DON'T PLAY THE RACE CARD!
Disruptive Airline Passengers
Disruptive Airline Passengers
Although details of the
incident are sketchy, it appears that the passenger was seated in the Exit Row
and was not being cooperative with the flight attendant’s job responsibility to
receive verbal commitments from ALL passengers seated in the Exit Rows for
assistance in the case of an Evacuation Emergency. All passengers who fly, and
been seated in an Exit Row seat, know of this procedure to obtain “verbal”
acknowledgment of willingness to assist in case of an Emergency. Passengers
also must be able to understand and speak English, for obvious
reasons. Failure to render this agreement for cooperation requires that the passenger unwilling to agree to assist be
re-seated. Evidently, there was more to
the story than the passenger’s refusal to render a verbal response to the
flight attendant that resulted in the expulsion from the flight. There may have been a language barrier, given
that Tom Joyner also mentioned the passenger may have had difficulty speaking
English.
Flight crews, after the
September 2001 terrorist attacks, have been trained to maintain a Zero
Toleration policy for passenger misconduct, which includes passenger failures
to comply with on-board Safety procedures. Excessive drinking, belligerence and
any other disruptive behavior Will NOT be tolerated, especially on the ground,
before closing the door at the Departure gate. Passengers need to understand
this before they board an aircraft. In purchasing a ticket on today’s airlines,
it is tacitly agreed that one is agreeing to abide by the airline’s rules of safety
and passenger conduct.
I am a retired Boeing
757 captain and have the indelible memory of the peering down into the
smoldering hole that was two days prior the site of the World Trade Centers.
After those tragic hijackings, airline crews, of necessity, tightened-up
procedures for passenger conduct on board flights. No longer do airline crews
tolerate any form of shenanigans or misbehavior on flights. On one of my own
flights I had the unpleasant duty of denying an African-American passenger,
accompanied by his wife and three young children, boarding on a flight from
Midway Airport to Seattle because he got upset with the Senior flight attendant,
threating to kick his MF’ing ass, for
not immediately resolving a seating conflict separating his family as they
boarded the flight. The Senior flight attendant called Airport Security,
informed me that he had been threatened by a passenger, and refused to work the
trip if that passenger was allowed to remain on the flight. In an incident like
that, a captain has no recourse but to support his co-worker’s call.
I escorted the young
Brother outside onto the jet-way and supportively explained to him exactly why
he was being denied boarding; he had threatened a flight crewmember. We have an unwritten motto in the airlines:
We don’t take a potential problem on the ground into the air with us. Once airborne on a flight segment, if a
disruptive situation develops that can’t be managed by flight attendants, we
WILL divert to an Alternate en route airport, deplane and have passengers
arrested who can’t conduct themselves in the proper manner. Passengers need to
know this.
Given the reality of today’s
onboard safety rules for proper passenger conduct on airliners, I feel it was
disingenuous of Tom Joyner to mention the incident on the United Airlines
flight, emphasizing that the female passenger who was expelled from the flight
had a “Black Lives Matter” T-Shirt. The
easy inference being that her being kicked-off the flight had something to do
with race. It appears, from the
information available, that this passenger was resistant to acknowledging Exit
Row procedures and therefore was required to be re-seated. Any resistance,
verbal or otherwise, to this procedural requirement could have been perceived
as recalcitrant or threatening behavior that the flight attendant is not
obligated to tolerate. The passenger has to leave the aircraft, no matter who she
or he is, Black Lives Matter T-Shirt or not.
Let’s reserve the Race Card for applicable scenarios; we diminish its
value if it is played without discretion.
Submitted by Capt. Brian H. Settles (
RET.)
Author of Smoke
for Breakfast: A Vietnam Combat
Pilot’s Story
www.CaptBrianSettles.com
