I’m not sure what’s worse — that people did this in the first place, or that they thought it was a good idea to upload this online for the world to see.
British Airways crew mocks Chinese passengers during layover
Two London Gatwick (LGW) based British Airways cabin crew have been fired, following their behavior on a recent layover on the Caribbean island of Antigua. During an evening out drinking between flights, one of the British Airways cabin crew mocked some Chinese passengers who had reportedly been on the flight, but spoke little English.
She made a “slant-eyed” gesture, and then in a Chinese accent said “give me wine.” Her colleague can be heard laughing in the background. The video was uploaded to TikTok, with the caption “two weeks in a row with this d*ckhead.” My gosh, these are some classy ladies, because I think that was meant as a term of endearment? Is that a common use in the UK that I’m just not familiar with, or…?
The video got more than a million views on TikTok, and as you’d expect, it eventually made its way to British Airways management. British Airways management called both of the cabin crew involved to headquarters. One flight attendant was even on a layover in Cancun (CUN) at the time, and was immediately removed from duty, and flew back to London as a passenger.
Both flight attendants were sacked after the meeting. A British Airways spokesperson said the following:
“All forms of racism are completely unacceptable, and we take allegations of this nature very seriously. These two individuals are no longer employed by us.”
This shows spectacularly bad judgment
It goes without saying that there are two major issues here.
The first issue is that these flight attendants think this way, when it’s their job to serve passengers from all kinds of backgrounds. This level of racism is disgusting, but I suppose you can’t force some people to change the way they think. Unfortunately alcohol often brings out the truth in how people feel about things.
Arguably what’s equally bad is that the cabin crew behaved this way, and thought it showed good judgment to upload it to social media. I mean, even if this was done while drunk, how little common sense are you showing by sharing this with the world? It’s infuriating.
Last year, we saw Cathay Pacific fire some flight attendants for making fun of passengers from mainland China. That was bad enough, but at least this happened because they were caught, rather than because they were boasting about their racism for the world to see.
Airlines around the globe have different policies when it comes to allowing employees to post on social media. Specifically, many airlines will restrict employees from stating what airline they work for, from posting pictures in uniform, etc.
In 2023, British Airways introduced a strict new social media policy. With this policy, employees are no longer allowed to post photos of them being “professionally engaged” in their jobs. In other words, pilots and flight attendants may no longer post photos from onboard aircraft while in uniform.
Presumably British Airways felt that some employees were either getting distracted during work in the name of creating social media content, or there were some other problematic incidents. However, arguably what’s much worse is how employees are acting out of uniform while drunk on layovers, when stuff like this happens.
Then again, we’ve seen seen such racist behavior in uniform while (presumably) not drunk. In 2017, a British Airways cabin crew member was sacked after she posted a video complaining about working a flight to Nigeria. She explained that all the passengers would be asking for upgrades because they don’t have enough legroom, as “their BBCs are in their way.” Oy.
Bottom line
British Airways has fired two cabin crew over a racist TikTok that they shared online during a layover in the Caribbean. They were making fun of some Chinese passengers, including a slant-eyed gesture, plus mimicking their accents.
Their first mistake was being so racist. Their second mistake was thinking that it was smart to upload that online.
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