Flight attendant loses stroller confrontation

The American Airlines flight attendant who reduced a baby-carrying young mother to tears Friday in a confrontation over her stroller may have one friend left.

That would be Bob Ross, president of the Euless-based Association of Professional Flight Attendants. Ross gets paid to stick up for each of his union’s 26,000 members at American.

Other than Ross, the as-yet unnamed stroller-snatching attendant shouldn’t count on anyone. This guy was far out of line — even if, as Ross pointed out in a news release, “we don’t know all the facts” and “neither the company nor the public should rush to judgment.”

He’s right. But a passenger caught at least part of the stroller confrontation on video and posted it on the internet. It’s impossible to hide from that these days.

We see the woman sobbing, pleading for her stroller as she holds one of her small children. There’s no way the stocky bald man in a uniform who caused her to cry comes away a winner in the public eye.

American quickly issued a statement saying the flight attendant had been “removed from duty” and the company had “started an investigation to obtain the facts.”

In a crucial step in such a crisis, American offered a straightforward apology “for the pain we have caused this passenger and her family and to any other customers affected by the incident.”

That’s damage control, but it acknowledges that customers come first. Most if not all of American’s flight attendants could have handled the stroller incident better than this guy.

This story was originally published April 24, 2017 at 6:10 PM with the headline "Flight attendant loses stroller confrontation."