In a nasty brawl filled with foul language and violence, a passenger spit on a flight attendant then tackled her when she slapped him.
I would start by watching the video below, which was allegedly filmed last Friday. The video, taken by the wife of the man at the center of controversy, documents a terse exchange between several members of the Brussels Air flight crew and the irate passenger. Apparently, the man complained that his mother-in-law was being “elbowed” by the two men she was sitting between. Flight attendants dismissed the complaint (it’s not clear why), which agitated the man. The video then begins.
I think the passenger acted despicably. There is no justification for threatening words and profanity. There is no justification for spitting in someone’s face then lunging at her, especially a male toward a female. Particularly in this world of fear over COVID-19, spitting becomes a particularly egregious act.
I don’t even fault, from a human perspective, the flight attendant slapping back the unhinged passengers for his nasty act against her. Sometimes anger gets the best of us. But here’s the thing: the flight attendant was not just another passenger. Instead, she was in position of authority over the passenger and had a duty to rise above the nasty action of the passengers she was trying to calm. It was her job to be stronger, to be better, to be wiser than the irate passengers. And she failed. And yet I cannot fault her…even the most disciplined human beings can only take so much abuse.
Folks, you cannot escape from the racial element of this situation. Let the record show the passenger was black and the flight crew was white. I don’t dismiss the passenger’s anger, even though it does not excuse his behavior. He was trying to take care of his mother-in-law. He saw, or at least sensed because of the narrow elbow room, that she was being squished by two men on either side. He reported it and was dismissed; his concerns were not taken seriously. As a passenger, I’d be mad too.
CONCLUSION
Anger and rage are such a bitter combination, especially in a travel world laced with fear and uncertainty. I hope the flight attendant presses assault charges against the passenger who spit on her and then attacked her. But she failed too, perhaps even more so, by failing to do her job, be the peacemaker, and rise above what quickly descended into a very nasty situation.
Zero justification for this behavior.
Wow.
Keep your hands to yourself. Regardless if he said what he said or Accidentally spit on her, she slapped him first. In this country that’s Assault flat out. And just like the police in this country u have the right to protect your self. She deserved it. Keep your hands off people.
You never ever hit a woman. Plus spit in her face. She had the right to slap him. He was a disgusting man.
If he had given or any of them a chance to fix it.
An I have flown an been elbowed. Get over it.
Where the hell were the men in this plane. His wife video taped it, crass person. I am glad she slapped him. He didnt accidentally spit on her he intentionally did it.
He needs jail.
He did t Spit in her on purpose and she should NOT have hit him, she is disgusting by the way she handled the situation, she could have gone over and asked the
Men to stop elbowing the woman, she treated that man with zero respect. And if you’re ok with that then you are part of the problem we have in America. He was clearly in distress and trying to get help .its clear why he was treated poorly.
She is a flight attendant not a law enforcement officer. She isn’t paid to be spit on. I see no foul on her part at all. Also, from what I can tell, she was trying to be the peacemaker.
You for sure doesnt know how coronavirus is transmited. In 13.03.2020 doing what he did is the same as trying to infect her. If you would think two seconds more you would not defend this terreble passanger. Btw, his wife is a lier and stupid. If she would be 1 % less stupid she would know make up one history and send that video as the video the true (he husband is asshole).
Low life piece of scum trash. He better be in jail.
You kinda sorta not really nailed down a position here. You say flight attendant should have risen above. But not really in this case. Passenger acted horribly. but no, not really due to race. What are you saying with this post???
I think you sense the difficulty of the topic. The man has no defense. He should be sued and potentially jailed. But in one sense I do feel his pain, a pain of being marginalized and not taken seriously. And I cannot judge the FA because I don’t know that I would have been able to keep my cool either. But she had a duty to and failed.
I 100% agree with you. He should forbiden of flying forever
1) To the flight attendants- whether the original complaint had validity or not, why not try to de-escalate the situation by moving one of the passengers in MIL’s row to another seat/row?
2) I’m guessing there were no empty rows on this flight, otherwise, the flight attendant would have obliged. They don’t want any drama or trouble either!
3) If a same-seat change absolutely couldn’t have been accommodated, SIL and MIL could have swapped seats. Problem solved.
4) It unfortunately appears alcohol was a factor, giving this man the benefit of the doubt, but I’m guessing he was under the influence and thus completely overreacted. He and his family should be very ashamed of themselves. And super embarrassed. This is not something you can simply apologize for. They should be banned from flying.
5) The wife taking video did nothing to help her husband’s case. Since it was her video, I’m guessing she gave access to show it to the world. Her video showed the male flight attendant staying calm and the female supervisor attempting to de-escalate the situation while her husband, the passenger, was irate, aggressive, over-reacting and assaulting. He deserves punishment for his actions. There were so many other options versus cursing, threatening, spitting in people’s faces, and resorting to violence against a much smaller person who was only trying to defend herself. Plus, Corona Virus. Jeez.
6) We all hate sitting in the middle seat. Airlines now offer the option to pre-purchase your choice seat. Utilize this. Was there ever a conversation with the two men on either side of the MIL? I would also like to have seen this recorded.
(Ps- common airplane courtesy: the middle passenger gets the arm rests and no one should ever recline their seat against an economy class passenger.)
7) I’d really like to know the outcome so far from this. I do believe the passenger couple deserve to be in jail and prosecuted. You don’t spit in someone’s face- especially in the wake of a worldwide pandemic.
🙁
Just the beginning of the unraveling of humanity. The Covid 19 will ultimately devastate food supplies and people will kill for a head of iceburg lettuce. Do stay tuned.
This passenger should be ban from flying plus should be charged with a big penalty plus few days in prison. Who knows how healthy he is or what kind of sickness he has? In a normal time what he did is terrible but now with this virus he committed an attempt on the crews life. He the same as all of us know that no one should even talk to close to the others and then he put all his germs and maybe virus into the crew faces? Unaccetable! No person can talk about racism concernig this case. He acted terribly and must pay for what he did.
Thw, I am black just make clear that not all black person will take his side. What is wrong is wrong.
This man should be charged with bio terrorism.
Leave it a cracker to defend the white flight attendant.
Who defended the flight attendant you racist pig? You’re almost as bad as the thug onboard.
This passenger should be ban from flying plus should be charged with a big penalty plus few days in prison. Who knows how healthy he is or what kind of sickness he has? In a normal time what he did is terrible but now with this virus he committed an attempt on the crews life. He the same as all of us know that no one should even talk to close to the others and then he put all his germs and maybe virus into the crew faces? Unaccetable! No person can talk about racism concernig this case. He acted terribly and must pay for what he did.
Thw, I am black just make clear that not all black person will take his side. What is wrong is wrong.
She screwed it up.
If this was the US all she had to do was walk away and file assault charges. He would be in prison and then on no fly. Now she needs to be on trial too. And prove her actions were justified in self defense. She probably should lose her job.
If you are in the service industry with the government your job is to take some verbal abuse. That is part of the job. Cops in the US need to be able to hear anything and everything from people which is protected by first amendment rights against a government authority. That a lot of cops in the south can’t take anything from the blacks and then take out their aggression on them means they need to be relieved of their jobs.
And who makes this worse? Yup the white, fake christian Republican politicians who stir the pot to win votes. Again and again we see that republicans are assholes.
After finished reading the first paragraph, I have a hunch that the passenger was American. The video just reinforces the general perception towards blacks in the US. Unsure how it will end but if it was American flight crew, the black couple would definitely be arrested and charged upon landing. No internal investigation required. The black woman is completely clueless how much power the flight crew and airline ground staff wield as we have documented and shared the experiences on this forum over the years. If the FA failed to resolve the issue to his satisfaction, he needed to escalate to the supervisor on duty. All other male FAs had to intervene and deescalate the brawl immediately before it got out of hand instead of standing around and watching it unfold: Separated the female FA from the obnoxious black couple and stepped in between the warring factions. We need to focus solely on the root of the issue and what transpired thereafter, in absence of racial and gender distinction. Anybody can get angry over any petty thing, but acting out and touching another person to express the anger is unacceptable and unlawful.
What’s funny is the fact that you assume the wife was black also.. “black couple”? Hmmm.. is that your own racial bias based on the way she spoke or what? Just curious how you could associate race to audio.
Girl, listen to her voice. Don’t tell me that’s a white gurl. I’m black. I know my people. We don’t all sound that way, but no white people do.
Rigoberto Alpizar was shot dead for far less than this despicable passenger. 100% defend the flight attendants on this one. That passenger should be charged with assault and in the age of COVID-19 also threatening with a biological weapon (spitting) and spend 10 years rotting in prison.
If the guy felt that the problem was that bad, he should have traded seats with the mother-in-law. I can understand unhappiness but his behavior went way over the line. Actions like that are why we should have a worldwide no-fly list. The flight attendant shouldn’t have slapped the guy but I doubt she’s trained to be assaulted, so she should get a pass this one time. As to skin color, at least to me that’s completely irrelevant, but others may disagree.
skin color does matter.
Matt. You gonna let this comment above stick around?
I agree , I appear to most to be white but I am actually Hispanic and Native American Indian Italian and Irish…. But I am baffled by other that assume that I’m white and have some sort of privilege? Grew up poorer than poor and had no healthcare and limited access to education. I’ve been harrassed by police , one sibling died from being misdiagnosed at a basic hospital and I witnessed one sibling commit sucide and 2 years after another sibling commit sucide /murdered by police (coroner could not tell if he did it or the police did it) , 13 years of domestic violence and I have a child with Autism that had had no education for almost 2 years because the education systemcan get away with many things and last but not least I’m a chronic pain patient who can not access pain relief from the Rare genetic disease I suffer from because of the ones who abused opioids….Ironically I worked in pharmacy for 20 years and have a rare incurable disease that has no treatment besides pain relief which can’t be obtained .
Please explain to me how it’s any of that skin color related ? Mind you I look caucasian .. green eyes .. light hair.
I dont know how my skin color has ever made a difference.
I’m not convinced that he deliberately spat on her ; it’s just as likely she got a spray of saliva resulting from his agitation and the fact she was ‘in his face’. She’s utterly clueless if her intent was to calm things down…aggressively wagging her finger in his face ( something that’s extraordinarily rude in many cultures, and unwise at best). Some people are temperamentally unsuited to service roles…she’s one of them. ( it goes without saying that he should not have hit her back…)
Sorry, I won’t watch the video. You never ever spit on anyone. Not on a human, not on an animal. Never ever!!!!!
So, the man traveled with his wife and mother-in-law. However, they didn’t sit together. Why?
Does the airline allow seat selection online (at a cost perhaps)? Didn’t want to pay? Didn’t get a chance because of too much traffic to the website?
Had the flight attendant addressed the passenger’s concerns the rest might never have happened. He should not have done as he did but she made the first mistake and behaved inappropriately – but this is Brussels Airlines.
Banned for life and ALL airlines ..simple as that
Just the beginning of the unraveling of humanity. The Covid 19 will ultimately devastate food supplies and people will kill for a head of iceburg lettuce. Do stay tuned.
Or a roll of toilet paper…
The middle seat is the absolute worst experience in air transportation. The passenger obviously has no experience traveling. In most jurisdictions spitting on another person is a battery and is punishable with a fine and jail time. This man should be banned from flying and his mother-in-law too.
“Mother-in-law being squished” is an absurd reason to escalate to any degree, much less this nonsense. If the flight crew can’t/won’t make accommodations for this issue, then… she’s uncomfortable for the flight and can complain again when they land, and go on Facebook and whine about how racist Belgians are.
Of course, this tough guy is willing to hit flight attendants, but not tough enough to just swap seats with his mother-in-law if she was really being “squished”. Just a dumb brute.
Not enough info here. Man claims he was pushed by attendants before video. Also, passenger gets in male FA’s face and FA swats him. A big no no.
It also seems the man doesn’t intentionally spit at the lady. It’s hard to tell. She does slap him, which is a big no no. He tackles her, which is a huge no no. Come on, she’s 70.
Lots of details and angles are missing and both sides are probably wrong. But if any of you traveling have a hard time believing FA’s are not sometimes outright jerks who abuse passengers, please stop drinking the cool aid.
We don’t know what happened before the video started, so it is hard to judge this. But we do see they guy hit the male flight attendant, which puts him in the wrong right away, even if they guy did “touch” him.
Funny how we’re all so over-sensitive towards racism, but not sexism? Hate it when people think “racism” (or any form of -ism) is a defense–completely undermines the whole movement and piggybacking on others’ efforts to reduce stigma. I really didn’t see how race played any part in this situation, apart from the pre-determined characteristics of the passenger and the crew, i.e. they happening to be of different color. I say this as a person “of color”, and trust me when I say I know what real racism is like.
Space was clearly tight, and being “elbowed” isn’t that rare on flights. Who (especially smaller-built people) hasn’t had their space taken over by someone else when in the middle seat? When I’m sat between two larger-set people, I wouldn’t be overly offended when they take over the middle arm rests. I do get upset if they’re large enough to spill over into my seat, but even then, it can’t be helped, right?
I think that anyone who turns this into a racial issue is just not right. Why is it that every time there is an Altercation between a black person and a white person, the white person is always accused of being a raciest? The man was clearly agitated and had no right to spit on anyone regardless of the situation , The flight attendant was just trying to do her job she is not law-enforcement and she reacted in self defence.
It wouldn’t matter what race the man was he was in the wrong.
He’s on a plane and he’s putting everyone’s life in danger by his actions, it’s not a black-and-white issue it’s an anger management issue.
The question then is, if the passenger had been white and asked the Flight attendants for assistance, would he have been dismissed in the manner that he was or told that they did not have to help him? Would he have been surrounded in the manner that he was? Would the male attendant have hit him as we have been told he did? Would the Female flight attendant have pointed her finger at him and told him to stop or he would get in trouble and belittled him in the manner that she did? There are alot of questions. The video starts at the point when things had clearly gotten out of hand with the flight attendants watching idly by ( like guard dogs) as the situation continued to escalate; a situation that could not have ended well given that both parties had clearly lost their cool and needed to be seperated immediately.
There is clearly collective fault on the part of the Flight attendants and the Passenger in this situation and they should all suffer the consequences for their actions.
First level-headed and reasonable comment that takes into account ALL perspectives. Thank you.
Like you said, your opinion. She slapped him, and we don’t know what happened before. You said that he was complaining because men were elbowing his mother in law, but somehow, you seemed to not remember that in your ‘opinion’. He was complaining for a reason – was it racism, sexism, we don’t know. What we do know is that she threw the first punch, and I would sue…
Any kind of out burst on a plane like that is grounds for arrest. Period. He was assaulting them with his violent outburst, and he was spiting! He acted like a criminal and should be treated like one. What kind of crazy person is his instigating wife! (Filming and screaming) Where did they think they were! It’s an airplane! Federal!
For anyone who said that supervisor deserved it, fine then, he deserved to be cuffed and dragged down stairs! Horrible what he did!
He should be given coronavirus and left somewhere in China to fend for himself
That’s not the entire story.
https://youtu.be/iPIqQNKWhIY
So, no one thinks that it’s odd that the majority of those commenting completely walk past the fact that this man asked for assistance when his mother complained that she was being assaulted. Instead of the flight attendants, a person of authority as described above, said that they “didn’t have to help.” That’s where the problem starts.. any reasonable person would be irate after that.. especially if your mother is involved. The actions that took place after that are the results of their initial response to a passengers complaint. Was he right for allegedly spitting on her purposefully? Absolutely not. Nor was it okay for her to slap him. Not only did other passengers say that the male flight attendant pushed him, he continued to say that as the female flight attendant ‘attempts’ to calm him down by threatening him.
Do not label him a thug and irate, but disregard the circumstances that led up to it. None of us would be okay with the mistreatment of our parents… no matter the place, time, or persons involved. Your selective outrage speaks volumes.
You buy the cheap seats they pack you in tightly, that’s how it is, she can’t fix that… I wonder if the mother in law was trying to get bumped into first-class, its been known to happen.