Two flight attendants working an American Eagle flight bound for Washington, DC were reportedly at each other's throats as the plane prepared for departure at JFK airport yesterday, and their "verbal altercation" was so raucous that the flight couldn't take off for FOUR HOURS. Remember the old days when a pissed off flight attendant would just tell everyone to go to hell and jump out the inflatable slide?
It's thus far unclear what the argument was about. The plane was scheduled to depart at 3:10 p.m., but as it taxied to the runway, the ladies' argument became so disruptive that the plane couldn't take off. It then returned to the gate, and passengers had to get off the plane and wait until more professional flight attendants could be found. Apparently, finding two people who can make it through a flight without clawing each other's eyes out takes American Eagle about four hours.
"We were informed we were going back to the gate because the flight attendants couldn't work with each other," passenger Dan Alexander tells NBC New York. "I find it hard to believe the flight attendants couldn't work with each other for an hour," which is the duration of a flight from NYC to DC. But when you're trapped in a confined space with two bickering, uh, flight attendants, an hour can seem like an eternity.
The incident caps off a bad week for the airline: American Eagle recently announced that it was cancelling 300 flights due to the high number of "pilots reporting sick and maintenance reports filed by crews."
