Yesterday, I wrote about United’s loosened new onboard photo policy, which now permits other passengers and FAs to be captured without consent. It’s a positive development and I give United credit for the update. In thinking more about this rule change, however, I doubt it would have saved me from the walk of shame.
Let’s recount what happened to me onboard, for it is instructive in analyzing this new policy. You can read my full narrative here, but here’s the short version:
- I board retrofitted 767-300 and take a picture of my new business class seat
- Flight attendant runs over saying I cannot take pictures
- Passenger in Row 1 overhears FA complain to other FA, “There is a customer in the back of the cabin taking pictures of us while we work.” (see comment from FJFV here)
- I discuss the issue with the FA, stating I am not a “terrorist” but will not take further pictures
- A member of ground staff escorts me off the plane, saying the FA don’t feel comfortable with me onboard
- I appealed to the captain who would not hear my side and threatened me to quickly get off aircraft
Interpreting the New Policy
The new onboard photo policy states:
The use of small cameras or mobile devices for photography and video is permitted on board, provided that the purpose is capturing personal events. Any photographing or recording of other customers or airline personnel that creates a safety or security risk or that interferes with crewmembers’ duties is prohibited.
As irrational as the fear was, I was thrown off the flight because the FA feared for her safety and deemed me a security threat. As expressed by her comments, the picture itself was not the issue: her issue was two-fold. First, why is this passenger taking pictures? For what purpose would anyone take a picture of their seat? Clearly, she had never read my blog. Second, if this passenger is acting “strange” on the ground, how strange will he act in the air? Thus, in her mind, I created a security and safety concern sufficient to throw me off the flight. The concern was not objective, but subjective. And it concerns me that the new policy still allows for a great deal of FA subjectivity.
United should clarify who defines what a safety or security risk is. Examples should be given to FAs of what is a real security risk…and what is not. Heck, maybe my own case can be used.
CONCLUSION
I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but this topic fascinates me…for obvious reasons. In one sense, I do view the modified photo policy as personal vindication. On the other hand, I believe very little will actually change and that FAs will pull the safety card or the security card to stop onboard photography even if the real culprit is only personal discomfort.
Take it from me: be careful before you go overboard with onboard photography. Sometimes even an innocent picture of your seat can get you in trouble…
image: Jimmy Kimmel Live! (Fair Use)
I agree that in your case taking a photo of the seat shouldn’t be grounds to get thrown off the plane. It was a huge overreaction. If it was me though, I probably wouldn’t have said I “wasn’t a terrorist”. It’s one of those words on a plane that you just shouldn’t say. I know that sounds irrational, but it is what it is.
If I was a flight attendant I wouldn’t like this policy. I get that a plane is a public space. And I think that passengers should be allowed to capture their trip…and if a FA or other passenger gets captured in the background that’s not a big deal. But what is a dig deal is if people get weird about it. I could see passengers filming the entire meal service, FA interactions and all, to post on Youtube or their blog. If I was a FA I’d think that was incredibly weird and feel very uneasy about it.
I do think that when things go wrong, ie Dr Dao, it is good to have a video recording to know exactly what happens. But where you draw the line of acceptable and plain creepy is subjective. Unfortunately, what I do expect to happen is see an uptick in people being thrown off the plane for taking videos.
I got booted off of a UA flight years ago for handing my to the FA during boarding while I was on the phone with United premier line to educate her on access to premier seats. The UA premier line talked to he for about a minute than she went and talked to the captain and a rep came and asked me to deplane. Granted not the best way to go about educating them but their lack of knowledge on their own policies is ridiculous.
Wow, when did that occur?
United airlines has been responsible for multiple pet deaths during flights. They refused to accept any responsibility for any of them. After reading your article I’m left feeling that This airline seems to lack professionalism, proper protocol, and ethics.
Where you given another flight from United or did you forfeit your ticket? If you violate United po ml icy to you forfeit you $500 ticket ?
I was given another flight and United paid for my missed flight from Istanbul to Baku on another airlines. Additionally, I was proactively offered compensation.
The only thing that stands between you and an irrational flight attendant is the Captain (you complied with all United policies and crew member instructions and still got kicked off) and as you discovered far too many of us won’t get involved in situations like yours even when we should.
Regarding your flight that you were removed from what was the end to that story? What kind of apology and or compensation where you given if any?
Have we forgotten that these flight attendants are human beings who have to follow rules as well? Flight attendants are in constant fear of being blasted on social media after making a mistake. Our society captures everything we see on our phones. We capture moments that without context could be completely misconstrued. FAs work insane hours, sometimes with very limited rest. They have to make calls on the overall safety of every individual on board, and they do it with the pilots approval or they don’t do it, if the pilot disapproves.
United has had many PR instances that are absolutely unacceptable, so I can see both sides to this argument, but this is a rule to protect the human beings who are doing their jobs.
I wasn’t there, but based on this situation it seems like a miscommunication occurred due to a brand new policy. And as indicated in the comments you received the necessary compensation and travel accommodations.
Also, there are some genuine creeps that take pictures and stalk Flight Attendants. I have had passengers try and Facebook friend me or follow me off a plane and try and proposition me. Maybe she had an incident with a passenger and she is not comfortable with a strange man taking pictures of her. Would you be okay with a strange man taking pictures of your daughter at her place of work? If the answer is yes, then don’t.
I have tons of passengers take video of me doing my safety announcements and other duties and while I have never asked a passenger to not, it does make me uncomfortable.
So don’t take pictures, Dummy
Just because its easy, does not mean you should.
It’s my job to take pictures.
I am 100% behind the flight attendants. They see thousands of people on planes a month. If you kicked off their radar and they expressed concern good for them.
Would you rather the response have been “well he got through security how dangerous could he be?” I know attendants who have had bones broken by disruptive passengers. Wasn’t there recent video of some guy going bat crazy on the plane and everyone going why was he allowed on the plane?
Your walk of shame is as much about you as any attendant. You could have easily pulled up your blog and shown the attendant why you were taking pics.
I gave her my business card and told her I was a blogger. She didn’t care. She would not even accept it.
Mary as you can tell by name name I happen to work in the industry as. Captain at a US major airline. The FA that kicked Matthew off the plane was way way way out of line. The Captain was frankly a disgrace to his uniform. Did you even read his blog post?
When told to stop taking pictures he complied immediately. He did not argue unlike another customer that was allowed to travel. He politely attempted to explain his actions to the FA. He did NOTHING that in any way shape or form merited his being removed from that aircraft.
The “safety and security” card gives flight attendants real power to enforce their will but with that power comes real responsibility. Similarly I as the Captain of the aircraft also wield enormous power especially once we have the door closed. There are very good reasons for this and it’s encumbent on me to use that power appropriately.
There is power on the other side of the lens too. People can use cameras as weapons and contrary to popular beliefs cell phone video usually does not tell the whole story. Pictures and stories can go viral for all kinds of weird reasons and those reasons don’t have to even be connected to reality. Plus once it’s gets out there the internet has a way of bringing out the trolls who just want to watch the world burn. Consequently it’s very understandable that people may not like being photographed.
But Matthew was doing none of that. He never violated United policy and he fully complied with instructions given to him with out complaint. I don’t work for United but I can certainly share his concern that the new policy is a mess waiting to happen. It’s not been well thought out.
Man I need to proof read before posting.
Usually people say that about me! 😉
Bomb, terrorist, marijuana, and other cheeky phrases get zero tolerance in air travel, even though they may be more or less benign (or not) while saying them anywhere other than an airport.
My guess is that you’re not used to being ushered off a plane. Simple etiquette (taking a photo out of the view of others) and humility (obliging and smiling when told to stop taking photos) will prevent this from happening again. We know you’ll photograph more seats. And we look forward to seeing them!
Jumping into this late, and nobody may read this, but a philosophical argument I’d like to make (I think I made it before but it’s so important it should be reiterated)
Matt agrees it was a mistake was using the word “terrorist” in a sentence to an uptight FA on a plane.
The concern I have with the logic that such a faux pas deserves such harsh retaliation is that it ironically creates an environment of “terror”. Matt was stating a literal fact: He wasn’t a terrorist. He was not being facetious or disrespectful. On the other hand, the FA ironically was a terrorist in a literal sense. The FA is a poorly paid post-9/11 employee whose been granted the ultimate employee perk to throw passengers off a plane for her subjective reasons.
This situation reminds me of this classic doorman scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmiVlyAfTnw
Her reaction was, (and I choose this term carefully and deliberately), hysterical under the circumstances.
The main thing we hear nowadays is that our “flight attendants” are there primarily for our safety yet if this woman is so easily flustered, does that inspire confidence in her how she would handle a legitimate emergency situation? I’m reminded of this scene in “Airplane!”
https://youtu.be/FNkpIDBtC2c?t=22
As a side joke, the term “steward” is defined in the dictionary as to actually protect something while an “attendant” merely stands around.
The captain’s reaction was little better in that he chose to back up the FA’s overreaction rather than rationally listen. Shouldn’t a captain be cool under pressure?
It’s good that Matt was taken off the flight. He was SAFER with a different crew!
Security theater and “low hanging fruit” (throwing out otherwise well behaved passengers who annoy you because they’re “threats” and easy to intimidate) generates a false feeling of security that may cause an authoritarian figure to avoid addressing actual threats. An example might be a cop who writes up dozens of speeding violations on affluent motorists but doesn’t bother to solve more difficult crimes because he’s “done his job.”
In addition, Matt has noted that the passengers are the last line of defense in a crisis and have mitigated at least two disasters including the shoe bomber and flight 93. How will those passengers be capable of acting confidently when their spirits have been broken where they’re afraid to look up or speak for fear of accidently uttering a “trigger” word and getting into trouble? Such people at best are merely passive, including when they’re needed to help in a crisis or, almost as bad, under continuous pressure and snap at random (as the incidents of “air rage” continue to go up).
In any case, Matt learned a valuable lesson that when someone is acting hysterically and in a position of power, don’t try to make them feel better. My own life lesson in that case is to immediately seek out someone whose above THEM and reason with someone whose 1) capable of reason and 2) in a position of authority over the hysterical person.
Don’t try to reason with overpowered, unreasonable people.
I guess i just don’t see what the upside of this new policy is. Like you said, there is still nothing here to prevent a bad apple FA from playing the “safety and security” card to have a passenger booted off a flight for taking pictures or video. On the other hand, I can see bad apple passengers using the cover of the new policy to inappropriately photograph and/or record interactions, perhaps even to provoke a reaction from the crew or other passengers.
As for providing examples of what does and doesn’t constitute inappropriate behavior, while I like that idea in theory, that unfortunately doesn’t completely eliminate the problem as long as rogue employees have carte blanche to trot out the “safety and security” and “interfering with a flight crew” BS to pretty much do whatever they want. I suppose something is better than nothing, though.
There are far too many flight attendants on power trips. I’ve had several. And one experience actually made me afraid to fly again. I even had other passengers give me their cards and say how badly I was treated and if I needed a witness to let them know.
On a another flight we were all treated so badly that I started collection names and numbers of passengers who wanted to complain engroup. When I got off my flight to switch planes my name was being called by someone who worked for the airlines. I was being singled out to be “warned” —airlines need to train their flight attendants better and weed out the “nazi like flight attendants” who over react and remove passengers.
However unintended, I suspect the fact that you were a travel blogger might have made the flight attendant feel (rightly or wrongly) that she or he could be the subject of future individual retribution. You don’t mention if your travel blogger status was made known to the crew. We don’t have another side of the story to compare here. I work for this airline, and the last thing we want is to ask a passenger to leave. Really. It’s messy and a drag and no one is happy and it feels like we failed. Being asked to leave is exceedingly rare. Yes there are some jumpy crew out there, and you may have been the subject of an overreaction because we are all just human, but believe it or not, we try to get more than one individuals’ take on the matter before making a decision such as this. (I’m not a spokeshole, just a random reader).
Matthew, your short version explanation seems to lack critical info about what you were taking pictures of and frequency. You say you took a pic of your seat (must have been first class given person in row 1 was observing you) but offered no other details of your filming. If FA’s were chatting among each other about what you were doing, maybe you were more intrusive than you realized. Keep in mind, the FA’s job is to ensure safety of ALL passengers. In today’s culture there is no room for people on a flight they perceive to be threatening to others or the crew. Their job is safety of all. They are not staffed to make friends or appease one person’s desire that could jeopardize any other travelers journey. You did not share what your intentions of filming the staff was. If you blog about traveling, you never stated what the importance of your filming. Too many people instigate situations so they can be reimbursed travel expenses and see airlines and hotels as a $$$ ticket.
I took one picture.
This is, of course, one side of a story. We don’t have the advantage of the Fa’s side of things, nor the Captain’s. Ultimately, Matthew, instead of offering yourself up as victimized you could have simply said to the FA “okay, no problem”. But instead, you take it even farther by emotionalizing it on your blog and making the airline and its employees look like irrational, reactive bad guys. Who is the irrational, reactive one(s)? And how do you think you would feel about the general public being able to come into your workplace/space and freely photographing and videoing? People like you, Matthew, make the job of those who work with the public harder than it needs to be. SMDH
Trisha
If you read the story you find out that Matthews side of things was later confirmed by another customer.
If you read his story you would know that he didn’t argue with her but rather sensing her concern tried to set her at ease.
If you read the story you would know that he wasn’t taking pictures of her or her workspace but rather the seat he was sitting in. Are you really suggesting the single picture he took was in any way an invasion of her privacy?
Maybe United looks bad in that story because they deserved to look bad. Because they kicked a paying customer off a flight for nothing. Nothing at all.
Seriously I don’t think people are even reading the original story at all.
I still can’t believe that incident didn’t break your loyalty to UA, Matthew.