'We're not letting you off the plane': Cabin crew threatens passengers

PA

An airline has apologised after one of its flight attendants reportedly threatened not to let any of the passengers off the plane until one of its inflight entertainment systems was returned.

The video player belonging to Alaska Airlines went missing on a flight from Miami to Seattle on Tuesday morning, according to the Daily Mail.

A passenger on board the flight, writer Jeff Reifman, took to his blog to describe what happened and, according to the paper, he wrote: "Threatening to detain all your passengers over transgressions by other flyers is about the dumbest thing you can do for customer loyalty."

He claimed that an attendant "said that the cabin doors would not be opened and that passengers would not be allowed off to catch connecting flights if the last video player (digiplayer, as she calls them) was not returned."

An Alaska Airlines spokeswoman, Bobbie Egan, wrote a response on his blog, apologising for the behaviour.

"The flight attendant's announcement to our passengers onboard this flight was inappropriate and did not follow our procedures."

And, in response to Mr Reifman's suggestion that the airline take a note of which seat has rented the DigEplayer, which shows films and television episodes for a rental price of $14, she replied that was usual policy, but it had not been followed in this instance.

Last year, Alaska Airlines hit the headlines when Jeff Ellis of West Linn, Oregon, was stung by a stowaway scorpion that struck while he was trying to sleep on a red-eye flight from Seattle to Alaska.


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