage in WWE like tactics over a stroller.
