American Airlines passengers shared that a flight attendant named Shannon followed them off their aircraft and outside to the curb at Washington’s National airport “with intention to stalk, intimidate, harass and cause great emotional distress to a black couple” after she’d threatened to put the man “on the ‘no-fly list’ after he wanted to finish his water when she came to collect it for landing. It sounds like they were first class passengers.

During inflight service she asked me what I was having, I said ginger ale please, she ignored me one time, two times, then 3, when I asked her one last time she turned around and yelled I need to go get more.

…Then as she is coming by to collect trash, she proceeds to yell at my partner to give her his water cup, he’s literally drinking the water. He says, “can I finish my water” she said no give me the cup NOW! And …I’m going to put you on the “no fly list” you need to speak with the captain when we land.

She reportedly told the passengers she had “officers waiting outside for you.” That appears not to have been true, but she started following and recording them.

American Airlines has not responded to a request for comment on this incident.

I understand how someone can assume poor or indifferent service could be because of race. It’s more likely just that this is poor service because it’s American Airlines and more crew than you’d hope make that the norm.

Remember that (1) the longer you stay on the job, the more money you make; (2) you get to pick the flights you work based on seniority; (3) there are very few negative consequences at work for poor service, and very little benefit to providing good service.

American missed a huge opportunity with its recent flight attendant contract negotiatons, handing out big raises to cabin crew, not to get any sort of ghost rider program or serious service standards enforcement with teeth. There are many fantastic flight attendants at American Airlines, but what’s genuinely impressive is how they go about providing above and beyond service because they’re intrinsically motivated to do so – not because of anything that management does to encourage it. (Poor service at American Airlines is a management failure, not a flight attendant failure.)

And as for filming the passenger, the flight attendant probably wasn’t thinking any more deeply about it than ‘they’re filming me so I’m going to film them’ although it isn’t clear who was filming whom first. The passengers may well have threatened the no fly list but that is not how any of this works.

• A flight attendant can fill out a CERS report to trigger an investigation by corporate security.

• But they have no direct influence over the outcome.

American Airlines flight attendants were fired last year after removing African American passengers who weren’t traveling together over a supposed ‘odor’ issue. That led to the airline restricting the ability of flight attendants to remove passengers for odor, attire or attitude.