Conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly was caught berating an airline worker at New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport after his flight to the Turks and Caicos Islands was delayed for hours.
The video, which was exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail, shows the irate former host of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, a program that Mr O’Reilly left when he departed from the network in 2017 following settlements with women who accused him of sexual misconduct, arguing with the JetBlue employee and demanding that he get the attention of his manager.
“We need to know what you’re going to do,” the conservative commentator can be heard saying in the video filmed by a passenger waiting at a nearby gate. “It’s three hours late now.”
The exchange between the pair seems to then escalate, as the employee begins to lift his badge towards the chastising Mr O’Reilly, perhaps to confirm his identity to the man.
At this point, nearly inaudibly, you can hear Mr O’Reilly retort that the employee is “lucky I don’t put my fist through it”.
More words are exchanged between the two men but most are inaudible except for a comment from Mr O’Reilly where he appears to be offended at something the JetBlue airline worker has said to him: “You f***ing scumbag, don’t talk to me like that.”
“You’re threatening me with violence,” the employee can then be heard saying in response.
After that, the bristled No Spins News host denies the employee’s accusation and informs him that “you’re gonna lose your job” and then proceeds to storm away.
For his part, Mr O’Reilly has since said during an interview with the outlet Mediaite that the incident with the JetBlue employee was handled “poorly”, but he fell short of issuing an actual apology to the man he chastised earlier this week.
On Twitter, he continued to hold the same line, blaming the “character assassins” online for “lying” about the recorded incident at JFK on Sunday.
“The character assassins on social media completely lying about my interaction with a JetBlue guy who misled passengers during a five-hour delay. We’ve covered on http://BillOReilly.com. I expected this,” Mr O’Reilly wrote.
On his podcast earlier this week, the 72-year-old discussed the issue of airline staffing shortages, specifically laying the blame at the feet of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
“The airline moguls routinely lie about not having enough pilots and flight crews to operate scheduled flights. [Pete Buttigieg] will not do anything because he doesn’t care. So the airlines bank your money, while Americans suffer,” he said in an episode of his podcast Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis.
“The story is JetBlue can’t get their flights off the ground. It was crazy in the terminal,” Mr O’Reilly specified during his interview with Mediaite regarding the JetBlue video.
As Covid-19 related restrictions have dropped across the country and people have begun travelling with comfort once again, airlines have struggled to rebuild their workforce to keep up with the new demand and reach levels they once had before the industry was gutted by the pandemic.
For instance, though the US witnessed one of the busiest weekends of travel since the onset of the pandemic – 6.5 million travellers passed through airport security checks from Friday through Sunday – there were nearly 1,000 flights going in or out of the country that were also cancelled.
Major airlines, such as Mr O’Reilly’s targeted JetBlue and Alaska Airlines, have already reduced summer timetables for travel due to a shortage of airline workers and pilots for staffing these routes.
