Passenger Records Why He Is Being Bumped — Airline Agent Grabs His Phone, Then Hits The 73 Year Old In The Eye

A passenger tried to record an airline employee explaining why they were being bumped off their flight. The employee attacked the 73-year old man, tried to steal his phone, and left him with a swollen eye.

WestJet passenger Jason Huang was flying from Edmonton to Toronto. He and his family had checked in and printed boarding passes. But at the airport his boarding passes were replaced with ones for a later flight with no clear explanation.

It turns out the airline swapped aircraft, and had to involuntarily bump customers off the full flight, so they’d be traveling several hours later. He wasn’t being offered any compensation, so he started recording his interaction with the airline’s agents.

• A WestJet agent told him he couldn’t record and threatened to call the police if he didn’t stop. He refused, so the agent told him: “You’re not flying today.”

• The agent grabbed Huang’s phone out of his hand and tore up all four boarding passes.

• Huang’s 73-year-old father started recording. The agent tells the family they have “no right” to record and ordering them to “get this phone down!”

• The agent then reaches for the 73-year old’s phone – and hits him in the eye, leaving it red and swollen.

Jingan Huang’s swollen eye, via CBC

According to the airline,

WestJet takes situations like this very seriously, and the incident was promptly investigatedinternally and recently closed with appropriate internal follow-up.We sincerely apologize to the guests for this experience, guest care is an important value atWestJet.We appreciate their patience while we completed the investigation; a member of our GuestSupport team is getting in touch with the guests directly to follow up on this matter.

Canada has one-party consent for recording private communications, and this one was happening in public. You can legally record a conversation you are part of in person or by phone without telling the other party.

And the passengers wanted to record the airline’s explanation to support their claim under Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations, because WestJet denied him boarding for reasons within their control and not for a safety issue. He wanted compensation for the downgrade. And Canada’s government tells passengers that when you’re bumped, ask why, and get the explanation. He wanted a record of it.

• In the U.S., airlines get a free pass on involuntarily denied boarding compensation when it’s because of an aircraft swap.

• But Canada does not give airlines the same exception. Under passenger protection regulations, whether compensation is owed turns on why the aircraft was swapped.

  Switching out a plane with fewer seats for commercial reasons is treated as being under the airline’s control, with compensation still due. If a smaller plane is all that’s available as a replacement aircraft when a plane goes mechanical, that’s still within the airline’s control but required for safety.

Earlier this month I wrote about the case of Air Transat passengers in Punta Cana, where an agent refused to check them in unless they deleted videos they had taken and signed a document admitting to having been abusive, a Canadian judge issued a scathing ruling about how crucial it is for customers to record interactions that show they’re being mistreated.

The judge called the airline’s conduct “especially egregious” and wrote,

Thank goodness [the passenger] took video, so that I can actually see how terrible the customer service that he received at the hands of the defendant corporation was.

The airline claimed their concern was safety, but the judge pointed out that if there was really a safety risk, telling passengers to delete their video as the condition to fly made no sense.

If there hadn’t been passenger video of David Dao’s being dragged off of a United flight and bloodied, airlines would never have changed their denied boarding practices nor would the Department of Transportation have changed its rules.