Tamar Braxton is apparently a Delta Diamond and lifetime elite, so a very experienced flyer. Prior to departure of her flight from Cincinnati on Friday night she had an altercation with crew that was taped and shared on social media.
The video starts when the pilot comes out to speak with singer and reality show star (“Braxton Family Values”). Her sister recorded the conversation. The pilot says,
Here’s how this works. My flight attendants work for me. They give orders that come from me, OK? And so if you get an instruction from a flight attendant, I need to know that you are willing and able to do what you are told to do. Are you willing and able to do what you are told to do by a flight attendant? Don’t ask me any questions… answer yes or no.
Tamar Braxton responds yes and the pilot leaves. The video was posted to Instagram and tweeted. Delta responded on Twitter.
Towanda, our employees reflect our culture of treating all people with dignity and respect, and if we aren’t doing that, we aren’t doing our job. We’re looking into it now. Please DM here for additional assistance. *HCJ https://t.co/6iDGBJRMTU
— Delta (@Delta) July 28, 2018
I have four reactions to this video.
- I do not know what transpired between this woman and a flight attendant that led crew to call for the captain. I think it matters for whether the captain was justified in coming out and speaking to her, which is different from concern over the manner in which he spoke to her.
- I found the captain to be incredibly condescending (“Don’t ask me any questions… answer yes or no”)
- Why is he so interested in her answer? Why would he take her at her word? I realize the captain’s interest is whether there is going to be a problem inflight, so whether she is going to follow flight attendant instructions or be a problem but I’m skeptical of the connection between her saying she’ll follow instructions to the captain prior to departure and the likelihood of her actually doing so.
- Take it to DM. The dominant corporate strategy whenever criticize in social media is to get the conversation moved to direct message, get the criticism – whatever it is – to stop in public as quickly as possible.
Last year a Delta pilot hit a passenger who was fighting in the jetway. Delta defended the pilot.
Pilot is spot on. He is making sure the passenger will follow crew member instructions. He was no BS. She obviously wasn’t listening to the crew otherwise the captain would not have been called. Why is everything about race. It seems anytime anything happens to a minority , no matter what, they just say well it’s because I’m ……..
Just another self important, self absorbed, don’t-you-know-who-I-am “celebrity” that 99% of the public has never heard of. Just like the one last week (?) who pitched a hissy fit because the FA didn’t give her the attention she felt she deserved over her companion’s peanut allergy. Never heard of either one.
“…. got ridiculed by a pilot for flying while black on Delta” – give me a break! I’m sick and tired of people using demographics as excuses for every single bump in their road. So “The cable guy arrived late at my house today because I’m _____!” (you fill in the blank). Sure.
I have over 3.2 million miles as a passenger on another major airliner. I’m also a licensed Pilot and aircraft owner.
Towanda (who ever that is) is NOT the most important person on the plane and the safety of all aboard is what matters. Refusing a directive by a flight crew member, in this case the Flight Attendant, is very serious. For the Captain to leave the flight deck to talk with a passenger something must have been very wrong. I hope airport police was waiting at the gate when the plane landed.
If Towanda doesn’t like it Greyhound is available to most cities.
I don’t know what happened before the video – Ed says it was a complaint over a peanut allergy. Fine. To me, it doesn’t really matter what it was. The captain is really out of line speaking to anyone – especially an adult (she’s 41) – in this way. I understand he needs to make sure there won’t be a problem, and I fully support that, but his job isn’t to humiliate the passengers.
Tamar Braxton is known for 3 things:
1) She’s the sister of singer Toni Braxton
2) She’s known for her shenanigans on reality tv and social media
3) She was FIRED from a talk show no one watches called The Real
The pilot was direct and professional.
Tamar backed right down on the plane, then plays “the race card” through social media, highlighting what a weasel she truly is.
Another site reported that this moron was “hiding” under a blanket talking on her cell phone and ignoring the FA’s directions to turn the phone off. If this is what happened, the pilot was 100% justified. Don’t care who she thinks she is or what race she is.
Thank you, Greg. That was lovely.
To the rest of you, it’s obvious we don’t have the whole story. Too many assumptions being made on both sides.
There is obviously a discrepancy between the way people are treated based on how they’re perceived. I know personally that as a generic white dude I’m offered more deference in my dealings with airline staff (and customer service staff in general) than a person of a darker skin tone.
Perfect example from a recent flight: myself and a black female passenger seated next to me had our phones out and were surfing on our phones when the boarding door had closed. Technically we were both supposed to have the phone in airplane mode. The FA who came down the aisle asked the black passenger if she was hard of hearing. When the pax replied that she was not, the FA said that she needs to have her phone in airplane mode, which she did. We had both committed the same violation but the response was entirely different. This isn’t unique to airlines and it deserves to be called out whenever it happens.
I wish this site would not allow people like Greg to use racial slurs. I take great offense to his use of the the “R” word. While I appreciate him sharing his thoughts and views I do not appreciate his racist remarks. I wish people had enough common sense to know that if you withhold those types of derogatory terms that their message will be better received by people of opposing views. On a side note I would like Greg to tell me where he saw the members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party marching in the streets. They may have been here to support Bernie Sanders since he strongly believes in socialism.
@Adam, thanks for sharing your experience.
@Rob – No, I didn’t say this incident was over a peanut allergy. Please reread my first post.
@Geoganna – Looks like @Greg’s post was removed, at least I’m no longer seeing it. Probably because it definitely wasn’t “lovely”.
The Captain isn’t going to come out of the cockpit unless he’s been told there is a problem. So obviously something has happened that we don’t know anything about. Its rather interesting that we have no lead up as to why the Captain got called to speak with her.
When something like this happens we have no idea who the person is or anything else about them. All we know is that the man/women in 27C is doing X. We don’t know race and we don’t know if they are a first time flyer or a mega super platinum elite.The fact that he’s back there is indicative that she’s very close to getting booted from the plane.
I think its fair to presume there has been some argument based on the Captain’s question. He’s to the point and clear. He’s not condescending he’s got a flight to operate and he wants to know if she’s going to be a problem or not. The blog community goes nuts every time someone gets removed from a flight and now Gary is essentially arguing that she should have been removed because her answer can’t be trusted. Is that really what you want?
What’s really offensive is that this person calls the Captain a racist based on the fact she’s black and he’s white. I also find it troublesome that her side of the story is getting media attention and being taken at face value when its blatantly obvious there is a lot we don’t know.
These people and many more used to take Greyhound. Now we have to sit next to them
A few years ago we were on a Delta flight, there were some people of darker skin, (not African American) they were just driving the flight attendant crazy with their demands. We were seated by the galley so we could see she was struggling to regain her composure. My husband got up and went back and told them to leave the flight attendant alone. Then he told her what he did. She answered you didn’t. Yes I did. A little later my husband said to her my call button isn’t working, she answered I disabled it.
@Jon
You are a troll, a racist, and wrong on so many levels!
But then again the blame falls squarely on the current PotUS and his dog-whistle rhetoric/politics that enabled such ugliness to come out of the trash bin of history!
@Jon –
What do you mean by “these people”? Did you mean “multi-million miler Diamonds” or something else?
I’m not saying that the captain did anything wrong, but when discussing issues potentially involving race, words matter.
IME – as a weekly Delta flyer – about half of Delta’s FAs are black–At least those flying around the SE. If a black passenger gets into an altercation with a black FA and a white captain comes out ot try and shut down the problem (defending his black suboordinate) and take off on time, where is the racism?
@jon. U and the KKK think alike. Bet my bottom dollar u like Trump
Poor Tamar Braxton. Busted for flying while being a jerk. Too bad the filming started only when it suited her agenda. I’m sure we’d all like to see what led up to this. All except of course for Tamar.
Gary Leff should stick to writing about credit cars. He’s clearly out to get some publicity for himself every time there is one of these passenger/airline crew videos. Furthermore he make no attempt to understand the airline employees perspective on these issues. By the way I think the Captain was justified in speaking to this women in an authoritative and direct manner. After all, he is the Pilot-in- Command of the aircraft, this women was apparently behaving in an uncooperative manner which prompted him to come out of the cockpit in the first place. He handled the situation well by being direct and concise. Airline passengers including Mr. Leff should be thankful that airline crews do not allow commercial airline cabins to devolve into dystopian free for alls like a San Francisco BART train.
I am white baby boomer professional female AA Platinum Million Miler. Years ago (when I was Gold and before video cell phones) I was upgraded to F at the gate. Since all the other F passengers had already boarded, there was no space in the F overhead bins for my carry-on, although space was being taken up by items that could have gone under a seat. I asked the FA to find room for my bag, and she said I would have to check it. I proceeded to point out that there would be space if she asked those who placed under-seat items in the overhead bin to remove them, or to place my carry-on in the closet. She nastily refused. I pointed out that FAs typically make such accomodations. She apparently did not like my response and got the captain to come back and talk to me, which was completely uncalled-for. He was pleasant and asked what my issue was; I explained, but he said there was nothing he could do, and I would have to check my bag. Obviously, there was SOMETHING the captain could do, but he chose not to. At that point, I shut up and became compliant and gave up my carry-on, since I recognized who was in charge. I was not afforded the customer service that I had seen being given to others, typically men (even in coach) on numerous occasions. Those were the days when the FAs doted on businessmen and tended to ignore businesswomen. I was angry and felt mistreated because of my gender, and probably should have contacted AA to complain, but had more important things to devote my time to. FAs did not and still do not like to be challenged. You have to do what they say. Today, however, they are rude to the men as well! Race and gender don’t matter…the FAs have the power, and you have to acquiesce, no matter who you are.
I think it totally matters what happened before. If she was totally ignoring instructions and was out of line then she should be spoken to this way. Its basically a final warning before being thrown off the plane or maybe arrested. If the FA was over reacting in getting the captain its one thing, if she was being a self entitled brat causing a disruption thats something else. Im sure sone will try to make this all about race and i suspect the this wouldn’t even be a post if she was white. Bottom line is we dont know what happened before, but sometimes it needs to be nade clear to people that they aren’t going to sit there and debate the staff.
The article left out the part where they asked to get off the plane which they were allowed but then they refused to remove their carry on baggage which would be a violation of FAA rules in an apparent attempt to cause a flight delay. Some reporting says this is what lead to the captain needing to come out because they would not comply, other reporting seems to indicate that this occurred after the captain came out, but either way there is agreement that they were at some point refusing to abide by crew instructions. Then factor in who this person is, a reality tv star, who if you know anything about her seems to revel in conflict and publicity. I think people would be well advised to step back from passing judgement on the crew until there are additional details forthcoming. Maybe FAs need to start wearing bodycams, so we don’t get one sided videos like this.
KALBOZ you a liberal idiot!!! i love when people used the R card in everything!!!