Nation

Airline apologizes, grounds attendant involved in conflict

Less than two weeks after a man was dragged off a United Express flight, American Airlines is handling a confrontation between a flight attendant and a passenger.

Another day, another cellphone video of a conflict on an airplane.

American Airlines said it grounded a flight attendant who got into a verbal confrontation with a passenger on a Friday flight from San Francisco to Dallas-Fort Worth.

Spokeswoman Leslie Scott says the airline is looking into whether the male flight attendant violently took away a stroller from the female passenger just before she boarded a Friday flight from San Francisco to Dallas. He has been removed from duty.

In an age of cellphone videos and social media, airlines are learning the hard way that it is essential to deescalate tense situations that occur during air travel.

The incident comes less than two weeks after video of a man being dragged off a United Express flight sparked widespread outrage .

United initially blamed its passenger, Dr. David Dao, before finally apologizing days after the incident, fanning the public’s fury. American, by contrast, seems to have learned from United’s mistakes: it immediately apologized, grounded the flight attendant while it investigates the incident and upgraded the passenger involved and her family to first class.

“American doesn’t want to become the next United, but then, United didn’t want to become the next United,” said Henry Harteveldt, travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group. “No airline wants to be seen as being anti-consumer or anti-passenger.”

American’s fast reaction to the incident could be helpful, said brand consultant Allen Adamson, CEO of BrandSimple.

Days after Dao was dragged off the United Express flight from Chicago to Kentucky to make room for airline crew, his lawyer spent a good part of a news conference railing against what he said was the industry-wide shabby treatment of airline passengers.

In the case of the American flight on Friday, a video taken by a passenger and posted on Facebook shows the sobbing woman holding a small child and saying, “You can’t use violence with baby.”

An unidentified male passenger confronts the flight attendant, telling him, “You do that to me and I’ll knock you flat.” The flight attendant responds with, “Hit me. Bring it on.”