Airlines management said the attendant took the best course of action to protect other passengers.
Erica Ramos was waiting patiently on board her Alaska Airlines plane at the Oakland, California airport. She was headed to Portland, Oregon with a window seat when an older man took the seat behind her. Before everyone was seated, the man grabbed Ramos’s hair and began to violently and repetitively pull it.
“I really wasn’t entirely sure what was happening at that moment,” she told NBC. “I was afraid that this person was going to start punching me.” She was able to escape, but she says her scalp swelled up, and is causing headaches a week after the attack.
The male flight attendant who came to her aid was recorded by another passenger grabbing the man and punching him in the face multiple times and was filmed asking for an “able-bodied male passenger” for help.
Alaska’s upper management said he wasn’t in the wrong
Sara Nelson, the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants, said the attendant took “immediate action.”
“The flight attendant who had to respond to this took the immediate actions that you would take if you were able to take the crew members self-defense training,” she said over a video call. “We’re in a confined space, we cannot call for help, there is no other way to do this… There was imminent danger here, and the passenger needed to have action against them to stop what they were doing and potentially harming another passenger.”
Police removed the man from the plane, and the flight resumed. Alaska Airlines’s official statement to the outlet also backed the attendant and noted the man can no longer enjoy its services. They also assumed the man was suffering a “violent medical episode.”
“Our crew responded to the chaotic situation quickly and kept all guests safe until law enforcement could intervene,” the company wrote. “The guest in question has been banned from Alaska.”
