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A fight broke out in the jet bridge at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL). The American Airlines flight had just arrived from Miami International Airport (MIA) when the video was taken. A trio of passengers are seen attacking an employee that was meeting the flight with a wheelchair.
MIA to ATL fight breaks out. @AmericanAir @wsbtv pic.twitter.com/2IeIwIq7gx
— Peter Miralles (@pmiralles) August 19, 2024
The video was posted to X on Sunday, but no other context has been provided. Regardless of what caused the incident, passengers should not be assaulting an employee and he should not be physically fighting with them. Even the woman in the wheelchair appears to take a swing. The wheelchair pusher strikes the female passenger after she chokes him. The other two men then jump in and attack the employee.
Anthony’s Take: There is not much context here, but these passengers should be banned from American Airlines at the very least. The employee should also be terminated for hitting a passenger. I’ll update if more details surface.
(Featured Image Credit: @pmiralles via X.)
(H/T: View from the Wing.)
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1 comment
I do not envy the job of the wheelchair assists especially in some of the very busy airports – and now with of course the rise in push requests and the extreme distances now present at some airports to get to the gate. Plus in more and more places TSA/airport are not allowing wheelchairs to skip the ID check queue at security, especially for PreCheck.
I know sometimes they need to be a little aggressive to move through the terminal but on the other hand some do seem to get a bit too aggressive or bossy with passengers. Especially the ones who seem to have 22 pairs of Delta kids wings up and down their lanyards.
I dealt with wheelchair contracts both on corporate side and as a station manager. I was blessed with an outstanding provider at one airport (I saw their GM probably 3 times a day, always coming to find me to make sure all was well) and over my 5 years at that station, they kept 75% of their staff the entire time. But they also hired mainly retirees and veterans and they paid a living wage. They refused to hire anybody who had worked for another provider (since they probably had gotten fired) and didn’t like hiring young people who hadn’t held a job before. But service was great, our complaints were next to zero, and when they needed a rate increase I told my HDQ that was a hill I was willing to die on to keep them. Other airports you had the pushers soliciting tips and even pushing people to the ATM then saying they don’t have change for a $20. Given the regulations on disability handling, you’d think things would be better…. but since it’s nothing but a money loser for airlines, sometimes as high as $150-200 a flight, it’s going to remain a crap shoot.