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Man kicked off Southwest flight (to Austin) after making joke about vodka

Nueces River Rat

By Nueces River Rat
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Nueces River Rat

Nueces River Rat 5539

Posted
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Which one of you asshats is the guilty one?

https://nypost.com/2019/05/15/man-kicked-off-southwest-flight-after-making-joke-about-vodka/

 

A man was booted off a Southwest Airlines plane in California — because he jokingly asked if the water being handed out on the delayed flight was vodka, according to new reports.

Passenger Peter Uzelac told local station FOX 40that he was on a flight from Sacramento to Austin, Texas, with a stop in Los Angeles, on May 8.

While on the tarmac, a maintenance light came on — and the plane was returned to the gate to check out a minor issue.

It took a few hours for the plane to refuel, so the flight attendants handed out water to all the passengers, Uzelac told the outlet.

Then the unidentified man next to him made what seemed like an innocent joke.

“He said something [like], ‘They should be passing out vodka because we’ve been waiting so long,’” Uzelac said.

The attendant curtly replied, “Yeah, it’s vodka,” and when she moved to another row, the man joked back, “Hey, this isn’t vodka,” Uzelac told Yahoo Lifestyle.

The attendant, whom Uzelac described as young, did not see the humor in the man’s comment, he told FOX 40.

“She came by and was like, ‘I don’t think that and I didn’t like your joke,’” he said. “Then my wife tried to butt in there and say, ‘Look it, we’ve been on this plane for hours.’ And she says, ‘Well, so have I, so get used to it.’”

Then the attendant started speaking to someone on the phone at the front of the plane — and the aircraft turned back to the gate a second time.

Several Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies boarded the plane and asked the offending jokester to leave.

“And people started yelling then,” Uzelac told the station. “In fact, people stood up. I stood up. People were saying this man didn’t do anything.”

The man was not charged with any crime, and Uzelac said he’s filed a complaint against the attendant with Southwest.

“If they have this in their records, you know, maybe it will prevent this from happening again,” he told the outlet.

In a statement released to the station, Southwest said it would share the report with its Customer Relations Team.

“We regret any less-than-positive experience a customer has onboard our aircraft,” the statement said. “We welcome over 100 million customers each year, and we aim to maintain the comfort of all while delivering Southwest hospitality.”

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Reagan1k

Reagan1k 3024

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Yeah - this one is on Southwest and the attendant.  You can't have attendants singing, joking, and doing back-flips down the aisle on flights and then throw a guy off the plane for interacting with you and trying to lighten up a bad situation where you're stuck on a tarmac.

Everybody has bad days, but to take it that far and then follow through with a shitty attitude is a problem.

It's always a good mental safety check to realize that if everyone is pissing you off, you just might be the common denominator.

Working for a domestic carrier in that capacity might not be her cup of vodka tea.

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Your Mom

Your Mom 4852

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 I have no idea what happened here but there’s a lot of things missing from this story.    

1)  The flight attendants side of the story is missing.   

2)  Flight attendants do not have the authority to kick people off airplanes. They never have, they never will. That decision did not come from her. 

3)  There was more maintenance procedures going on. Not just refueling. 

 

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Your Mom

Your Mom 4852

Posted
Posted (edited)

 Full disclosure, I work for an airline and my girlfriend is a flight attendant.  

 Last year a group of college kids are boarding the airplane.   One of them looked her up and down and says, “I’d fuck her.” out loud to his buddies and  ask her if she’d like to join the mile high club.    She steps into the flight deck to tell the captain she’s just been harassed and would like this guy removed from the airplane.   Meanwhile the guy heads down the aisle to the back of the airplane and grabs a seat. 

 It takes a few minutes to work through the process but eventually the agent comes back to the back of the airplane, where the guy has been joking and respectfully friendly with his fellow passengers.  He gets singled out and told to leave the airplane. He puts up a huge dramatic argument about how he didn’t do anything. None of the other passengers had heard what he said when he was boarding so they all stand up for him as well.   

 Everyone on board thinks he’s getting kicked off for no reason and the airline is overreacting.   None of them heard what he said in the incident long before he got kicked off,  which is what he’s really getting kicked off for.   

 I bet a Rocco style paycheck that the guy in the story did not get kicked off simply for a vodka comment.  But we’ll never know. 

 All that being said, we definitely have a few bad apples in the flight attendant ranks.    SWA employs 20,000 flight attendants.  There’s going to be a few. Without a doubt, this is being investigated and if it went down like the New York post says it did she’ll be fired. 

Edited by Your Mom
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Lhorn

Lhorn 4963

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The statement I heard from SWA was essentially “we regret if our passengers didn’t have a good experience” or something to that effect.  It sounds like whoever made the call had an itchy trigger finger.  Maybe we’ll see that it was more than that but the account I heard was from a bystander, not the vodka guy himself so probably less biased. 

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SwanderedTalent

SwanderedTalent 5761

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9 minutes ago, Your Mom said:

Last year a group of college kids are boarding the airplane.   One of them looked her up and down and says, “I’d fuck her.” out loud to his buddies and  ask her if she’d like to join the mile high club.    She steps into the flight deck to tell the captain she’s just been harassed and would like this guy removed from the airplane.  

it's good that she knows to keep temptation at arm's length

but seriously, glad he got kicked off the plane and I agree, there is no way the story above captures everything and I say that fully expecting that the flight attendant was at fault/had an itchy trigger finger-- I doubt whatever he did rises to the level of "getting kicked off the airplane" but I bet it's also a lot less innocuous than "I just said I wished I had a vodka!"

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RomaVicta

RomaVicta 30018

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2 hours ago, Nueces River Rat said:

The attendant curtly replied, “Yeah, it’s vodka,” and when she moved to another row, the man joked back, “Hey, this isn’t vodka,”

I'd throw him off the plane for lame jokes. With extreme prejudice.

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Vito Andolini

Vito Andolini 9132

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43 minutes ago, ztejas said:

How many times does stuff like this need to happen for people to realize there's absolutely nothing funny about vodka? You can't just joke around about it like it's tequila or something. 

A tequila joke? Ok, mister, now you’ve done it. Get your keypad and leave the forum. 

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RomaVicta

RomaVicta 30018

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40 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

True. Just look at the Russian airliners’ safety record. 

Back in the 80s, more than one Russian jet fighter crashed in cold weather because the pilots or crew were drinking the alcohol-based de-icing solution.

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clapclapclap

clapclapclap 9000

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1 hour ago, ztejas said:

How many times does stuff like this need to happen for people to realize there's absolutely nothing funny about vodka? You can't just joke around about it like it's tequila or something. 

But don't ask her on a straight tequila night, she'll start thinking about him, and she's ready to fight.  Blames her broken heart on every man in sight on a straight tequila night.

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BearSchlong

BearSchlong 8114

Posted
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Your Mom said:

  One of them looked her up and down and says, “I’d fuck her.” out loud to his buddies and  ask her if she’d like to join the mile high club.  

 

About 9 yrs ago I was on a milk run United Regional Jet flight from Denver with stops in Chadron, NE, Sioux Falls SD, Williston, ND. . .full of oilfield guys headed back to work after R&R. . .youngish female flight attendant was trying to corral a bunch of rowdy guys including one Okie (my assumption) who kept offering up his face as her seat of choice.  Totally cringe-worthy, but she rolled her eyes and said something to blow him off like "oh like you would actually know what to do with a woman."  I think these guys were regulars so she didn't take them too seriously.  Most other situations would have ended up with him ejected.  Personally I was appalled and was waiting for the situation to escalate but it didn't happen.  That was before society became highly attenuated to situations like this.

I'm usually a smartass but even I know that nowadays the jokes stop the moment you enter an airport.

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Gil Bang

Gil Bang 26020

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3 hours ago, Your Mom said:

 Full disclosure, I work for an airline and my girlfriend is a flight attendant.  

 Last year a group of college kids are boarding the airplane.   One of them looked her up and down and says, “I’d fuck her.” out loud to his buddies and  ask her if she’d like to join the mile high club.    She steps into the flight deck to tell the captain she’s just been harassed and would like this guy removed from the airplane.   Meanwhile the guy heads down the aisle to the back of the airplane and grabs a seat. 

 It takes a few minutes to work through the process but eventually the agent comes back to the back of the airplane, where the guy has been joking and respectfully friendly with his fellow passengers.  He gets singled out and told to leave the airplane. He puts up a huge dramatic argument about how he didn’t do anything. None of the other passengers had heard what he said when he was boarding so they all stand up for him as well.   

 Everyone on board thinks he’s getting kicked off for no reason and the airline is overreacting.   None of them heard what he said in the incident long before he got kicked off,  which is what he’s really getting kicked off for.   

 I bet a Rocco style paycheck that the guy in the story did not get kicked off simply for a vodka comment.  But we’ll never know. 

 All that being said, we definitely have a few bad apples in the flight attendant ranks.    SWA employs 20,000 flight attendants.  There’s going to be a few. Without a doubt, this is being investigated and if it went down like the New York post says it did she’ll be fired. 

Need pics for girlfriend

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DaysOff

DaysOff 7974

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Posted
Too bad to hear that SWA has gone full pussy.
I'm just glad that Herb Kelleher isn't here to see this.
There's an old story of Gordon Bethune on a flight with some asshole being belligerent with a foul mouth toward a flight attendant. He asks the guy what he paid for his ticket. Guy responds and Bethune hands him two Bourbon soaked hundreds and says get the fuck off my airplane. I want it to be true.
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Uncle Nate

Uncle Nate 2097

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I fly SWA and AA.  AA's flight attendants haven't been friendly or nice in what seems like decades.  SWA has, in the past year or so, followed suit.  I mean, just plain surly at times, especially the male ones.  They act like we are a burden to their day.  

I'm the nicest, most courteous passenger I know.  I smile when I get on, I say thank you when I leave, and most of the time lately it goes unreturned from the FA's.  Heck, I'm so nice that if it's a short flight (e.g. Dallas to Houston), I typically will pass on the beverage because I know it's tough on them if it's a full flight.  

I get that people suck, and people make FA's jobs harder.  But they can at least pretend to be nice to those of us who are being nice, courteous, and decent.  

Edited by Uncle Nate
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ztejas

ztejas 43537

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9 minutes ago, Uncle Nate said:

I fly SWA and AA.  AA's flight attendants haven't been friendly or nice in what seems like decades.  SWA has, in the past year or so, followed suit.  I mean, just plain surly at times, especially the male ones.  They act like we are a burden to their day.  

I'm the nicest, most courteous passenger I know.  I smile when I get on, I say thank you when I leave, and most of the time lately it goes unreturned from the FA's.  Heck, I'm so nice that if it's a short flight (e.g. Dallas to Houston), I typically will pass on the beverage because I know it's tough on them if it's a full flight.  

I get that people suck, and people make FA's jobs harder.  But they can at least pretend to be nice to those of us who are being nice, courteous, and decent.  

You know, I will say this, I have flown Spirit twice and both times both the attendants and staff at the gate were very chill. Maybe a "hey, we're in this shit together" type of thing, but it definitely made the flights suck less. 

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Reagan1k

Reagan1k 3024

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1 hour ago, Helobious said:

There’s roughly a 100% chance he got kicked off for something more than that joke. What a stupid story.

I'm normally going to take that same path but this one seems a bit different, as it is other passengers rallying to the defense of the guy that got kicked off.

It's not him telling the story but those sitting right there.  Seems to be a bit of a unicorn compared to the other "passenger mistreatment" stories we see.

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RPM

RPM 26354

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4 hours ago, Your Mom said:

Flight attendants do not have the authority to kick people off airplanes. They never have, they never will.

I thought their power was absolut.

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Lhorn

Lhorn 4963

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She came by and was like, ‘I don’t think that and I didn’t like your joke,’” he said. “Then my wife tried to butt in there and say, ‘Look it, we’ve been on this plane for hours.’ And she says, ‘Well, so have I, so get used to it.’”

This response is so far outside what the airline would want them to say that I can believe she got him kicked off for a bad joke. She’s had a shitty day, probably took a ton of crap already. He was just the straw that broke the camels back.  On an average day his joke wouldn’t have been a thing.  She just snapped on the guy. 

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