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Flight Attendants: Pursers or Peacekeepers?
Opinion · January 31, 2002

In his State of the Union address, President George Bush praised American Airlines flight attendants Hermis Moutardier and Christina Jones for stopping accused shoe-bomber Richard Reid and "likely [saving] nearly 200 lives." They aren't the only airline employees who have been singled out as heroes in the war on terrorism: Sandra Bradshaw, a flight attendant aboard the United Airlines flight that crashed in Pennsylvania, was mentioned as a possible Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. And a recent editorial praised all flight attendants as the "unsung heroes" in the current conflict.

But there's another side to the story - the passenger's side - that suggests flight attendants are anything but heroes.

Just talk to Akiko Mitsui, a charity worker from New York whose crime was asking for the name of the flight attendant who wouldn't let her stow her regulation-size bag in an overhead compartment. Instead of getting an answer, she got kicked off her flight from New Orleans to New York. A Continental Airlines crewmember told her, "That's it. You're outta here!" according to Mitsui. The plane returned to the terminal and the 5-foot-4-inch passenger was escorted off the aircraft. (Continental refused to comment on the incident.)

Or ask Pamela Batch Garza about her Delta Air Lines flight from Orlando to Allentown, Pa. As she boarded, a flight attendant began yelling at her because she was carrying too many bags. Even after surrendering her excess luggage, the crewmember continued to harangue her. Finally, Garza asked for the attendant's name - at which point she and her entire family were shown the door. "He said if I did not leave the aircraft immediately, he would have security physically remove me and have me arrested," she told me. (Delta refused to comment on the incident.)

Then there's the John Kish incident. Kish got kicked off a recent AirTran Airways flight because a crewmember accused him of "not apologizing" to her after she claimed that he bumped her with his bag. Interestingly, the flight he was ejected from wasn't the flight that his alleged offense took place on. It was a connecting flight that the same crew transferred to. When the crewmember saw him at the gate, she waited for him to board the aircraft and stood by his seat. As he approached her, she said, "Get off my plane." (AirTran had no comment on the incident.)

This is neither heroic, nor professional behavior. But it is increasingly common. No one knows how many travelers are removed from commercial flights every year. I checked with the Federal Aviation Administration, and it doesn't release those statistics. However, airline officials admit - and anecdotal evidence confirms - that these aren't isolated cases. "We've done a complete 180-degree turn, from an attitude of 'the customer is always right' to 'the customer is not always right,'" one airline spokesman told me. "We started backing the flight crews in disputes with passengers."

In an age of air rage, hijackings and shoe-bombers trained by al-Qaeda, no one would question a policy of backing a flight crew. It's how the cabin attendants operate within the parameters of these rules that's telling: many of them acting as airborne autocrats with the absolute power to remove any passenger for any reason.

But airline crewmembers are neither heroes nor villains. They are just confused, and so are we. The president and the public think of them as surrogate air marshals. Many passengers still treat them like glorified waiters. And their employers saddle them with the duty of both purser and peacekeeper - a dual mandate they can't possibly fulfill.

Maybe it's time to clarify the role of the flight attendant. Has the time come to train cabin crew in hand-to-hand combat? To deputize them as law enforcement officers? Even to arm them? Once those questions are answered, then these frivolous passenger ejections are far less likely to happen, because an aircraft's crew will know how to handle - and how not to handle - an unruly passenger.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.