easyJet flight EZY2122 from Nice to London Luton was delayed nearly 13 hours on Saturday.
According to easyJet’s tracking for the flight,
- the inbound aircraft experienced air traffic delays
- then the aircraft went mechanical (‘fueling problem’)
- so they assigned a new aircraft
- but the crew timed out
- and a new crew was flown in from London Gatwick to operate the flight
@easyJet_press #CarolynMcCall your company are a lying shambles. Waiting 12hrs for flight Nice-Luton #customerservice
— Arabella Ark (@ArabellaArkwri1) July 29, 2017
Tensions were running high. Customers were frustrated. But apparently the easyJet experience was harder on airport customer service staff than on passengers, because this agent was photographed hitting a man who was holding a 9 month old baby.
After 13 hour delay of an easyJet flight, a Nice Airport employee punches a man with a baby in the face for complaining about the delays pic.twitter.com/744HsYegUr
— Leo Gupta (@LTG07) July 29, 2017
“It all kicked off after his [the father’s] wife was talking to the man [suspected attacker] because we were getting no information whatsoever about the delay.”
Mrs Arkwright said the passenger was holding his nine-month-old baby while his wife complained there was no baby food available.
Passengers though had been given “a $6 food voucher while they waited.”
A witness claims this was unprovoked and there’s no excuse at all for turning violent against the man carrying his baby though I’d sure love to know the rest of the story.
[T]he alleged attacker, wearing a white shirt and black trousers, repeatedly smiled at the family before lunging at the father.
‘He said nothing, smirked, showed no interest or concern for the family,’ she recalled.
‘Then out of nowhere, he just whacked him. My husband, who’s 64, had to pull the man off him and hold him against a glass door. Everyone was appalled.
‘The man had a great big mark on his eye when he finally got on the plane and everyone applauded him.’
easyJet for its part is distancing themselves from the incident, saying that the customer service agent dealing with their delayed passengers was a third party contractor working on behalf of the airport not the airline.
We are concerned to see this – it is not an easyJet staff member & they do not work for our ground handling agents. 1/2
— easyJet Press Office (@easyJet_press) July 30, 2017
We are taking this up with Nice Airport & their special assistance provider Samsic who we understand this person works for. 2/2
— easyJet Press Office (@easyJet_press) July 30, 2017
Inspiring! Whatever american did, french can do it better!!!
The real question is whether EasyJet contracts Samsic to provide “customer service” or whether only the airport does. If they do not, I agree with them that they’re really unfairly being scapegoated because an airport employee hit one of their passengers.
Did anyone else read the title and picture a man swinging a baby around and using it to hit somebody?
@Michael: That is exactly how I read it. It is Sunday, let’s give Gary some rest. 🙂
Travel lesson: Pack enough baby food. Expect delays. Airlines/airports dont provide it.
United is already trying to poach this employee with a higher salary offer and fringe benefits.
@Michael, @Santastico: You both “beat” me to it. 🙂
Is it me or does it feel like this website has become the “jerry springer” of travel blogs with all these articles about bad behavior on planes and in airports?
Not very “Nice”. Maybe Nice has a different meaning in French.
Anyway, it looks like customers accused easyJet of poor customer service and not communicating the status of the flight. But, when I click on the links, I see that they did provide updates similar to what Gary noted, starting with “Air Traffic congestion”.
None of this should lead to a fist fight. Hopefully the plane didn’t have anymore mechanical problems or crew problems.
And if they used the right credit card, a 12 hour delay followed by a punch to the eye should have some sort of reimbursement guarantee by the issuing credit card bank, right?
This is EasyJet, where everything costs extra. The pax probably didn’t pay the not-getting-punched-in-the-eye fee.
Seriously, are these pax not entitled to massive compensation under EU regulations for this delay?
The headline “Airport Customer Service Worker Caught on Camera Hitting Man With Baby” reminds me of a classified ad I heard about years ago: “Piano for sale by lady with mahogany legs.”
We used to test copywriters with headlines like these.
BTW, did anyone read the head to mean that the service worker was caught while standing (or perhaps sitting) on a camera and employing a baby to hit a man? Perhaps only a non-native speaker of English might interpret the sentence this way.
Ah, the wonderful excuse of SODDI. Some other Dude Did It … not EasyJet. You certainly can’t blame EJ for the actions of someone they’ve hired to do their customer service, can you?
@Michael & Santastico. That is exactly what I read. Using a baby as a weapon. Then I read it differently. Either way it’s not good.