Worker suspended over stroller row with passengers

SAN FRANCISCO: American Airlines has suspended an employee after a video showed an altercation on one of its planes involving crew, several passengers and a crying woman carrying a young child.

An American Airlines employee violently took a stroller from the woman, hitting her with it and just missing her child, Facebook user Surain Adyanthaya said in a post accompanying the video he put on the site on Friday.

American Airlines was investigating Friday’s incident, which happened on Flight 591 from San Francisco to Dallas before the plane took off, Leslie Scott, an airline spokesman, said.

The incident started over a dispute as to whether the woman could bring her stroller on the flight, Scott said.

In the video, the woman with the child can be heard asking flight attendants for the stroller.

A male passenger then walks towards the front of the plane and demands from the airline crew the name of the employee who took the stroller before he returns to his seat.

Moments later, another American employee, who Scott said was a flight attendant, enters the plane and the male passenger confronts him.

“You do that to me and I’ll knock you flat,” the passenger can be heard saying to the flight attendant.

The two then confront each other in the aisle and the employee can be heard challenging the passenger to hit him. The passenger eventually returns to his seat.

“We are deeply sorry for the pain we have caused this passenger and her family and to any other customers affected by the incident,” the airline said in a statement on Friday.

The woman and her family were upgraded to first class for the remainder of their trip, it said. — Reuters