While JetBlue Took Ownership And Compensated For Failures, American Continues To Ignore Alleged Anti-Semitic Incident

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I wrote about 2 unfortunate in-flight incidents last week.

• A JetBlue flight attendant falsely reported that Paul Faust created an in-flight disturbance, triggering a call to the Las Vegas Police Department and a cancelation of his return flight.
  • The airline rapidly made policy changes and responded to media requests.
• American ejected 21 year old Yehudah Roffman from a flight when he repeatedly asked the crew about what he thought was a dent in the plane’s tail without getting answers. The airline then ejected 17 year old Reuvi Scheinerman for apparently no reason other than being dressed in similar yeshiva clothing.
  • The airline has ignored repeated requests for comment, but that doesn’t mean you should stop reporting safety issues.

While the American story was covered in The Forward, trended on X/Twitter, and on several blogs, it didn’t gain the viral traction of the 2022 Lufthansa story or the JetBlue story.

These days, people want to see video of what happened, or at least video testimonial of what happened, which we don’t have in the American Airlines incident.

I spoke to Paul Faust about his JetBlue incident.

He told me that he has grown his Instagram presence since 10/7 from 2K to 30K followers by sharing common sense thoughts about the attacks and the war on Hamas. He’s also the co-founder of RingBoost, which sells vanity phone numbers, and made a cameo on The Office.

Paul said that he’s a long-time JetBlue loyalist and Mosaic elite member. He also never called for a boycott, he just wanted to vindicate himself and get an apology from JetBlue.

He agrees that posting the calm video, without threatening JetBlue, just putting his face out there with his story, resonated with people. He was open and truthful, said what was really upsetting, and it went viral. When you speak from the heart, people listen,

Paul said he wasn’t upset over the Free Palestine pin, “Free Palestine? Sure, free it from Hamas.” But he discussed Israel with seatmate Rachel Almagor, and felt the flight attendant was targeting them when she moved only that pin to her apron.

He was much more upset after an agent tried to stop him from leaving and then called the police on him. And he was livid when he woke up the next day to find his ticket had been canceled. When the Mosaic agent read the notes about him causing a disturbance, he knew he had to fight back.

Initially, JetBlue issued a boilerplate apology about not meeting their high standards for customer service. It was an email that you would receive for a broken TV or seat on a flight.

The media took care of vindicating him and Paul commends JetBlue for then taking the complaint seriously. The airline told him that there were failures across the board, from their pin policy, to the flight attendant, to the lead flight attendant who raised the issue when he asked that it not be raised, to the pilot who paged for an agent, to the agent for calling the police based on the false disturbance report. None of those actions followed the airline’s rules and procedures. Paul assumes the flight attendant filed that report, though it could have been the lead flight attendant or the pilot. JetBlue promised there would be consequences based on the outcome of their investigation. The airline did reach out to everyone sitting around him and watched video surveillance from the gate, and concluded there was no in-flight disturbance.

He was very happy to see the pin policy being changed and believes the airline will follow through with disciplining those at fault and providing additional sensitivity and deescalation training.

While he wasn’t looking for a payday, he is still waiting for an apology in writing, as he was promised. JetBlue says that will be coming. The airline refunded his canceled flight and reimbursed him for his flight home, Paul jokes he wouldn’t have flown Spirit if he knew they would do that! The airline is also providing him with 4 free flight vouchers and 2 years of top-tier Mosaic 4 status when he is ready to start flying JetBlue again. That sounds like pretty adequate compensation for this situation.

Paul notes that he received many Instagram messages from JetBlue pilots and flight attendants apologizing for what happened. He’s happy with JetBlue’s response and apology.

All in all, I think JetBlue did a good job getting this one right.

Now American on the other hand…Shame on their crew and shame on how the airline has handled this situation.

Our original X/Twitter thread was viewed over 200,000 times. You can like, repost, and quote these posts to continue to spread awareness of the story:

On Sunday, May 5th, @AmericanAir Kicked an orthodox Jewish passenger off a flight due to the actions of an unrelated orthodox Jew.

This story was so outrageous I had to investigate, and after talking to the two passengers involved, the story seems even worse than I thought!

— DansDeals (@DansDeals) May 7, 2024

How long can @AmericanAir stay silent? #AntiSemitismInTheAir https://t.co/0kZWyFtADm

— DansDeals (@DansDeals) May 8, 2024

What’s your take on the American and JetBlue incidents?