Star Alliance member EVA Air has one of the best business class products in the world but has been in the news lately for how a single passenger behaved inflight and whether the airline does enough to protect its flight attendants.
Now there’s further criticism over the way the carrier approaches rumor and innuendo surrounding members of its cabin crew, based on an incident that occurred the very same day.
At a news conference held in front of the Taoyuan City Government on Tuesday morning, the female flight attendant, who covered her face with a ball cap and black mask to maintain her anonymity, told reporters that she had been falsely accused of engaging in prostitution in the Netherlands and taking part in an adult video. She said she was traumatized by the ensuing questioning and forced written statements, and was humiliated by the rumors that circulated in the company because of the investigation.
The flight attendant was accused of prostitution and appearing in a porn film. The allegations reported stem from an anonymous letter sent to the airline.
While the claims are apparently unsubstantiated, EVA Air “temporarily reassigned her duties on Jan. 19, interrogated her for three hours, and asked her baited questions about her friends and emotional state.”
EVA Air Union member Chao Chieh-huan (趙婕歡) said, “He [company] directly asked my union member, ‘please may I ask if you have ever had a foreign boyfriend? Does your boyfriend have tattoos on his body? Because the main character in the video has tattoos.’ He kept pressing with the questions, and then asked ‘if you think that it was a boyfriend who filmed it, which boyfriend was it,'” reported SETN.
The flight attendant said she was asked to ‘prove herself innocent’ and prove that she wasn’t the actress in the film at issue. She was told to “continue to search the internet to find if there were any other obscene photos or videos with her in them” and to “write a formal letter stating that she was not the person in the video in question and that she would never do anything to hurt the company’s reputation.”
The carrier defended its investigation as proper and legal.
(HT: David H.)
Shaggy defense?
How do you defend yourself against a non-event ?? I think EVA’s management was a bit “heavy-handed”, given the details reported here. Obviously men are running the Q&A show….
Just when I was thinking about switching to EVA as a preferred carrier. Will never happen. Until they come out with an explicit, transparent and genuine apology and explanation for such abusive, inappropriate behavior, which was sanctioned no less by the company’s senior management, EVA WILL NEVER GET A DOLLAR OUT OF ME. SHAMEFUL & DISRESPECTFUL.
Someone should ask them, how do you actually ‘prove your innocence’? No, seriously, how would one do that? It is absurd to ask someone to prove his/her innocent.
Of course it is ridiculous to be asked to prove your innocence. However, the boot is usually on the other foot when men are accused of misconduct or wrongdoing. Unfortunately in the “enlightened West” where feminism, trans everything etc. are all the rage and oh so PC, the accusations usually run that way round. In the more old fashioned East and Asia, things still work differently.
Harry, I totally agree that the pendulum has swung the other way in our societies. Why can we logic not prevail, I wonder? Why can’t we, as a collective bunch, settle on neither male- nor female-dominated society, but a logic-led one? Oh, the nirvana eludes us…
Edit: … Why can’t the logic prevail…