Oh, to be a dragonfly on the wall of a recent United Airlines flight from Denver to North Dakota.
On Thursday, a passenger tweeted to United saying that she was so unnerved by a flight attendant’s behavior that she was compelled to snitch tell the pilot, saying that the attendant said, “If your seat belt isn’t tight, you fucked up.”
Inquiring minds want to know: Did the stewardess mean you “messed up,” as in, you made a mistake, or did she use the inherently more black English intonation “You fucked up”—as in, you are messed up in the whole entire game?
As said dragonfly (’cause a fly is nasty), I would have preferred the latter. Just because that would have been hilarious to hear over the loudspeaker.
Anywho, this passenger, Erika Gorman, thought that the disheveled flight attendant was drunk or high, and tweeted the parent airline to say so. Gorman tweeted that she was “terrified” and took pictures of the stewardess and another passenger.
Gorman also tweeted that police and an ambulance met the plane when it landed in Williston, N.D.
In a statement to the New York Daily News, United got in front of this by giving all passengers on Trans States Flight 4689 their money back “as a gesture of goodwill.”
“We have compensated all customers aboard the flight and we apologize for any inconvenience or distress this may have caused,” read the statement. “The safety of our customers and crew aboard all United and Trans States flights is a top priority.”
The Daily News also reports that the attendant “was taken out of service.”