A passenger and his wife were removed from a flight by police after an altercation with a flight attendant, and the passenger is now concernedthat the flight won’t count towards his diamond status. I found this discussion, “Removed from an SAS plane after being assaulted by flight attendant” to be funny in its conclusion.
A flight attendant bumped the passenger’s wife during boarding. She was “in floods of tears” and told the crewmember he was a “bad man.” She was removed – and he stayed on the aircraft without her, but called out the flight attendant “you are a really nasty person” and is shocked that he was then booted as well. They were out of pocket $624 to get home and the airline is telling them to pound sand.
My wife and I were removed from an SAS flight after an attendant barged into my wife as we boarded (in boarding group A), she had to grab the headrest to prevent a fall.
Having seen the incident, the other attendant asked my wife if she ‘was ok?’, my wife respnded, ‘not really, i’ve just been pushed’, attendant stares straight at her and says, ‘well, that’ll be alright then, take your seat.’
…[T]he orginal attendant that pushed my wife leaning over to her and openly stating that yes, he did push her, he needed to get by… what was the fuss? By this time my wife was in floods of tears. She told the attendant he was ‘a bad man, please leave me alone’, he left us. 5 minutes later the police were onboard to escort my wife from the plane.
Now they want to know what to do about their status,
I am [SAS EuroBonus Gold], i had 10 flights booked from 01 Sep to get Diamond. The lack of credit for this flight means I have only 9. Should I book the cheapest flight I can find to get Diamond? Is it worth it?
My own take here is that, while the flight attendant could have done a better job de-escalating the situation after accidentally bumping this passenger’s wife during boarding, it’s on the passenger not to require de-escalation in the first place. It was an obvious accident and there’s no indication the woman was actually hurt in any meaningful way.
More importantly the priorities here are off. His wife was taken off the flight by law enforcement and he (1) stayed on without her, leaving her to fend for herself away from home, and (2) is worrying about his elite status benefits with the airline if they even allow him to fly them any longer!
A couple of Karens that were “bumped” by another Karen it looks to me. Airplanes are really tight spaces and over the past 20 years normally have every seat filled. There’s going to be people bumping into people. Deal with it. Or fly private.
Sadly, just another report told by the person removed from the plane. We’ll never know the whole story. But, your issues with the storyteller’s priorities make me wonder about veracity.
This sounds like a high school creative writing assignment. I don’t think any of this really happened.
What?
I’ll take “things that didn’t happen” for $400, Alex.
“A couple of Karens that were “bumped” by another Karen it looks to me.”
Perfectly said!
After all of that drama, the husband still wanted to pursue airline status? Not all heroes wear capes.
Hmmm, there is something about this story that doesn’t hold up, namely, there is only one side of it being told. Before throwing stones, I’ll await the other side of the story.
two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ’em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.”
@Steve it’s an admission against interest on the part of the passenger, so pretty sure this happened
If there is anything to this and there is any evidence that would stand up in court, the airline could be sued. The cabin crew member may have asked to get by and was refused or ignored, starting this situation. I suppose how the bumping was done would be the concern if it really happened. An accidental bumping while trying to slide by should not be a problem. An on purpose bumping to cause touching would be a problem and could be considered battery in the USA legal system. This situation goes to show that a person should not react to perceived bad actions by the cabin crew. Get in your seats and hold your comments. Wait until the flight is in the air and then quietly and discreetly find out if anyone has a video of the incident. Without a video or a person noting the incident and being willing be a witness (the other flight attendant would probably not be the witness), a lawsuit would be hard to pursue.
I used to think that FA were also right. They can be like the Gestapo secret police. Therefore, give them great respect, even more than they deserve. Chances are that nothing will happen to you if you try to avoid them but you never know. I am lucky not to ever have got into a confrontation with a FA in thousands of flights. I’ve met only a few nasty ones.
Status is overrated. I no longer have loyalty
Americans (the people, not the airline) don’t look so bad in comparison to some of the stories I am reading from rest of the world. 🙂
@jns – of course the knee jerk response from many Americans is “sue”. So sad. First of all you have no idea where this may have occurred and if suing is even an option (in most of the world you can’t find an ambulance chaser and sue like in the US). Secondly, there is a concept of contributory negligence and if both parties are at fault (likely the case here) it is tough to win a suit. Lastly, the passengers could have let it go instead of escalating and I’m sure that would be brought up. Also, on a plane FAs (and especially pilots) are basically the police and if have power over passengers (which is misused at times) but the passenger is by default in the wrong in most cases.
BTW I hate the US civil litigation system. I would prefer there but NO ability to sue and people would actually have to deal with things, make informed decisions and live with whatever consequences life may bring.
Miguel should considered that the passenger pursuing a fast track challenge upgrade to Diamond (from Gold) wants the Diamond benefits because they are a frequent SAS flyer and want to financially milk the free same-day changes benefit available to Diamonds as they will be flying SAS a lot anyway? Seems not.
Given SAS has a near monopoly on a lot of non-stop routes to and from the SAS hub airports, a very frequent flyer on any such routes or who will start/end a lot of trips at SAS hubs could be a completely rational actor in wanting to save money this way. It could also explain why the person wanted to remain on the flight despite the person’s wife being booted — it could be about the money.
I fly a lot of SAS flights. I usually don’t run into grumpy or power-tripping FAs on the airline. But when I do run into an outwardly grumpy Scandinavian FA on SAS, then the chances are extremely high that it would be a middle aged woman working the flight who is grumpy rather than a Scandinavian male FA on the SAS flight.
But the Americanization of Sweden in particular is having cultural consequences in various ways, and it probably showed up in this deplaning incident.
But, did anyone poop on the plane?
No compassion for the victim. She burst into tears. She told the FA to leave her alone when he admitted he probably shed her on purpose, no apology. How did this warrant the passenger being removed by the police and not the bad man who assaulted her. Has anyone considered that she might have PTSD from previous assaults by men? Most women have been assaulted by men, after all.
Don’t buy another SAS ticket for the perks. Spend the money on counseling for the wife who ended up in “floods of tears” after being bumped accidentally during boarding. She needs mental help.
The passenger in question needs to grow up, she sounds like an entitled bitch. Should have accepted apology and everything would have been fine. The attendant asked if she was OK, and she wanted to be confrontational. So…..bye-bye. Happy now?
@AC says:
“BTW I hate the US civil litigation system. I would prefer there but NO ability to sue and people would actually have to deal with things, make informed decisions and live with whatever consequences life may bring.”
My wife is Finnish, and has also worked for 20 years in Sweden. She asked me why in the U.S. people are so litigious. I agreed, but mitigated it by saying that companies often just ignore or say no to their customers when there is a problem.
She they told me about something that happened to her in Sweden. She had a problem with her car. The dealer refused to fix it on their kroner. BUT, and here is the big BUT, in Sweden, as in other Nordic countries, when a customer makes a complaint, and gets no satisfactory response, you can refer the problem to a consumer watchdog in Sweden. You see, they have a law that in such a case, the customer is always right; and it is up to the company to prove negligence on the customer’s part. In most cases they cannot; and must make the proper restitution.
This law has been in effect for many years, to the satisfaction of both the companies and its consumers. No shouting, no threat of lawsuit, and it is resolved promptly. In my wife’s case, they had to give her a new car.
Bumping someone in a way that they were set off balance to the degree that they had to catch themselves on a seat back (or fall) is bad. If they fell and are older, it could cause a life changing injury. If they had a past injury that flared up as a result of being knocked off balance, they could be in serious pain just due to catching themselves.
> while the flight attendant could have done a better job de-escalating …
The FA clearly should have apologized. That is not de-escalation, that is human decency.
Instead the FA did:
> …[T]he orginal attendant that pushed my wife leaning over to her and openly stating that yes, he did push her, he needed to get by… what was the fuss?
What I read in this is, the FA hung over the person (asserting dominance) and said, yes I bumped you, I don’t think it was that bad, so get over it – and I am the FA so there is nothing you can do about it anyway.
What I see is the FA chose to provoked the passenger. De-escalation may be optional, but provoking a passenger is a big problem.
This reflects poorly on the training provided by the airline and its procedures. If a passenger is this upset the procedure should be that another FA addresses the situation.
It would be interesting to hear from the airline and/or FA and what the emergency they were responding to that required them to nearly knock someone over. Handling emergencies is part of the job. It does not excuse treating people with dignity. If it was not an emergency, the FA should be terminated. If it was a real emergency, the FA should get mandatory training on how to keep calm when dealing with multiple situations and keep separate things separate.
WRT the husband.
I agree. Priorities are off. Not getting of the plane with his wife is unacceptable – he is certainly in the dog house.
Should he book a flight with the airline to get status. No. He should write to the CEO of the airline and if executive trouble shooter of the airline does not respond, he should cease flying with the airline and take their complaint to their elected officials – particularly if the airline has a monopoly.
@AC says:
“BTW I hate the US civil litigation system. I would prefer there but NO ability to sue and people would actually have to deal with things, make informed decisions and live with whatever consequences life may bring.”
Yeah, recently in Chicago one party, accusing another party of stealing his customers, shot him. Some people settle disputes without lawyers.
‘YAY! I’m famous for 15 minutes’ says this moron. Yup, famous for being the world’s best idiot. This is the dumbest story I have read since they invented the internet. Hope the airline bans them both for life and he can see his status quest disappear permanently.