An American Airlines employee is in big trouble after misappropriating personal passenger information in a manner which can only be described as super creepy.
Imagine you are sitting in the gate area and all of a sudden receive the following text message:
“Hey, Ashley! How are you?”
Random text messages do show up, but don’t usually include your name.
She answered:
“I’m good, thank you!”
but added:
“Sorry, I’m not sure who this is.”
Then it got creepy:
“BTW I must tell you that you are gorgeous.”
But wait, there’s more:
“You are looking very gorgeous in that gray top today.”
Umm…
Ashely started to look around the gate area. Was there a friend on her flight? The unknown text messenger then identified himself as Ahmad and said he worked for American Airlines…
She boarded her flight from San Diego to Chicago and then received another message:
“I am on board now. Are you going to Chicago too??”
Ahmad continued:
“Will you join me? I really like you!! Come on join me!!”
Ashley was feeling quite uncomfortable.
“Not ok! Not cool. Leave me alone.”
But Ahmad wasn’t finished yet. He tried another pick-up line:
“Ok it’s up to you, but friendship with me will be very beneficial for you. I can always give you good seats, access to the lounges, and free drinks.”
By now Ashely was scared and flagged down a flight attendant.
Busted In Chicago
After sharing what happened, the flight attendant confirmed Ahmad was an AA employee and expressed outrage and sympathy that Ashley was being hassled.
She also radioed ahead to Chicago, because upon landing AA officials met Ahmad and escorted him off the plane…
The story seems real. The victim is Ashley Barno. She told NBC 7 San Diego:
“I called my sister, and I was crying profusely because I just felt… I mean, the best way to describe it was, I felt naked in a public place.”
American Airlines reached out to her to extend a private apology, but refused to provide more information about Ahmad. Apparently, Ahmad has harassed other passengers too.
Barno is now suing, and I don’t blame her…
Her attorney told NBC 7:
“We’re doing this to send a message to big corporations that this behavior is not acceptable. They have to train their employees better and take better precautions to make sure these things don’t happen again.”
Yep.
Finally, American Airlines won’t respond beyond acknowledging the issue:
“American Airlines takes the privacy and safety of our customers very seriously. While we can’t discuss details about this individual case, we investigated the allegations and took appropriate action.”
If the story is as Barno described, I’m quite disappointed that American Airlines has not offered a more public apology.
CONCLUSION
Apparently, Ahmad scoped Ashely out, gathered personal details from her luggage tag, then looked her up in the system, suggesting he is a gate or baggage agent.
I really think Barno’s lawyer gets it right. American Airlines must better train their employees to avoid this sort of appalling behavior. There is simply no excuse for it.
“I really think Barno’s lawyer gets it right. American Airlines must better train their employees to avoid this sort of appalling behavior. There is simply no excuse for it.”
It’s crazy that this type of thing should require training rather than the most basic of common sense!
Yeah, this isn’t a training issue. I guarantee that AA has provisions in their training saying ‘don’t misuse customer info’.
What’s really at issue here is whether AA knew about this guy doing this before, and whether they allowed it. If this was the first time, they probably took the right action — immediately met the plane on first report of this, and dealt with the guy. But if they did have reports of similar behavior before, and did nothing… thats a nicely wrapped lawsuit with a bow on top.
Exactly. From an H.R perspective, its an issue of undesired behavioral traits, combined with poor professional competencies and unsuited personality type. There may also be a cultural element at play (I worked in Arabia as an expat for many years, and have seen approaches like this previously.). I wonder whether the guy underwent personality and psychometric assessing before being employed. Seems he’s also somewhat socially inept by trying to trade favors for friendship.
Agreed, but some people seem to lack it.
Hello Matt.
Cultural observation. I have two women friends whose experiences are similar to those described by the woman in the article. One gal got a card that went something like: “If you feel like you’re struggling, just remember… you have options” and the guy’s name was signed off on it. And he was married. She chuckled that she could have done ANYTHING she liked with the card including give it to the guy’s wife.
In both cases, the women described men from a particular culture so perhaps it’s sort of like they’re still living in “MadMen” where they’re from.
Russian friends of mine went through a similar cultural adjustment where relations between men and women at work are more… intimate and friendly gestures there got at least one guy canned from his job.
Anyhoo, as a traveler note that ‘common sense’ varies at times geographically.
2015, i was 24, flying to honolulu for a work trip on a eerily empty flight… i think first class had 2 other people in 16 seats on a 767.
i had a male flight attendant waiting on me too intensely, then start making comments about what i was working on my computer, then sit down next to me and ask me continuous questions about my work leading into personal life, and then finally proposition me to travel with him. all the while i kept politely saying “i’m sorry, i’m trying to work” and “no thank you”. i put on my headphones and eyeshade for the last hour, and even then still felt his leer and he tried to grab me when we disembarked.
i wasn’t phased because i am 6’3 male, but if i was a female, i would have gotten off that flight and run.
I thought about your comment for quite some time and how your reaction differs from the gal in the article.
She didn’t “run”. Kudos to her for bringing her concerns almost immediately to another FA. The challenge in these situations is that the harassment isn’t obvious in the first couple of exchanges (it can be innocuous for a FA to merely chat up a passenger) but when the “line” is crossed, that’s when enough is enough (or as my physics professor put it: Give someone enough time to hang themselves.)
If I was in 1st class and being harassed like this, I’d be especially demanding of a better class of service and treatment and would likely have raised the alarm sooner before it got out of hand.
I remember an HBO special about Elvis meets Nixon where Elvis remarks to a friend that he felt safer on planes because it was a “controlled environment.” It’s not a dark alley or being alone in a home when someone is breaking through your window.
I find it interesting you say you weren’t “phased” because you’re tall and male, but the opposite may be true: You merely may have thought nobody would take your complaint seriously. Even if you’re 6’3″, a threatening individual could spike your drink or worse.
This goes far beyond mere “training”. If this employee has a history of harassing passengers in this (or any) manner and AA was aware of it, then AA is guilty of fostering an environment that allows this sort of incredibly inappropriate behavior to continue unabated, if not indirectly encouraging it by failing to take decisive action to prevent further, repeated occurrences – especially from one individual. Whether that’s termination or limiting/removing access to passenger info or whatever is up to AA, but on first glance it looks like AA didn’t do a heckuva lot. I’d love to see Ms. Barno and her lawyer hammer AA for this if what I’ve surmised is correct. Airlines have a lot of our information in their systems and we are forced to trust that they’re taking appropriate measures to safeguard that from malicious actors whether internal or external to the airline.
Why would a public apology make things better?
AA make an apology for what? I get the guy is creepy but it just happens he works for AA. So what? How about if he worked for Whatever company? Would she sue Whatever? She should go after him and not his employer.
Ahmed is at fault, not AA. If a police officer beats you up, she should pay more than the city. Too often, lawyers go after the deep pockets, not the real villain.
I heard of a teacher who changed the answer on a test but purposely erased the correct answers of the student and put in wrong answers. Evil.
It’s a great time to be an attractive female working in corporate america. Passively lead guys on while documenting everything they say, do and after a few months cry sexual harassment and make a few millions.
Remember to document only the negative things while all the leading on part needs to be strictly verbal.
In a she said against ten he saids, the she said will still carry more weight in today’s era.
Gross take. Time for a self-check.
I would have a lot more support for these women if they and their lawyers agreed to give half of the money to charity that supports women’s causes. Until then they are just opportunist gold diggers.
We have the example of hypocrisy of david boies.
Apparently, the incident happened in April. So I’m willing to reserve judgement and consider that perhaps she took the high road and was waiting for corporate to properly fire the guy and maybe didn’t get the resolution she was hoping for. If she’s trying to protect fellow passengers from harassment, good for her. Keep in mind that half of the money will probably go to the lawyers for, among other things, “copying fees.”
My thoughts on the matter is that I can appreciate her emotional distress: She’s on a flight where she expects to feel safe and some guy has her personal information and could potentially stalk her. She feels guilt and PTSD that she’s partially responsible somehow for putting her name, address, and phone number on the luggage tag (that would be an interesting article for Matt or boarding to discuss as to how much work he does customizing his luggage tags for each trip. I dedicate a good 10 minutes to writing up luggage tags)
Anyhoo, for a brief moment, she worried that she had a psycho stalker that might not have gotten caught.
All THAT being said, her reaction (as well as another on this discussion) suggests that she has a security mindset (cover her luggage tags) rather than a more dynamic approach to handling uncomfortable social interactions. People from different cultures and generations have different ideas of what is “normal” and while it’s good to be safety conscious, enjoying traveling means opening up as well as “locking down.”
My own mother and grandmothers would have complained if an employee had violated her privacy like that but they would have been a lot more calm about it. Perhaps in the days of social media and hyper security, people are less used to calm, personal confrontation.
Wow debit, you must really dislike women to think they would “lead men” on. “She wants me, she said good morning. Hot dang! I think I will go corner her at the cooler later, she asked for it. ”
Me, I say it is about time that men take responsibility for their actions. ENOUGH! Women are no longer easy meat. I say tar and feather the creeps, but since we can’t do that anymore, a law suit is the only thing. Having been a victim of men’s unwanted attention in grade school walking to school, and harassment by men in the work force, it’s about time, and men have no one to blame but their own disgusting behavior. If that were your wife or daughter going through that, you would sing a different tune.
R/niceguy
I can understand why AA would not want to talk publicly about this. It’s unlikely to do them any good. What I struggle with is why companies refuse to discuss what they have done when stuff like this happens. For example if AA fired Ahmad they should have told her that. If they have referred his case to the authorities for possible prosecution (I suspect he may have violated some law somewhere) they should have told her that.
An apology with specific actions taken to ensure this doesn’t happen again is far more likely to result in the offended customer walking away happy vice them retaining a lawyer and suing them to send a message.
AA gate agent here we are given training every six months on how to handle pax data. When I first read this I was shocked that someone would try something like this. I can’t imagine what this lady was going through with this creep around the corner.
Hahahaha… Public apology only invites more suits. Real and fake. Too much work. Let’s settle this quietly. If you’re a lawyer, that’s litigation 101. Hahahaha