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Posted on 04/22/2017 6:55:12 AM PDT by Helicondelta
An American Airlines attendant has been suspended after smacking a mother with a baby stroller onboard a domestic flight Friday afternoon, according to passengers.
The woman had just boarded a 2:18 p.m. flight from San Francisco to Dallas when the shocking incident occurred.
A video posted to Facebook by Surian Adyanthaya caught the tumultuous aftermath.
“OMG! AA Flight attendant violently took a stroller from a lady with her baby on my flight, hitting her and just missing the baby,” Adyanthaya captioned the video.
The footage doesn’t catch the moment when the flight attendant allegedly struck the woman, but the atmosphere in the cabin gets tense as a man steps in to defend her.
“Hey bud, you do that to me and I’ll knock you flat,” the man says to the attendant as the distraught woman stands to the side clutching her baby, with tears streaming down her face.
“You stay out of this,” the attendant fires back.
The man then takes a step forward and the attendant immediately turns confrontational.
“Hit me, c’mon, bring it on!” the attendant shouts.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
She obviously did not find storage for it and was telling the flight attendant to “give me my stroller”. She was not saying “find a storage place for it.”
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According to a witness:
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.
According to the American Airlines website, small strollers can be checked at the gate but there is no policy about strollers in the overhead bin.”
http://jalopnik.com/american-airlines-employee-allegedly-hit-woman-with-str-1794552514?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Jalopnik_twitter
“”How can you miss that?””
Gee - with all the commotion, I have no idea! The word “stroller” was heard and other than the two guys yelling at one another, nothing else was clear...
I wonder why the article at the link referred to “twins”...It doesn’t appear that she had twin babies with her. If it was a stroller for TWO, it probably would not have fit in the overhead. The article does say she was told she could look for another place to stow it by a flight attendant.
We flew AA from LAX to Nashville in the spring of 2010, relocating for a job. Because we were moving, we had a lot of “stuff” to check, including pets, and it was piled on one of the airport carts. It was about 7 a.m. so we’d already been up for a long time after spending the night on the floor, then in a taxi, in LA traffic. A mess.
DH rolled the cart up close to the counter to get it out of the way, while I stood in line to secure our place in line. A nasty AA (AA = American Airlines AND Affirmative Action) agent kept screaming at me to “go directly to the gate!” since I had no luggage. (It was on the cart.) When I pointed that out, everyone in line laughed at her and I guess it embarrassed her because at that point we were targeted.
She went to my husband and told him he had to unload everything because he wasn’t allowed to touch the cart — only union hacks could do that. (We had no idea. Saw the empty cart and used it.) Then he was called to the counter and that rescued us for the time being.
We checked in and started rolling the cart to where they inspect the check-in baggage. They used to take it at the counter, put it on the conveyor belt, and that was the end of it. No more. The same AA “woman” came screaming after us to not touch the cart, so we had to wait 10 minutes for a union hack to show up and roll the cart about 20 feet.
Then another agent had to inspect the cats. Other pets were just looked at in the cages and passed through. We were told that ours were going to be taken out of their cages. I have no idea why. When we requested that they do it in a room with a closed door (and there was one immediately behind them), in case a frightened cat escaped and went loose in the airport, the inspector guy got pissed at us.
All of this was happening with the typical LAX chaos spinning around us.
If the flight attendant had harassed us after getting on the plane, I hate to think what I’d have said or done.
“Looking for a nun-gun.”
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But found none, just a nun.
Thanks - more info..
This does explain the “twins” but still hard to account for as no one seems to be paying any attention to another baby in a seat on the floor. That poor woman didn’t need the hassle when she was already handling two babies. She was told one thing by an attendant and prevented from doing that by another one and her frustration level had to be off the meter - mine certainly would have been.
Wrong. There are strollers that are small. They are made specifically to be stowed in the overhead bin. She was told it could be brought aboard.
Even if you were correct - which you are not - do you think it was appropriate for the FA to hit her in the head while she was holding her twins?
American is supporting the woman and is flying her first class.
Pure speculation on your part. Were you there?
“She was told one thing by an attendant and prevented from doing that by another one and her frustration level had to be off the meter - mine certainly would have been.”
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It’s a royal pain to deal with when person A says to do something, but then person B says another thing.
“”If the flight attendant had harassed us after getting on the plane, I hate to think what I’d have said or done.”
What any of us would have felt in the same situation. I just posted that this woman’s frustration level had to be pretty high and then consider what she would have gone through getting two babies TO and THROUGH the airport and onto the plane only to be met by some arrogant jerk...
Bravo to the man (whose wife was trying to hold him back which was natural) who stood up and spoke up. Something that wasn’t done on that UAL plane a week or so ago...
I think he was the gate agent and nota flight attendant.
All he would have had to do is say “we’ll store this for you and give it back at the end of the flight”. Nothing too had about that.
“”It’s a royal pain to deal with when person A says to do something, but then person B says another thing.””
For sure....The woman had to be breathing a sigh of relief to finally be on the plane and able to sit and then be ACCOSTED by that jerk...
Finally see the second one - thanks. Have to wonder who was tending to the second one when all the brouhaha was taking place...
Now tell me who the guy is with the stripes who was utterly useless... With stripes, I would take him for a member of the cockpit crew but who knows? If so, he’s a pretty sloppy officer..IMO
She was given permission to look for storage for it, which she did not find. When she was crying, she was asking for her stroller back which, from the comments made by the FA and the other passenger, was after she could not find storage for it. So where did she think it was going to be stored? Why is she asking for it when she already knew she couldn’t find storage for it?
Of course I don’t think it was correct for the FA to hit her, but I didn’t see that on the video. The male passenger says the FA “almost” hit her in the head, so I don’t know if she did or not.
I am AMAZED the macho-man clearly drunk passenger wasn’t tossed off the plane. Physically threatening an FA is usually automatic removal, frequently by cops.
which is why I said:
I have absolutely no reason to say this...
Wow, while my experience has never been that awful, those I have encountered have been most unpleasant. Simply cranky, unhappy people.
I will say that the FAs on Aer Lingus, Emirates, and Etihad are incredible as far as international flights go. Alaska Airlines and Southwest domestically are fab. I had an Alaska FA sit in my lap. Long, humorous story :) And Southwest, their FAs make me laugh. We all know that in the event of an emergency they are going get the job done, but I love that they aren’t full of themselves.
Flew into Las Vegas 10 days ago. Very turbulent on our descent to McCarran. Pilot does a great job getting us on the ground. As soon as we roll up to the gate, we hear, “Phew, we made it” . We all laughed. Could never see an AA FA saying that.
“Bravo to the man (whose wife was trying to hold him back which was natural) who stood up and spoke up. Something that wasn’t done on that UAL plane a week or so ago...”
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Yeah, it’s one thing to sit and complain and take video, it’s another to get up, speak your mind and risk getting in trouble. Good thing the guy’s wife was there, though, to tug him back to his seat.
How do you know that? Neither of us were there. I’m not going to make up stories to fit a narrative that may or may not be true.
BTW - here is a quote from FlyerTalk:
“It’s amazing to me how many people are unaware of, and refuse to do a basic google search about, strollers that are designed to be stored in an overhead compartment alongside other bags. And yet, they still feel a need to post.”
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