A United Pilot Was Removed From Her Own Flight After Bizarre Rant About Election, Interracial Couple
A United Pilot Was Removed From Her Own Flight After Bizarre Rant About Election, Interracial Couple
We have seen plenty of stories where an unruly passenger gets taken off an airplane for some bizarre rant, whether it is based on alcohol or the person just being mean. However, it isn’t all too often that passengers start leaving an airplane out of fear that the pilot is not in a condition to fly. Well, on Saturday that is what happened, as the pilot came on the aircraft out of uniform. Eventually the pilot was taken off the plane and a replacement was brought in for the remainder of the journey. You can watch video of part of the pilot’s comment here.
According to BuzzFeed,
The strange comments rattled passengers, prompting dozens to walk off the plane as it prepared for takeoff from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas. Witnesses said the pilot called Trump and Clinton “assholes” and pointed out an interracial couple sitting in the cabin, causing passengers to question her ability to fly the plane.
“She said, ‘Sorry I’m late, the reason I’m late is I’m going through a divorce,” Randy Reiss, a passenger aboard the flight told BuzzFeed News. “It quickly went from playful to scary.”
The pilot seemed friendly at first, Reiss said, and some passengers even let out what sounded like empathetic “oh’s and aw’s” when she said she was going through a divorce.
But things took a turn when the pilot pointed out an interracial couple sitting in first class, Reiss said, making several passengers uncomfortable. She then said, “Look, I don’t care if you voted for Trump or Clinton, they’re both assholes,” Reiss recalled.
In a video captured by a passenger during the incident, the pilot, who was not in her airline uniform but instead wearing a green blouse and green cap, can be heard acknowledging that some people on the plane appeared nervous.
“So I’ll stop, and we’ll fly the plane,” she says. “Don’t worry. I’m going to let my co-pilot fly it. He’s a man.”
In the video, you can see Reiss get up to leave the plane. Apparently he asked the flight attendant if she felt safe flying with the pilot, to which the flight attendant responded that the pilot had been cleared to fly. This is bizarre behavior and it is completely sensible that passengers felt uneasy about the situation. I think the behavior of the pilot is shocking, but I am also curious how the flight crew saw nothing off with this behavior. The pilot was not acting rationally (from what I see in the video) and I just cannot imagine that if passengers had not spoken up, that the crew would have been okay with continuing on with the flight with this person as the captain.
