American Airlines flight attendants apparently have been leaving passengers on board aircraft. Everyone leaves the plane, and the sleeping passenger is still there. Sometimes they’re in a window seat and no one notices. Other times they’re in the lavatory.
Cabin crew received a memo in late December from their union warning that this seems to be happening more and more, and constitutes a violation of federal rules (“minimum crew violation”) since a minimum number of flight attendants must be on board an aircraft whenever there are passengers there. And the union and airline have concluded this is happening because flight attendants are failing to perform their security checks.
Paddle Your Own Kanoo excerpted the memo.
These procedures are required to ensure that no passenger is ever left onboard. Check lavatories, and make sure no passengers are sleeping in or under seats. This is a critical final check to confirm that no one has been overlooked, and this ensures that you and your crew aren’t at risk of violating a FAR…Leaving passengers on the aircraft unattended is a significant safety and security concern and we appreciate everyone’s shared efforts in ensuring this doesn’t happen.
Flight attendants have been warned that all crew on a flight are responsible for the post-flight check, and that the lead flight attendant must do a final walkthrough prior exiting the aircraft to check for any passengers still on board.
Famously, an Air Canada passenger from Quebec City to Toronto fell asleep on a plane in 2019 – slept through touch down, gate arrival, and all the other customers getting off the plane. When she woke up, the plane had been towed away from the gate to be parked overnight. She was in a totally dark aircraft with no way off.
Her cell phone was out of battery and she couldn’t call for help. She opened the aircraft’s door but it was too treacherous a drop onto concrete to make it. Ultimately she flagged down a worker driving a baggage cart who went for help. Obviously that’s a situation to be avoided, but so is having a passenger on a plane between flights.
I’ve been known to doze on on the ground during long waits to push back and taxi, but I’m always rustled away as we take off. I’ve never slept past touchdown so this is hard for me to imagine, but there are heavy sleepers out there. Goodness knows I’ve passed my stop on DC’s metro, but just because I was focused working never because I had fallen asleep.
Definitely happened to me, on AA ironically. Woke up in ORD on a 787-9 in J by the FA after all the other passengers had exited the aircraft. She was very professional, and nudged me awake. Boy was my face red lol. I guess that is a good testament to the comfort of those seats, though, lol.
As a disabled passenger, I am usually the last one off the plane as I need the aisle chair, which often takes forever. I often have FAs come up to me and tell me it’s time to leave.
I inform them that I’d be happy to leave when the aisle chair and my personal gate checked wheelchair arrive. That usually gets them moving to figure out what the delay is because they want to get off the plane too.
Never had them leave and forget that I was there.
Have we tried paying people better? Oh, so, socialism is only for the wealthy and corporations; rugged individualism for everyone else. Gotcha. Noted. Zzz.
There is all the evidence to prove needed to prove the lack of proper training, failure of the senior flight attendant to ensure that ALL of the regulations are followed and the cabin is secure, failure of the flight deck crew to ensure that the flight attendants are doing their job, (yes…the captain still has ultimate responsibility), failure of management to ensure that the flight attendants KNOW their responsibilities, failure of FAA oversight and, ultimately, the fact that the customer is paying your salary. Typical union mentality.
How can this be? The regular FA shills here regularly tell us that their primary job is safety, and not customer service, so sorry elderly lady, you have to put your carryon up yourself. These dedicated, hard working safety workers that have no time to serve drinks or other menial tasks because of their numerous safety duties would simply not let this happen.
I noticed with more frequency in 2024 that on AA flights I was on, the FAs often would not do a safety check before land- so seats were still reclined, bags were not properly stored under seats, etc. So not surprised to see this at all on AA.
Truly bizarre. Due to laziness.
Fun fact: If you are abandoned and stranded inside an American Airlines aircraft because you overslept on a flight and the flight attendants forgot about you, search for the giant pack of emergency and complimentary Biscoff cookies or pretzels in the overhead luggage storage at the front or aft section of the passenger cabin.
@Ken A
I would have a blast if the plane was towed to a remote area and the plane shut down for the night. If a widebody plane with a crew rest area above or below, check that out. Check the galley for snacks. Take photos in the cockpit. What if I figured out the sequence to start up the plane but that might lead to arrest even if there was no prosecution. Besides, the wheel chocks would be in place.
When I was ready to leave, activate the emergency slides unless it was a 737 with stairs, then deploy that and walk towards the terminal.
With respect to the disabled passenger; American, and most other carriers, have outsourced their wheelchair operations to a third party. They’re not accountable or reachable by AA employees.
Flight Attendants are not salaried, contrary to a previous poster and they’re pay stops when the brakes are set. They’re working for free during boarding, disembarking and you tend to get what you pay for….
> Have we tried paying people better? blah, blah…
Say a product is available for sale at a certain price. You would be rightfully upset if the product did not have all the features that it advertised.
Airlines specify job requirements which are known to all applicants. They also have a pay scale associated with those requirements. If the salary is not acceptable, the applicants are free to decline the job offer. But once the ‘sale’ is made, they have an obligation to deliver the requirements at the agreed-upon price.
Did this happen once, and now it’s reported as a regular occurrence? In all my years at AA, I’ve waited on the FA’s who could not exit the aircraft due to min staffing. I’ve waited on the checks for passengers. I’ve never seen the FAs leave a pax onboard. Gary is making a mountain out of a memo.
They likely got better inflight service being out cold for the flight than they would have had they been awake.
@Jon
They make $70-80 per hour when the brakes aren’t set. It’s an average and it’s one that benefits them. They know it, you know it, we know it.
How about just putting them on a yearly salary like many low-level managers across multiple industries in this country? Would they be happier then?
Don’t like the conditions or the pay of the job…….don’t work there. (Of course, most of them don’t actually “work” there anyway)
Ahhh, everyone is responsible for your own LIFE ! Duh ??? People the public are out of control !!!
No accountability what so ever. Follow crew instructions period.
Go to the bathroom , 1 hour before arrival, not while the plane is landing !! Do not take a sleeping pill 30 minutes before arrival !! Duh ??? Plane stupidity !!!
We are here for your safety, not to give you good service. HaHa, the joke is on us.
Just tell the FA that the sleeping passenger is not in their assigned seat- they’ll all converge on them.
Two words…
Gen Z.
With Gen Z, it’s not unintentional incompetence, it’s willful, studied incompetence and negligence.
Garbage generation.
If that were my picture I’d be suing you
Reminds me of when I was at DCA years back and exhausted from too much travel. I was waiting in the area downstairs where you used to take a little van to a turboprop. Many were in waiting area waiting for the flight. I dozed off and evidently they boarded and left. And not one person woke me to catch the plane and I missed it. I was surprised at least another passenger didn’t wake me up. It was a pain-took a long time to get another flight going where I was going!@ Learned my lesson to not doze in waiting area.
No @FA you would not because it is a photo provided for use by American Airlines (and even if it wasn’t there would be no grounds to do so)
@Paul Romanoski, sorry to hear about that. The gate agent should have woke you. I fell asleep waiting for a NWA BKK to LAX flight that connected in NRT but was woken by a gate agent after all of the other passengers had boarded so I could make my flight. I have fond memories of NWA. The flight was at 6 am so I had to wake up at 2 am to get to the airport 3 hours before flight time. Flagging down a taxi was sometimes a problem but it was usually ok.
Once when I had stayed up all night prior to a flight to Sacramento, a flight I made at least once a quarter, I fell asleep at the gate before we pushed off, and slept through the entire flight and landing and woke up at the gate as people were getting off the plane. I walked off the plane and recognized nothing. I had never seen this terminal before. I freaked out thinking I must of boarded the wrong flight (this was pre 9/11). It took me a few minutes to find a gate agent and learned that this was a new terminal at SAC that had just opened, which is why I did not recognize it. Whew!
This does seem to be somewhat contradictory in nature. On one hand, almost everyone complains that it’s more uncomfortable than ever flying.
Then you have people complaining that they slept through touchdown, taxiing, deplaning, aircraft final check and then towing to parking for overnight storage.
If you can sleep through all that, it seems an overseas flight should be a cinch for these folks.