A heated moment from a scene captured by Surain Adyanthaya and posted to Facebook
“Maybe you’ll get videotaped too and it will be all over the news,” shouted an angry passenger at a flight attendant on a recent San Francisco-Dallas flight on American Airlines caught on video. Apparently a flight attendant violently grabbed a baby stroller from a mother, which set off this incident of tears, shouting and a near physical altercation.
According to a Facebook video posted by Surain Adyanthaya (see below), here’s what happened: OMG! AA Flight attendant violently took a stroller from a lady with her baby on my flight, hitting her and just missing the baby. Then he tried to fight a passenger who stood up for her. AA591 from SFO to DFW.
Dallas News station Q13FOX reports, “According to multiple witnesses, the woman, who is from Argentina and was flying internationally, brought her stroller on the plane. When the flight attendant attempted to remove the stroller from the plane, there was an altercation, which resulted in the stroller striking the woman and nearly hitting her child.”
After the widespread attention to last week’s United incident, prepare for newly empowered and enraged passengers to get feisty this summer as temperatures and tempers soar.
Here’s the full video from the American Airlines flight 591 incident on Friday night at SFO:
American Airlines responded quickly to the incident on Friday night, removing the flight attendant in question and posting the following statement on its website:
Statement from American Airlines
More details are emerging about the incident this morning and reported on the Q13Fox News site.
You may be a veteran business traveler with millions of miles under your belt, but do you really know what your specific rights are if something goes wrong?
Following a tsunami of publicity about United Airlines dragging a passenger off a flight, the Transportation Department has put up a new web page that serves as a one-stop research center for air travelers’ rights.
Subjects covered on the new web resource include tarmac delays, flight delays/cancellations, reservations and ticketing issues, refunds, accessibility and discrimination, baggage issues, bumping and oversales, and passenger complaints. It also includes links to other consumer protection pages.
The updated DOT site goes into some detail about overbooking for example, it notes that airlines are required to conduct an auction to solicit volunteers who will surrender their seats. If there aren’t enough, “it is legal for airlines to involuntarily bump passengers,” DOT said. And “it is the airline’s responsibility to determine its own fair boarding priorities.”
When that happens, “an airline may deny you a seat on an aircraft based on criteria that it establishes, such as the passenger’s check-in time, the fare paid by the passenger, or the passenger’s frequent flyer status,” DOT said. “However, the criteria cannot subject a passenger to any unjust or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage. For example, an airline could not lawfully use a passenger’s race or ethnicity as a criterion.”
What do you think about these new incidents? Is this just a taste of what’s to come later this summer? Please leave your comments below.
ICYMI, see the 25 most recent TravelSkills posts right here
In the market for a new credit card? See our “Credit Card Deals” tab to shop around! It helps us help you.
Don’t miss out! Join the 185,000+ people who read TravelSkills every month! Sign up here for one email-per-day updates!
