I’ve been unavoidably off the beat for a while, but I need to catch up on what seems to be increasing incidents of airline thuggery.
Here’s an IAGBlog blogcast interview of a 56-year-old Arizona woman who was harassed, threatened, cuffed, manhandled and arrested after she refused a totally out-of-line order by a JetBlue flight attendant to delete some video she had made on board a flight to Las Vegas. The reason for the flight attendant’s order to delete video: It might “end up online.” It’s a shocking report, and I don’t use that word shocking very often.
Kate Hanni, of the passenger rights coalition, is prominently urging passengers to make video recordings of untoward incidents on airplanes. I heartily endorse that idea, but beware: some crazed flight attendant might call the cops. And some half-cocked cops might barrel in and just make things worse, like the ones who responded like Keystone Kops to this ridiculous complaint when the plane landed in Las Vegas.
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August 16th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Yes, this is absolutely true. It’s almost a conspiracy of sorts. We have reports and I know of at least one video where a gate agent told a whole line of ticked off flyers to stop video taping that it was “illegal”. When did it happen that filming in an airport, a publicly owned airport that should be for the people that pay for it, that it’s illegal to film?
It’s totally legal inside an airport excluding security lines, and totally legal inside an aircraft except during take off and landing. Period. And something must be done about this. We are appalled. Folks, it’s like Martial law once you get inside the airport and worse in the aircraft. How is someone supposed to prove to the airlines that deny everything that they were stranded for 3-4-5-10 hours on board? No food, no water, no air conditioning?
Tell me?
Kate Hanni
flyersrights.org
August 23rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
JetBlue has attempted to recast this situation as a passenger “refusing to follow crew member instructions.” But there is no generalized requirement of obedience to any and all instructions issued by a flight crew member. If a flight attendant orders a passenger to “Hop on one foot…. Bark like a dog… Shine my shoes… or Give me $10 from your wallet,” there is simply no legal requirement to obey.
The legal issue here derives from Federal Aviation Regulation 121.580 and Section 46504 of Title 49 the United States Code (49 USC VII A(iv)465, § 46504), which prohibits any action which “… interferes with the performance of the duties of the [crew] member or [flight] attendant or lessens the ability of the member or attendant to perform those duties…” So, for example, because it is part of a flight attendant’s duties to prepare the cabin for landing by requiring passengers to remain seated, no passenger may lessen the flight attendant’s ability to perform that duty by refusing a request to remain seated. But that rule is not a generalized duty of obedience to any and all instructions which might conceivably be given by a flight attendant, as JetBlue might have their passengers believe.