Blogger JT Genter of Award Wallet writes that he was kicked off of an American Airlines flight from New York JFK to London Heathrow on Monday after moving someone’s bag from the overhead bin above his seat in premium economy.

He says that overhead bins in the cabin were full when he arrived, but carry-on bags above hm were placed horizontally so he first tried to rotate them vertically to make more room. One of the bags was too large to do that.

• He asked passengers in the cabin whom the bag belonged to, but no one acknowledged the bag.
  
• He figured it must not be a passenger in the cabin (that turned out to be correct, but also the eventual problem).
  
• Since the bins say they’re for premium economy only, he moved the bag back to coach… where it did not fit.

Flight attendants now had to deal with an overhead bin in economy that would not close. And that’s when it came out that it was a flight attendant’s bag that he’d moved. He was told to move his bag to business class so the crewmember could have the space back.

He did not want to have his bag with electronics and medications in a different cabin. Genter quotes the purser of the flight,

It’s a shared space. He’s got a specific place where his bag has to be, and you moved that. You moved another person’s bag, which is a crew member’s bag, which is not allowed. So go ahead and find another place for your bag.

Genter, who says that he recorded the interaction, later quoted the purser “You moved a bag. You did something wrong. You know what? I’m going to go tell the captain” and quoted the flight attendant owner of the bag that was moved, “I want him outta here.”

A supervisor was called to the aircraft. He says they thought the situation was silly, but also that flight attendants “would refuse to fly” if he wasn’t kicked off the flight.

Genter was rebooked onto the next flight (and offered a non-reclining first class seat instead of premium economy, which he declined). His checked bag flew without him, but he was reunited with it in Corfu, Greece. And he received 5,000 miles from customer relations as an apology. He concludes,

The reaction by the flight crew wasn’t just disproportionate — it was punitive and personal. The gate supervisor and on-duty manager made it clear that the American Airlines flight attendants and purser overreacted to this situation. I wasn’t removed for breaking a rule but because a crew member took the situation personally and insisted on my removal.

This removal appears to have been in direct violation of American Airlines policy which was revised in the fall following an incident where eight black men were kicked off of an aircraft over a reported body odor issue. Those men were not traveling together and did not know each other. The airline said that crewmembers could not initiate concerns unrelated to safety or security leading to removal from an aircraft (such concerns had to come from customers only).

Taking the situation as JT describes, and I’ve known him for years dating to when he used to work at The Points Guy, it sounds to me like there’s a little bit of blame to go around here.

1. He should not have moved another person’s bag out of the overhead bin and into a different cabin on his own. He didn’t want his own bag away from him. Here, he’d left someone else’s bag in a place where they wouldn’t even know where it was. He should have involved a flight attendant. He mentions there not being one around, but he could have waited or sought help.

2. He should not have left the bag he moved to coach in a bin there when it wouldn’t fit. Whenever something is a close fit, I test to ensure the bin will close. Here he just left it as somebody else’s problem, right as the flight is getting ready to depart.

3. JT should have apologized when confronted over what happened. He assumed the bag belonged to a coach passenger, and moved it to coach, since the bin is supposed to be reserved for premium cabin passengers. The assumption he based his actions on was wrong and a little bit of humility might have gone a long way to diffuse tensions.

4. However, he should not have been removed from the flight over this. He wasn’t a threat to other passengers or the aircraft. While I think JT made a couple of choices he probably shouldn’t have, it sounds to me like the airline escalated things unnecessarily. And while he made his original connecting flight in London, 5,000 miles is silly as compensation for getting kicked off of the aircraft.

JT is hardly the first passenger to move another passenger’s bag back to coach. I called out the behavior then, so should say here I don’t think doing that on your own is the right reaction.

At the same time, here’s a coach passenger who was kicked off an American Airlines flight for using an overhead bin that wasn’t in their cabin – the signs that bins are for passengers in that cabin are meant to be taken seriously.

I’ve certainly seen plenty of interactions over the years where a flight attendant lets their emotions mix with authority in the cabin. That authority really rests with the captain.

49 USC § 44902 provides broad latitude, within certain bounds laid out by the FAA, for the captain of an aircraft to refuse transportation to a passenger if they feel that passenger might be “inimical to safety.”

A pilot’s decision cannot be arbitrary or capricious – but it’s generally presumed that the actions of the pilot are reasonable, and judged based on facts the pilot was aware of at the time and the time constraints they’re under. Their authority is virtually unreviewable under these standards.

Here, though, it sounds like it was the airline’s decision and not the captain’s to remove JT because the flight attendants were threatening not to work if he wasn’t kicked off. That would have meant cancelling the flight. If accurate, it was a childish threat and one that should have had the flight attendants fired for even being made. If those crewmembers are still working for the airline (which they almost certainly are) that points to an ‘inmates running the asylum’ problem that underscores what’s wrong with the service culture at the carrier.