An American Airlines mechanic who wanted overtime was arrested yesterday for deliberately damaging a plane ready to take 150 people from Miami to the Bahamas.

According to CNN:

Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani has been charged with "willfully damaging, destroying, disabling, or wrecking an aircraft, and attempting to do so," according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.

Alani allegedly tried to damage or disable the aircraft's air data module (ADM) system, which reports aircraft speed, pitch and other critical data, on July 17.

On Thursday, investigators interviewed Alani and he "admitted that he accessed the ADM" and that he "inserted a piece of foam into the ADM's inlet where the line connects and that he applied super glue to the foam so as to prevent the foam from coming off," the complaint says.

Alani told investigators that he meant no harm to the passengers — he was hoping the damage would allow him to work more hours and get overtime.

The plane had actually started its flight, but after picking up speed on the runway, received an "error related to the ADM system," so the plane turned back to the concourse. None of the passengers were injured.

Image: by Zidane hadeed - Taken with the Canon T3i by Tevin Belasco, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43686908 Read the rest

A drunken baggage handler for Piedmont Airlines was in Kansas City when he took a snooze on the job. Just a bit later he woke up to find himself in Chicago. The gentleman had taken his lie down in the cargo hold on a Boeing 737 American Airlines flight.

Although there were 80 passengers onboard, the heated, pressurized cargo hold was empty, making for a cozy napping nook. The man wasn't hurt. He was sent back to Kansas City with no charges pressed.

It's one hell of a way to fly for free.

Via The Kansas City Star

Image: Colin Bowern/Flickr Read the rest

Et tu, American Airlines?

Just weeks after a shocking video surfaced of a United Airlines passenger being violently dragged off a flight for refusing to give up his seat, a new video shows an intense confrontation between American Airlines employees and passengers, including a woman holding a baby stroller.

Surain Adyanthaya is credited with capturing the video, and says it happened on American Airlines flight 591 from San Francisco to Dallas.

The video was posted to r/dallas, and started to go viral even before the flight landed at DFW.

The original Reddit poster says he was told it started over how a flight attendant dealt with a young mother who was trying to store a stroller in an overhead bin.

American Airlines is investigating after a video shows an altercation between a flight attendant and passengers. https://t.co/VORWX5Ike1 pic.twitter.com/HB3lfoIgyU

— Jim Dalrymple II (@JimDalrympleII) April 22, 2017

@Breaking911 @united : watch us knock a guy out@AmericanAir : hold my beer while I knock out a baby

— Elvis (@ScumbagElvis) April 22, 2017

Jalopnik watched it, so you don't have to:

The video starts with the woman already crying at the front of the airplane, holding a child in her arms and asking for her stroller back. You can hear another upset passenger say he’s “not going to sit here and watch this...” before making his way to the front of the plane to confront the flight attendants and ask for the name of the employee that allegedly hit the crying woman.

Read the rest

Authorities say Tulsa maintenance base workers workers for American Airlines found seven bricks of cocaine weighing 31 pounds with a street value of about a half a million dollars hidden in the nose of an AA aircraft. Read the rest

Two Muslim-American women were kicked off an American Airlines flight this week, basically for flying while Muslim. Read the rest

A Muslim man was booted from a flight after an attendant publicly announced his name and seat number and warned him she was “watching” him. Welcome to American (real ones) Airlines.

Mohamed Ahmed Radwan had boarded a plane in Charlotte, North Carolina and the flight attendant went to the tannoy and said: “Mohamed Ahmed, Seat 25-A: I will be watching you.”

The employee made no other announcements about any other passenger. Mr Radwan asked the employee why she had made the announcements. She reportedly responded that he was being “too sensitive” [and] was told he must leave the plane as he had made the first air stewardess “uncomfortable”.

The company's response: "We thoroughly reviewed these allegations and concluded that no discrimination occurred."

The same way bad police use "felt threatened" as an excuse for beatings and killings, bad airlines have settled on "felt uncomfortable" as their lawyer-approved all-bases-covered method of booting Muslims from flights. Read the rest

Air travel is degrading, stressful, and humiliating enough as it is, so imagine doing it when you can’t get up and walk off the plane.

Covertly snapped last night at the AA baggage office in Memphis, after they lost my luggage: Read the rest