Airline staff abuse unmasked
Flight risks
US AVIATION: GETS COMPLAINTS FROM ATTENDANTS ENFORCING SAFETY RULES
One flight attendant needed medical attention for a crippling migraine brought on by confronting a passenger who refused to wear a mask. The day after the siege on Capitol Hill, passengers on a shuttle bus with a Black flight attendant assailed her with racial slurs, according to a union for flight attendants.
US Aviation safety officials have received dozens of confidential complaints in the past year from attendants trying to enforce mask safety rules. The reports, filed in the Aviation Safety Reporting System database, at times describe a chaotic, unhinged workplace where passengers regularly abuse airline employees.
“I felt like if this man is bold enough to scream ‘SHUT UP’ at me in the cabin, there is no limits,” a flight attendant said in one report.
The coronavirus pandemic and political divisions of the past year have caused fear, economic pain, and social and family rifts around the country, but for airline workers, and flight attendants in particular, the unease and tension have often converged in a tiny cabin space.
The tension is at a level flight attendants have not seen before, said Paul Hartshorn Jnr, a veteran attendant and a spokesman for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants union. “I think we’re pretty well-trained on how to handle a disruptive passenger,” said Hartshorn, 46.
“What we’re not trained to do and what we shouldn’t be dealing with is large groups of passengers inciting a riot with another group of passengers. It’s insane.”
Even as airlines have struggled to contend with the pandemic, attendants have increasingly faced problems from passengers attacking one another over politics.
Most prominently, before the Trump rally in Washington and the riot at the Capitol on 6 January, supporters of then president Donald Trump were recorded on multiple flights to Washington heckling other passengers, including Senator Mitt Romney.
In the aftermath of the riot, airlines, flight attendants and authorities moved to prevent similar altercations.
American Airlines crews were given access to private transportation during layovers in Washington-area airports. Delta barred six people from the airline after a group heckled Romney, according to a spokesman.
United Airlines moved its crews from downtown Washington hotels, and American Airlines, which had stopped serving alcohol in the main cabin because of the pandemic, also banned alcohol in first class for flights out of Washington.
Some Democrats have called for Capitol Hill “insurrectionists” to be added to the federal no-fly list, a demand that worries civil libertarians.
Manar Waheed, senior legislative and advocacy counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, said that expanding the nofly list would “further entrench an error-prone and unconstitutional system that will continue to be used unfairly against people of colour”.
And in January, the Federal Aviation Administration said passengers who assault or interfere with airline workers could face prison time and a $35 000 (about R522 000) fine.
Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, said in a statement that the “mob mentality” the public witnessed on some flights “will not happen again.”
In October, about 100 000 airline workers lost their salaries. More than 45 000 of them also lost their medical benefits, according to the association.
Brittany Riley, 31, a union member who has worked for United Airlines for nine years, said her seniority allowed her to keep those benefits. But for months, she and husband, Peter Golembiewski, who is also a flight attendant, took money out of their savings and retirement plan to pay for bills.
In November, Riley said she was hospitalised with severe abdominal pain, which led to thousands of dollars in bills despite her health insurance.
The stimulus package passed by Congress in December provided $15 billion to airlines, allowing companies to recall furloughed flight attendants. But the funding did not cover the wages lost in October and November.
And the package provided only enough funding to keep workers on the payroll through March.
The uncertainty of what happens after that is agonizing, Riley said.
Nearly 2 500 attendants have been infected with the coronavirus, according to an estimate from the Association of Flight Attendants.
If this man is bold enough to scream ‘SHUT UP’ at me, there’s no limits