It’s beyond horrible what happened here…
An American Airlines flight attendant was hospitalized with broken bones in her face after a passenger brutally attacked her.
The shocking story comes to us from The Washington Post, which reports the assault happened on a Wednesday flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California. So what happened??
All the flight attendant did was accidentally bump into a passenger while moving down the aisle of the first-class cabin, per President of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants Julie Hedrick. After she apologized, the passenger allegedly followed her into the aircraft’s galley and started punching her in the face!
What the f**k!!!!!
Following the horrific incident, the plane was forced to divert the flight to Denver, where the unidentified victim was rushed to the hospital for treatment. She has since been released; we cannot even imagine what she must be feeling at this time.
Meanwhile the passenger was detained and arrested. It’s unclear whether alcohol was involved at this time, but American Airlines does offer limited alcohol sales to first-class passengers.
In a video statement posted on Instagram Thursday, AA chief executive Doug Parker called the assault “one of the worst displays of unruly behavior we’ve ever witnessed” and promised to have the offending passenger “prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.” Not only has the airline banned him from traveling on American, but he said the company has also started working with the Federal Aviation Administration, which can levy fines up to $50,000 for the attack. But most importantly, Parker just wants the overall abuse from passengers to end before someone else gets seriously hurt:
“This type of behavior has to stop.”
It really does. Take a look at the entire video message (below):
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What fuels our anger about this whole situation is that this keeps on happening to employees who are just doing their jobs. According to The Washington Post, there has been a significant increase in verbal and physical abuse towards flight attendants since the coronavirus pandemic, with some of the altercations starting over the mask requirements. The FAA reports that of nearly 5,000 reports of “unruly behavior” in 2021, over 3,500 involved arguments over the mask mandates while others involved alcohol. The sad thing is we cannot even say we’re shocked by those numbers. Anyone in the service industry right now has had to deal with anti-maskers getting irrationally angry, if not outright violent.
Referring to the incident on Wednesday, Hedrick expressed to The Post:
“We’ve never had passengers assault us like this. I think for flight attendants going to work today, the mental exhaustion of ‘what am I going to be dealing with?’ — you just don’t know what’s going to happen on your flight today.”
No one should have to live like that. We’re sending so much love and light to the woman who was attacked, and all the fight attendants who keep having to experience this awful behavior.
[Image via NBC News/YouTube]
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