An American Airlines captain died in flight, and the co-pilot safely landed the plane with 147 passengers, an airline official said.
The A320 was flying from Phoenix to Boston and was diverted to Syracuse, New York.
The airline official did not specify the cause of death. Ref. CNN
What is going on with American based airlines these days? Have a look at this confrontation and crying mother with baby: American Airlines investigates after video shows mom in tears via CNN.com. The level of service seems to be deteriorating and the crew / ground staff seem to be very cranky.
American Airlines (Hover)
What is happening is you have these people who think of no one but themselves and feel that the rules mean every one else but not them. People feel it is their right to do as they wish all the time and no one can tell them otherwise. When you have tow that are like this and the they clash you get things like this. She was told she had to check her stroller at the gate I believe and she did not want to so she started crying when it was taken away from her causing another man to stand up in her defense when clearly she was in the wrong in the first place. I think we will see more and more of this as people will be seeking to see if they can get a confrontation out of the airlines staff now.
While that may be so there are two things to note:
1. The ground staff (Bald guy) could have not replied to the passenger with equal aggression. He could have said, "I understand Sir, we are handling it… " and just ignored him.
2. The captain of the plane took a very nonchalant approach to what could be an esscalating situation. He should have been in between the two of them with speed and not just there casually as a spectator.
The professionalism is always on the part of the airline and staff not the passengers even if in the wrong or we saying that all gloves come off when a passenger is not as compliant as an airline will like.
Yes many things went wrong in this situation and I think as people keep going down the path we seem to want to go down it will not get much better any time soon. I guess we wait and see what happens in the next couple weeks as both the passengers and airlines strive to come up with some common ground that both can live with.
Wow, can our airlines not do anything right any more? If this is true it is horrible. Bad enough a mother has a child die, but then to suffer they indignity of having her ashes lost as well. Airlines need to get their act together or all the bad press will really kill their business. Watch another airline that actually cares about customer satisfaction come in and take over.