American Airlines Passenger Emerges From Lavatory, Climbs Through Aisle [Roundup]

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Comments

  1. Regarding the woman freaking out: Mental illness, which makes it very sad, or she took bad drugs in the lavatory, in which case she should be heading for jail.

    Interesting that the passengers were the ones who ultimately — and seemingly quite effectively — took care of the situation with a degree of compassion from a position of strength.

  2. The worst part is that she is stepping on the armrests with her feet right after leaving the lav. Gross.

  3. My honest opinion. The way she was going, it almost looks like something out of the exorcist. That woman without a doubt was possessed by something demonic.

  4. Fun fact. Clear-air turbulence and wind shear will take the fun out of accepting the physical challenge of returning to your seat from the lavatory without touching the aircraft floor by straddling the armrests across an aisle. However, you will ruin your afternoon when your body crashes to the aisle floor.

  5. @ Thing 1
    Your comment is rather passive/aggressive. What would YOU have done if you had found yourself in that crew member’s place? No need to reply, I think we all know the answer.

    Kudos to the guys that stepped in.

  6. My comment may be critical, but I wouldn’t describe it as passive aggressive. As for me, fortunately my physical condition and training is such that I can handle myself in this type of situation.

    But the key here is that the other passengers DIDN’T have to wrestle her to the ground. They DIDN’T have to tie her up, use brute force, etc. They used calm, soothing speech and guided her to her seat. A flight attendant should have tried the same thing first and prevented the potential serious danger of turbulence or the woman injuring another passenger in which case the entire situation could have rapidly escalated.

    If the flight attendants weren’t trained to approach these types of situations in that manner, then their training sucks and shame on the airline. If they were, then why didn’t they at least try something?

  7. @ Thing 1
    Again … what would >YOU< have done—without the assistance of passengers—what with your "..physical condition and training.." and all .. to take care of the "..situation with a degree of compassion from a position of strength." by … your … self?

  8. @ Banana. You’re tossing me a red herring.

    Isn’t the primary role of flight attendants to ensure the safety of passengers? You’re changing the topic. As you note, “kudos to the guys that stepped in” But that is, by definition, the role of the flight attendant. I actually have worked with severe, physically, mentally ill individuals (this woman may have had a drug reaction, but the behavior is similar). I actually have experience and training in this area. I have stepped into situations with distressed, mentally ill individuals in the past (and will in the future — hopefully — for another decade or so). This is not something you want to leave to passengers to solve. It’s great that these guys handled it well. I would be concerned that we leave it to passengers to address such problems in the future. They *can* get hurt if not trained. They *can* unintentionally (or unfortunately, intentionally) escalate the situation so that other passengers get hurt. Having an ill or drugged passenger climb around the cabin endangers passengers — it needs to be dealt with. By crew. Not other passengers.

    As in any emergency (and I wouldn’t consider this an emergency), passengers should help if needed, but they should be **helping**, not the responsible for initiating and solving the problem.

    We’ve all seen videos and read stories where flight attendants (and other crew) have done a great job in challenging situations. This was not one of them.

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