A JetBlue flight attendant threw a hissy fit when a passenger failed to return her jammed seat to the upright and locked position. The stewardess admitted that the seat’s spring was broken, but still gave the passenger a “warning card” and had airport security meet the plane at the gate. Why? A fellow passenger explains, after the jump.
I was on Jetblue flight 324 that left Las Vegas Christmas night and arrived in Washington DC this morning.
I fell asleep and slept through most of the flight. I remember waking up as I heard the captain announce that we were close to Washington DC.
Around then a short blonde female crewmember with a nasal voice (didn’t catch her name) began loudly arguing with a lady in the row across from me. The crewmember kept yelling at the lady to put up her young son’s seat, and the lady was trying, but the seat wouldn’t budge. The crewmember repeated her request to put the seat up several times, and the woman struggled with her seat, arguing that it wouldn’t move.
The crewmember said that she was putting in a “warning card” and that the woman and her kids would be met by airport security on the ground.
The crewmember went to the front of the plane, then came back and started yelling at the woman again. At this point, the woman asked the crewmember to try putting up the seat herself. The crewmember struggled with it, admitted that the spring was broken, but said that since the woman was so rude, security would still be meeting her.
About then, the plane touched down. I looked down and noticed I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and that none of my stuff was stowed. I had swapped seats with someone so I could have an empty seat next to me and my carry on bag was on that seat.
I was really confused. The crewmember seemed to have really overreacted to that woman’s kid’s seat being back an inch or so, but she hadn’t even noticed that my stuff wasn’t stowed. (I would have stowed it if she’d reminded me about it, I just went from being asleep to watching the argument to feeling the plane set down.)
As I left the plane, I was mentioning my confusion to a man who had been sitting near me. I couldn’t imagine why the crewmember was so quick to get the woman in trouble while not even noticing me. He supplied the answer. Apparently, the crewmember had been loudly talking during the night and her voice kept waking up the woman’s kids. (The woman, her kids and I were in the last row of the plane, and the blonde crewmember was in the back.)
So the woman had complained about the crewmember making so much noise. Twice.
As I left the plane, I saw airport security interrogating the woman as her freaked-out children watched. That image is still bothering me.
I get that air safety is really important and the unruly passengers can cause a lot of problems. But from my perspective, this really looked like the blonde crewmember called the police not because the woman was creating a disturbance, but because the woman had gotten her in trouble earlier in the flight.
I love your airline and have recommended it to my friends. I get that this was an isolated incident and I will fly Jetblue again. Your customer service has been awesome literally every time I’ve flown with you, except for today.
All that said, I really think this crew member is, to put it bluntly, a whackjob who is better suited to working for one of your more sadistic competitors.
At the very least, she needs a talking to.
Thanks
Don’t worry, JetBlue. Even good airlines have bad apples. Just ask Southwest.
(Photo: Getty Images)
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y’all MUST REMEMBER THIS: @Scampy is a common flamebaiter, and not a good one at that. You’ll always find an “I bet…” or “I’m sure…” within his comments, which merely point out his conflation of fact and his narrow, ill-informed opinion.
@veraikon:
Hitler isn’t involved here! (There, I said his name!)
The point is simply that these things erode the expectations of the public over time. Sure, plenty of these laws are passed by well-meaning people. That doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous. Things like the PATRIOT act and COPA are ‘noble’ on the face, but can (and are) misused and abused.
@RvLeshrac:
“can be” doh. :/
I actually had that pulled on me once. I was on a Delta flight a couple of years ago and I was playing a game on my blackberry. I had the phone part turned off, but the stewardess was too stupid to understand the difference. I tried several times, even showing her the screen where you select “airplane mode” and she still did not understand. Finally she just told me that she giving me “direction” to turn it off. I ignored her. A few minutes later she came by and demanded that I give it to her. I refused and got the routine about the warning..security, etc, etc.. She told me to stay in my seat until everyone else had left. I ignored that too and got off with the crowd. There were a couple of rent-a-cops waiting. I walked by them and, just for grins, went into a bookstore where I could see. Maybe 60 seconds later, the flight attendant came running out waving her arms. They stood around and pointed at various walls for a few minutes and then left her there. I knew I was pushing it, but I could not resist walking past her after I gave the security long enough to leave the area. She looked like she did not know whether to shit or go blind. Then I decided to get the hell out of there.
Made me a little nervous that, the next time I flew, I would end up in a cell in Gauntanamo, but nothing happened.
@LadyCarolineLamb: Were you the tool who told me that it was a FAR that FAs take up the bin space in FC? Perhaps the FAR that mandated that I lose my aisle seat to accommodate the family of six who insisted they get to sit together?
I am sick to death of FAs who claim FAR when it is simply expediency for the FA that is in play. My two favorite words when I challenge you on y’alls’ BS? “Captain says.”
Not once. And I mean NOT ONCE, was the captain involved when y’all invoked that little ditty. I loved the looks on the Captains’ faces as I disembarked and inquired as to his involvement in my situations.
Y’alls’ claims that you are a vital component of safety is laughable. Are you required to carry victims out of a burning fuselage in the manner of a firefighter in a burning building? Too funny.
The only lower life forms I encounter on the road are the gate agents who love to mess with pax.
That flight attendant MUST have been from Jersey, and the soccer mom was from Ohio…
Hey, y’all. I was the one who submitted this story, and I have a few clarifications and updates.
1. What I sent to the consumerist was a copy of what I sent to Jet Blue. Note that I did provide the flight number and plenty of identifying information, though I didn’t catch the stewardess’ name. I got a semi-canned response back a few days later that essentially said my complaint had been forwarded to the appropriate people.
2. The lady’s kids were well-behaved as far as I saw. But if they had been fussy after being woken up, I wouldn’t have blamed them.
3. I did tell airport security what I saw. They smiled and nodded and sent me on my way. (I probably should have mentioned this in the letter, but I thought my letter was too long at that point and it wasn’t relevant to the customer service aspect of the story.)
4. I said I will keep flying JetBlue after this incident because it’s the truth. I’ve flown lots of great flights. This one woman was just a whackjob.
5. I don’t care what other people’s experience is, the last row seats in this plane did recline an inch or two. In fact, with two minutes of googling, I turned up this graphic, which explicitly states that the last row sea…
So there.
Hmm… That’s weird. It cut off my link. The previous sentence did say “which explicity states that the last row seats on the Jetblue plane we were on DO recline” or something like that.
@CurbRunner: Except that under the facts presented in the letter, all we know is that security responded to a complaint by a member of the flight crew and investigated it. We know nothing of what happened during the interview of the passenger. It’s fascism for security to investigate a complaint? How could they possibly know it was a bullshit complaint before doing so?
I agree that things are F’d up when it comes to air travel, but when you drop a word like “fascism,” the immediate perception is that your thoughts are knee-jerk or half-baked.
@nequam: “Facism” in today’s Amerika? The only ones who would argue with that are NOT PAYING ATTENTION.
@diggity: Thats JetBlue for you, they took out an extra row soon after they began flying so the back row would recline…
ChaliceChic-
If I had to guess I would say that you must be an angry brunette. I found it interesting that you kept mentioning the BLOND attendant as if it’s a negative thing. What’s up with that?
@PryncessLayah: She mentions that she didn’t catch the stewardess’ name, so it looks like hair color was the simplest way to identify the flight attendent. Given that all flight attendents wear uniforms, if you don’t know names, hair color is as good a way as any to indicate which FA you’re talking about.