The two women spoke with the flight attendant, explaining that their seats were wet and there was visible vomit residue, Benson observed.
“The flight attendant was very apologetic but explained that the flight was full and there was nothing they could do,” Benson wrote in her post.
The women were eventually given wipes and blankets, and “settled in as best as they could,” she said in the interview, but then a pilot came and knelt down at eye level to the women.
“He said very plainly and very clearly that they had two options: that they could exit the plane on their own accord, and rearrange their flights themselves, or security would escort them off the plane, and they would be placed on a no-fly list,” Benson said.
“They asked him again, ‘Pardon me, what?’. He repeated it again, word for word.”
Benson rejected the pilot’s characterization of the women’s behaviour.
Who would just happily accept a vomit seat? This can get you off planes? We need better trains in this country.
Usually I expect pilots to help resolve the situation, not escalate it…
In all honesty it sounds to me like a game of telephone. The flight attendant probably said these people refused to sit down or were hesitant to sit down or something like that to the pilot.
The pilot then came to the back and took the flight attendant’s word for it, assumed the worst and didn’t bother to ask what the situation was.
Poor communication all around.
While possible that’s entirely unacceptable. Hopefully communication procedures will change as a result of this.
there was nothing they could do
I’m willing to bet ‘showing basic humanity’ was an available option the flight crew was just unable to consider.
How is an airline not prepared for this kind of incident? It must happen all the time, you would assume they know how to properly clean it and dry it.
Most airlines contract third-party “groomers” that clean the seats and aisles between flights and have access to spare cushions to replace soiled ones “in relatively short order,” Dee said.
“You’ve got toddlers, infants, even adults who have certain accidents … it doesn’t happen every flight, but it certainly happens every day.”
But specialists say tight-packed schedules and flight delays squeezing turnaround times can put more pressure on crews to get back in the air as soon as possible.
“You’d be extending the ground time on the airplane to do the clean-up,” Gradek said, noting that crews have strict rules on their shift time, or “duty period.”
So basically the crew forced someone to sit in vomit so they wouldn’t have to work late? Sounds about right.
I’ve worked lots of places where working late meant overtime pay, which was against policy and therefore led to battles, “administrative penalties” like getting lousy shifts, and occasionally even labour board intervention. So yeah, it’s not unreasonable to think that someone might push the problem on to someone else.
I don’t know much about airline regulations, but I would hope that there are also limits on hours based on safety regulations. In that case, the entire flight might get cancelled when someone exceeds allowable hours. Now imagine the pressure the employer applies to the employees in that circumstance. And the outcry from the passengers booked on said cancelled flight.
That absolutely cannot be what they call these 3rd party cleaners. Right?
Language is funny like that.
tight-packed schedules
Extra hardware.
Not something sitting there hot and ready to go, but there to take the place of the flight. Maintain a one-unit queue of planes ready to board and launch so that each and every plane sits for 2 hours and is actually prepped.
Or, when that inevitable daily breakage happens and a plane needs to be taken off the line for the day, it allows time to bring in another spare to keep that queue full (of 1) when the rotation loses that active plane.
Nobody who has ever flown Air Canada should be surprised by this. They separated my wife and I and refused to let me board the same plane due to them overbooking it and refused to refund us the extra we paid to reserve seats together.
Set the entire trip on a bad foot. I’ll never take Air Canada even if I am paid to do it.
The standard of care from Air Canada tends to be “not caring”…
Wet residue from someone’s puke is considered a biohazard… That’s unsafe and unsanitary and I can’t believe this is the standard operating procedure. The cushions themselves could be completely replaced and the seatbelt can and should be cleaned and disinfected at a minimum.
Air Canada’s been playing ads saying stuff to the tune of “we take your health seriously”, but this is a case where clearly they do not.
