HONG KONG — Cathay Pacific has apologized for embarrassing a customer whose anguish after missing her flight was captured on video by an airline employee and posted on the Internet.
The Hong Kong airline said in a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday that the worker who filmed the video has been disciplined but that another person posted the footage on YouTube, a video-sharing Web site.
The three-minute video shot on a mobile phone shows a woman wailing, throwing herself on the floor, banging on an airport counter and trying to barge through a closed boarding gate at the Hong Kong International Airport on Feb. 4 after missing a flight to San Francisco.
“They have no compassion. The plane hasn’t even left, and they’ve shut the gate. They’re crazy! They’re crazy!” the woman shouted.
[..]
Cathay said it had apologized to the woman “for the inconvenience and embarrassment she may have suffered as a result” and offered to upgrade her seats on her next trip and reimburse her for frequent flyer miles she used for upgrades on recent journeys.
The airline said the woman has not sought compensation from the company.
As far as I’m concerned she should consider herself lucky that she wasn’t flying with EasyJet who regularly film customer tantrums for the television show Airline which is internationally syndicated.
The only difference between this video and every other video of people having a tantrum in public is that this one spread quickly on YouTube and was then picked up by the broadcast media and appeared on almost every news programme on the planet, whereas most sit on YouTube with minimal interest from anyone.
Madam, think about this more entrepreneurially, you could make a fortune out of television interviews about this video…or perhaps start a successful anger management course. Possibilities galore here…although if you’re really embarrassed about it, well you’ll know not to do that again in a public place.
I’ve been thinking of calling US talk radio host Sean Hannity for a little while now and finally decided to do so today. It took me a good forty minutes or so of intermittent redialling to get through, and then I spent another forty minutes or so on hold. By this stage an interview was going overtime and with the other interviews they had lined up, it was unlikely that they would be able to get to me for at least an hour or more, if at all…as I was calling from overseas they were kind enough to inform me of the situation, take down my phone number and offer to call me back tomorrow.
Hopefully I’ll be able to chat with Sean tomorrow. His show airs between 7am and 10am Canberra time (with current timezone differences). If it ends up happening, I’ll be sure to let you know.
I’m a few days late on this one, but I couldn’t let it go without mentioning it.
Barack Obama’s appointee as director of Urban Policy, Adolfo Carrión Jr., is facing some rather interesting scrutiny from his recent stint as Bronx Borough President. The New York Daily News broke the story early this week with an investigative feature which Sean Hannity summed up quite nicely:
Adolfo Carrion Jr. [..] had a mysterious pattern of receiving contributions from various groups and individuals, either right before or right after approving their building projects.
The New York Daily News story goes on for three pages and includes many examples of the suspicious payments…far too numerous for me to quote them all here, although I will be saving the document for future reference.
I’m losing count of these ethical problems in this administration…I pity the 47.1% of American voters who voted against this mess.
WASHINGTON – Ron Kirk’s excess deductions for basketball tickets and failure to report speaking fees as income have cost him $10,000 in back taxes, a Senate committee disclosed Monday, in the latest IRS-related embarrassment for an Obama Cabinet pick.
The problems are the first indication of potential trouble for Kirk’s nomination to be U.S. trade representative, though White House officials and key senators called the errors minor and predicted the former Dallas mayor will be confirmed by the Senate.
And who was the senator who declared the issue to be a minor issue? Why it was the illustrious “I got my high speed train from L.A. to Vegas in the stimulus bill” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of course!
“When you put anybody’s tax filings under a microscope, people don’t have to be dishonest,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “It’s just hard to do all the right things. It certainly shouldn’t disqualify him.”
In Senator Reid’s defence, I suppose it is small compared to the other tax problems in the cabinet, but really, how many more of these tax problems are we going to find?