One passenger’s behavior caused flight 2557 from New York JFK to Georgetown, Guyana to divert back to New York two hours into the trip. This occurred last July 18th, and appears to have been reported at the time, but is now receiving
American Airlines Flight Diverted After Passenger Called Flight Attendant A “Waiter”
A nickname that didn’t sit well with the steward, escalating their exchanges, which caught the attention of the pilots. They decided to divert the flight and return to JFK Airport in New York, where the passenger was removed from the aircraft by the crew.
There are basically two takeaways here,
- This was rude and condescending
- There was no reason to escalate the situation in response. We saw during the pandemic with mask-related conflicts, American Airlines crew seemed most likely to escalate conflicts. We rarely saw this at United – disruptive passengers were written up and deal with on arrival – a consequence of widespread de-escalation training done after the April 2017 David Dao incident.
According to American Airlines,
Safety and security are our top priorities. We thank our customers for their understanding and our team members for their professionalism in handling a difficult situation.
The passenger was met by law enforcement on arrival. While the airline referred to the man as a “disruptive passenger,” American gave them 10,000 miles as an apology.
Obviously fake story. The linked source is a content farm, not a legitimate news site.
This was BA !!!!!!!!!!! AA doesn’t fly to Guyana !
@tim Ja
Sure they do
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL2557/history/20240506/2125Z/KJFK/SYCJ
@High Class & @Tim ja, why are you so quick to lable something as fake news ? Took two seconds to find this on an NBC News site: https://www.nbc24.com/news/nation-world/american-airlines-flight-turns-around-2-hours-after-passenger-calls-attendant-waiter-steward-business-class-dispute-respect-common-courtesy-cincinnati-policy-policies-escorted-off-pilot-referred-cabin-crew-technical-guyanese
@ hi class professional
There were literally dozens of news articles about it last year. I’m really surprised a high class professional doesn’t know how to use Google.
Why are you rechurning this up.a year later
Running out of negative news about AA?
Why dont you dig deeper and bash Delta
They just have a bigger broom to sweep negative press under the rug. ?
If true, the AA FA has an attitude problem. Waiters are people, too. Their occupation is nothing to be ashamed of.
I worry about the Captain who would revert a flight over insulting a crew member. Really? That’s not a safety issue. If it was a serious problem, you don’t fly for another two hours??
Is English this person’s native language? If not, it could have been something ‘lost in translation’. I know I accidently once called my host brother’s girlfriend fat, when I meant she looked comfortable. Accident!! If English wasn’t his native language he may have substituted waiter (as someone who waits on you versus a restaurant server) for flight attendant. The world is without a lot of grace today. A little would have made for a pleasant flight.
Is English this person’s native language? If not, it could have been something ‘lost in translation’. I know I accidently once called my German host brother’s girlfriend fat, when I meant she looked comfortable. Accident!! If English wasn’t his native language he may have substituted waiter (as someone who waits on you versus a restaurant server) for flight attendant. The world is without a lot of grace today. A little would have made for a pleasant flight.
@derek
Amen. As if being called a “waiter” is some unforgivable sin. They are mostly amazing people who deal with more BS with a smile than FAs. Of course not many servers have the option of 86ing a-holes. Imagine a world where restaurant staff had the same power. One a-hole and everyone must stop eating, exit the restaurant and return later to a cold meal. While still paying the same fee for service.
Unless a passenger is an actual threat, there’s zero justification for diversion. We all deal with idiots in our jobs. But we don’t interrupt the lives of 100s of people dealing with them. Only FAs have this power and while 99% are amazing the 1% are bad apples just enjoying a power trip.
Waiters work for poverty wages but they get tips. AA FAs work for poverty wages.
“We thank our customers for their understanding and our team members for their professionalism in handling a difficult situation.”
NO! DO NOT THANK ME AS YOUR CUSTOMER!
I do NOT understand, support, or am in any way sympathetic with collective punishment of an entire plane full of paying customers because a few power-hungry AA employees decide to escalate a ridiculous situation. “Safety” my ass. They were offended by one person and decided to take it out on everyone simply because they could.
This is an obviously true flight because it is actually on FlightAware. The trip was less than one hour out from JFK and less than one hour return. The rest of the story is less assured but it was certainly reported on many websites. I got enough details from the New York Post story to track down the flight. https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL2557/history/20230718/2139Z/KJFK/KJFK .
This is where the FAA needs to adjust policy. If this was actually the case, $1000 fine payable to each passenger full reimbursement for flight, free lodging, transportation and meals should be afforded to passengers as well as free flights to their planned destination.
@Joseph
I’m going to assume you work for AA or some other airline. You sure as hell don’t know what poverty wages are. I triple guarantee it in the words of Baghdad Bob.
@Thing 1
Amen brother
@Steve
You are 100% correct about Delta having a big broom a really big broom in Atlanta. Being born and raised and lived in Atlanta all my life I have seen this time and time again. They at least have the local press in their back pocket. The press doesn’t want to alienate one of their biggest advertisers.
@Gavin Christie, excellent idea !!! Make the FAA terms contingent on all incidents where the Cabin & Flight Crew were unable to prove a safety risk. That in turn will immediately cause the Airlines to hold conversations with their FA’s.
AA certainly handled this situation very poorly. This passenger posed no threat to the plane or others. Too inconvenience the rest of the passengers with a major flight disruption is incomprehensible.
Gavin Christie excellent idea! So tired of these overreacting FA who have no common sense. Imagine the cost to AA as a result of this disruption not to mention the other passengers.
Stupid on AA’s part. This diversion cost them LOTS of revenue:
Fuel
Labor for flight and ground crews – I’m sure they had to get a fresh flight crew for extra flight
Double the airport landing, gate, taxi fees, etc.
A severely delayed flight
Reimbursement for affected passengers (hotels, meals, drinks, etc.?)
Extra costs for rescreening and reloading passengers
Very negative publicity
@Gracie K
Guyana is an English-speaking country. It is technically part of South America but is generally considered part of the the Anglophone Caribbean. The passenger was a sassy gay man and knew exactly what they were saying.
That’s a reason to turn the aircraft around? Seriously? Completely ruin a couple of days for the other travelers? 10,000 miles? What a joke, 10,000 miles gets you nothing.
For an extremely thoughtful and premium travel experience, choose Delta.
@sal a sassy gay man? Wow. I guess the comments here so far weren’t offensive enough and things needed to be turned up a bit? The offenses were already at a high enough level.
If indeed this is real, what ab incredibly myopic and selfish course of action.
To delay a couple of hundred passengers for hurt feelings over the usage of an incorrect job title is frivolous at best, galling at worst.
A little perspective would go a long way in these events.
Gary, I used to get a confirmation email from WordPress after a comment. Not any more.
Have things changed?
Thanks!
@JorgeGeorge Paez – good question! your comments are certainly getting posted!
@JorgeGeorge Paez, if you are using a gmail account, you might be having some of your incoming emails blocked by Google. At least that is what I think happened to my emails from this site. I solved the problem by using an email account that is not from gmail.
Why is this a new story. This was reported days after the original even. The subject was a prissy nobody “media personality” from Guyana who pushed his luck too far.
When did using AI generated images for news stories become acceptable? Makes me think the entire thing is made up.
@Tim ja:
That’s odd. I just flew AA from Georgetown to Miami last October.
Do American pilots and FAs wake up every day and think “what can I do today to make our reputation even worse?” It sure seems so.
@bhn, you may have hit on what is going on at least for a subset of them.
1. The steward’s job includes cabin management but he was rude to the passenger. A passenger is airlines guest
2. It requires some action against the pilot who returned the flight after two hours flying burning fuel unnecessarily and made all the passengers suffer.
3. It’s a perfect example of might is right. What about the courtesy of pilot and the airlines towards the passengers ?
My take away from this incident is not to take the risk of flying with American Airlines. While passenger was allegedly rude and condescending the decision to abort the flight was self indulgent.
200 odd passengers suffer serious delays and possible onward travel problems because a stewards feathers were ruffled is over the top.
Either there is more to this story or AA staff forget who pays their wages.
Did they compensate all the other inconvenienced passengers with 10K miles as well? This is absurd. If I was a passenger on that flight and learned about this, I’d ask for thrice as much.
@Neil Forde — you are 100% correct. Some of the comments I have read on ViewFromTheWing, OneMileAtATime, etc. seem to have a common theme — American Airlines has serious issues with FAs that are on a complete power trip. Of course, United isn’t much better.