I hope she likes them apples
Thanks for the low-hanging fruit. [rimshot!] Thank you! Please tip your waiter!
I agree that her behavior was inexcusable, but I don’t agree with the charges against her. If the executives of an airline don’t have any say in what their captains, planes, or staff do - then who does? She was being an ass, but I think she was within her rights. Which doesn’t change that her underlings deserve better.
So rare when justice is actually served. A year is actually about right here.
Next up, young Master Hilton.
The aviation authorities?
She wasn’t the supervisor of the flight crew, she was just an entitled passenger. Ordering the plane back to the hangar is probably not among her job responsibilities.
How does this ruling lead you to the conclusion that executives no longer have ANY say in what their captains, planes, or staff do?
ANY? Yikes!!
I feel sorry for her kid who’s like 9 or something. Also I think the pilot should have refused her order since she was just a regular passenger on that flight.
I think the pilot returned to the gate at that point to deal with an unruly passenger.
obstructing the flight’s captain in the performance of his duties
If her duties are executive, then it might not be farfetched to assume that she has leeway in deciding what the captains duties are to begin with. Likewise the crew member who she booted off. If I got forcibly removed from a flight before takeoff, my intuition suggests that it would take quite a beating for me to get assault charges to stick to the airline or TSA.
I am not sympathetic to Cho, but I suspect that this is merely an incidence of criminalizing embarrassingly rude behavior because she was a foreign businessperson. Also with more drastic bureaucracy because (ooer) it’s a plane. One could push a stranger off of a public bus and probably not get prison time.
I’m pretty sure captains’ duties are described in their contracts, and aren’t susceptible to ad-hoc redefinitions by off-duty executives.
Koreans aren’t foreigners in Seoul, which is where the court decision being reported on was made.
This is an example of South Korean courts being draconian (or serving just desserts, according to point of view), rather than US courts. I don’t know much about the SK legal system, except that it is still a criminal offence to commit adultery there, so maybe this is all of a piece with how such things usually go there.
“Captain, I am this airline’s executive vice-president in charge of in-flight services and I demand a barrel roll RIGHT NOW.”
No, it was an appetizer.
I’ll show myself out.
Sure thing, boss.
In similar news, the ship captain for the Costa Concordia has just been sentenced to 16 years in prison.
I loved – in the sense that I was horrified – by the transcripts of the Italian Coast Guard telling him what his duties were as Captain. “That ladder where you see your passengers going one way, you need to be going the other way.”
He will probably have nothing happen to him. At worst community service with a reality show around it.
