Flight attendants at American Airlines keep on leaving lone passengers who have fallen asleep in window seats and lavatories on empty planes after they’ve gone home or moved on to their next flight, the union that represents crew members at the Fort Worth-based carrier has warned.
In a memo sent to tens of thousands of flight attendants at the end of last year, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) warned that it had seen a marked uptick in sleeping passengers being left on empty planes.
This type of incident is known internally as a ‘minimum crew violation’ because passengers aren’t meant to be onboard a plane without a set minimum number of flight attendants to manage any emergency situation that might emerge and to ensure the security of the aircraft.
Having investigated several recent incidents, the airline and union discovered that in every case that passengers had been accidentally left onboard, it was because flight attendants had not properly completed post-flight security checks.
In most cases, flight attendants had missed a lone passenger snuggled up and sleeping in a window seat or using the airplane restroom before they deplaned and left them onboard.
“These procedures are required to ensure that no passenger is ever left onboard,” the flight attendant union told its members in a recent memo. “Check lavatories, and make sure no passengers are sleeping in or under seats. This is a critical final check to confirm that no one has been overlooked, and this ensures that you and your crew aren’t at risk of violating a FAR,” the memo continued.
FAR stands for ‘Federal Aviation Regulations’, and it is essentially a bible of rules that set out what flight attendants are expected to do.
The union has warned flight attendants that a post-flight security check can not be left to one person and is the responsibility of all the operating crew. As a final check, the lead flight attendant should also perform one last walk-through of the cabin to ensure no passengers have been left behind.
“Leaving passengers on the aircraft unattended is a significant safety and security concern and we appreciate everyone’s shared efforts in ensuring this doesn’t happen,” the memo continued.
In 2019, an Air Canada passenger made international headlines when she woke up alone and still strapped into her seat in a dark and freezing cold airplane that had been parked up for the night in Toronto following a flight from Quebec.
Tiffani Adams says she managed to call a friend, but her cellphone ran out of battery after about a minute, and she could not recharge it because all the power was on the plane.
With access to all areas of the plane, Tiffani went on the hunt for something to help attract attention and get help. She found a flashlight in the cockpit, which she shone through the windscreen, flashing an SOS signal to attract attention.
When that didn’t work, however, Tiffani opened one of the plane’s doors but quickly realized that the jump to the ground would be too far, and the plane was parked far away from the terminal building.
Thankfully, a baggage cart driver noticed Tiffani with her legs “literally dangling down” from the plane door and managed to orchestrate her rescue.
Presumably at least one flight attendant has to walk from the back of the plane to the front once deplaning is done, with their bags, to exit. So really no excuse for missing someone in a seat.
They have enough to do already so why add being someone’s wakeup call. At some point people need to start being responsible for themselves.
This is overlooking another awful possibility, a sick/unconscious passenger. How horrible it would be to miss a person who is in the midst of a medical crisis whose life could have been saved if the FA had checked on them.
Fun fact: If you are abandoned and stranded inside an American Airlines aircraft because you overslept on a flight and the flight attendants forgot about you, search for the giant pack of emergency and complimentary Biscoff cookies or pretzels in the overhead luggage storage at the front or aft section of the passenger cabin.