American Airlines Suspends Worker After Confrontation With Mother
American Airlines has taken swift action after video of a confrontation between one of their employees and a mother with two small children went viral.
The video, uploaded by Facebook user Surain Adyanthaya, shows a woman holding a baby crying hysterically near the front of the plane on a flight, preparing to fly from San Francisco to Dallas-Forth Worth. Another passenger eventually gets involved in the fracas and almost comes to blows with the employee.
WFAA in Dallas has been on top of this story…
The original poster says he was told it started over how a flight attendant dealt with a young mother who was trying to store a stroller in an overhead bin.
Near the start of the 2 minute and 40 second video, the woman can be heard crying and asking for her stroller back.“He was very upset. He grabbed it and just pulled it off, sort of violently yanked it, and then stormed off the plane with it,” Surain Adyanthaya said.
As the video continues another passenger, Tony Fierro, of Dallas, apparently upset with how the situation is being handled, gets up and approaches the front of the plane where the attendant, young mother, and other crew members are gathered. He asks for the flight attendant’s name and returns to his seat.
Other passengers can be faintly heard discussing the situation, appearing to explain to other crew members that the flight attendant grabbed the woman’s stroller.
Around 1:50 into the video, the male passenger again rejoins the situation, apparently yelling at the flight attendant saying “Hey bud, hey bud, you do that to me and I’ll knock you flat!” with the attendant getting visibly agitated and gesturing wildly at the passenger, replying “you stay out of this!”
Fierro said the situation upset him.
“A baby almost got hurt. That’s what just fired me up, so that was it. I don’t want to make a big deal about it,” Fierro said.
According to American Airlines, the woman tried to bring a double-wide stroller down the aisle of a single-aisle A321. The airlines said she did speak English, and she had flown from Argentina to the U.S. but forgot she needed to check in the stroller and tried to bring it on the plane with her.
The airline said it upgraded the woman and her kids to first class for the flight to Buenos Aires. She is in Argentina now.
The airlines said they agreed that the flight attendant shouldn’t have gotten in the face of a passenger. He has been put on paid leave while an investigation is underway.
