Aer Lingus flight attendant accused of reducing passenger to tears by not allowing use of toiletOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\nOther cabin crew said they were \u201cafraid\u201d that trying to de-escalate the situation would make their senior colleague \u201cangry\u201d, a senior manager said.<\/p>\n
The airline decided the actions of Alan O\u2019Neill, a senior cabin crew member, amounted to gross misconduct and terminated him with notice after 12 years\u2019 service with an otherwise clean disciplinary record, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has been told.<\/p>\n
The tribunal heard a stand-off developed between Mr O\u2019Neill and a passenger after the senior flight attendant told him he could not use the bathroom while the plane was being refuelled on the tarmac in Marseilles on 9 April, 2024 for a flight to Dublin.<\/p>\n
Another flight attendant said passengers had been left to wait for the inbound jet in a part of the terminal with \u201capparently no bathrooms\u201d available.<\/p>\n
When Mr O\u2019Neill refused the passenger use of the toilet on safety grounds, she said she heard the passenger saying \u201cunder his breath\u201d the words \u201coh for f***\u2019s sake\u201d. She said he didn\u2019t say it \u201cdirectly\u201d to Mr O\u2019Neill.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Neill had another interaction with the man when he got up and tried to use the bathroom while the \u201cfasten seat belt\u201d light was still lit.<\/p>\n
The passenger was subject to a temporary flight ban after Mr O\u2019Neill wrote him up under the airline\u2019s \u201cdisruptive passenger\u201d procedure and read him a formal warning \u2013 a ban which was later \u201crescinded\u201d, the airline\u2019s legal team said.<\/p>\n
The airline launched an investigation into what happened on the flight when a different customer wrote a complaint to the airline about what happened during the flight, the tribunal heard. Members of the cabin crew were called in for interview around five or six weeks later, the tribunal heard.<\/p>\n
Mary McHugh, a senior Aer Lingus manager overseeing cabin crew operations confirmed in evidence that other cabin crew and the second customer had described Mr O\u2019Neill as being \u201caggressive\u201d, \u201cangry\u201d and \u201cextremely unprofessional\u201d, engaged in \u201cthreatening behaviour\u201d, and had \u201csnapped\u201d or \u201cflipped out\u201d at the passenger.<\/p>\n
When these points were put to Mr O\u2019Neill in a disciplinary meeting, he replied that he had been \u201cfearful and felt triggered by the customer\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Neill maintains the passenger told him: \u201cF**k you, I need to use the toilet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another flight attendant, Claire Durkan, said in evidence that when the passenger later refused to hand over his boarding pass when Mr O\u2019Neill was preparing to issue the formal warning, her senior colleague said: \u201cHe won\u2019t be allowed to go to the toilet unless he gives the boarding pass,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ms McHugh said: \u201cOkay, [the passenger] didn\u2019t provide his boarding pass; but apart form that, he became upset, and was just complying and embarrassed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAlan was getting angrier throughout the flight, which was creating an unsafe environment. Nobody was happy on that flight,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Comparing commercial aviation now to her time working as a flight attendant in the \u201890s and \u201800s, Ms McHugh said: \u201cOur world has evolved, and we do end up carrying passengers who do become unsafe.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said that part of her consideration in the disciplinary process was that as a senior flight attendant, Mr O\u2019Neill\u2019s duties in relation to conflict resolution and crew resource management (CRM) were safety-critical.<\/p>\n
That included recognising and accounting for times when a member of crew was \u201cnot having a great day, like what happened here when Mr O\u2019Neill was \u2018triggered\u2019,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might have been the better choice to go to his captain and say he couldn\u2019t operate on the flight,\u201d she said. It might have been \u201cthe safest thing to do\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is your reaction to the most junior member of staff expressing fear of approaching the senior in these circumstances,\u201d asked counsel for the airline Tom Mallon BL.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just saddened me that there was such a breakdown in CRM,\u201d Ms McHugh said. \u201cJunior crew would see Mr O\u2019Neill as a role model and were trying to de-escalate in their own ways,\u201d she said. \u201cBut they\u2019ve all stated, in different ways, that they were afraid; they were afraid it would make Mr O\u2019Neill angry on the flight.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, we\u2019re all human beings, Mr O\u2019Neill was very open and honest about personal stuff he shared with us; we can all get triggered. She said she was concerned that \u201cthese young crew were highlighting this to the senior\u201d and Mr O\u2019Neill \u201cdidn\u2019t stop in his tracks\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ms McHugh decided Mr O\u2019Neill reacted in a \u201cdisproportionate and unprofessional\u201d way towards the passenger, who was \u201cclearly in desperate need to use the toilet\u201d.<\/p>\n
The tribunal has heard the incident culminated outside Dublin Airport\u2019s Terminal 2 when Mr O\u2019Neill, in the company of colleague Joan O\u2019Gorman, encountered the banned passenger near the taxi rank.<\/p>\n
Ms O\u2019Gorman\u2019s evidence earlier this week was that her colleague shouted across the road at the passenger: \u201cYou think you\u2019re mister big man now, do you big fella?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Neill said the customer \u201ccalled me a name\u201d when they passed. He said he replied: \u201cReal mature, bud\u201d.<\/p>\n
Addressing Mr O\u2019Neill\u2019s version of events, Ms McHugh the \u201creal mature\u201d remark \u201cwouldn\u2019t be viewed as professional when in uniform\u201d.<\/p>\n
The hearing was told Mr O\u2019Neill immediately proceeded to phone a crew management office about his further encounter with the customer and later went to a Garda station.<\/p>\n
He told the disciplinary meeting that when he was next due to report back to work he \u201cjust sat on the bed for three hours looking at the uniform\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was still affecting me, and I knew I had to do something about it,\u201d he told the disciplinary hearing, before going on to reference a personal matter in mitigation.<\/p>\n
The case before adjudication officer Michael MacNamee BL has been adjourned to the first week of May, when Ms McHugh is set to be cross-examined by Jason Murray BL, instructed by Daniel Spring & Co on behalf of trade union F\u00f3rsa. Mr O\u2019Neill has yet to give his evidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sacked Aer Lingus flight attendant accused of refusing to let a passenger go to the bathroom on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[601,72,61,60,6465],"class_list":["post-320760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-aer-lingus","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}