While everyone can be caught at a bad day at work, two Spirit Airlines (SAVE) agents took their frustration to a level that made them go internet viral.
The videos, which traveler Kevin Eis captured while taking the airline to go from Burbank to Las Vegas on July 12 (and so before the CrowdStrike software breakdown that sowed chaos at the world's airports on July 19), show two Spirit agents screaming, and telling passengers to "shut up" and threatening those who were filming the encounter.
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"Can I have everybody's attention right now? Right now!" a gate agent in a yellow vest is heard screaming in the first video posted by Eis under the @clubkev TikTok account. "Do you want to get on this flight or not? Alright, so everyone's going to shut up."
'They insisted I was a flight risk for simply asking'
"Not only did they threaten me for recording them, but they INSISTED that I was a 'flight risk' for simply asking what flight they were delaying smh," Eis wrote in the video caption. TikTokers viewed the first video more than two million times while the second one, in which a second gate agent says she doesn't "even know what aircraft is here", received 5.1 million views.
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The videos also spurred widespread comments mocking the airline for such customer service.
"Now that's the SPIRIT!!!!" reads one comment that Eis overlaid over the second video.
"Someone was a hall monitor in school," reads another.
@clubkev not only did they threaten me for recording them, but they INSISTED that i was a ‘flight risk’ for simply asking what flight they were delaying smh 🤦🏻♂️ #spiritairlines #customerservice #fyp
♬ original sound - kevin
'Our vendor's internal investigation into the matter'
In a statement to USA Today, Spirit Airlines said that the "two agents involved are no longer working with Spirit following the completion of our vendor’s internal investigation into the matter."
"We apologize to our guests for this experience, which does not reflect Spirit’s high standards for guest service," the spokesperson said further.
As the source of the video, Eis told USA Today was "not happy these two women got suspended." In the comments, some also pointed out that they might have been caught at a particularly bad day or simply cracked amid a crowd of travelers screaming at them with questions they could not answer. In a statement to USA Today, Spirit Airlines said that the "two agents involved are no longer working with Spirit following the completion of our vendor's internal investigation into the matter."
"We need to normalize matching customers' energy!" wrote @gaymian in reference to the rise of "plane passengers behaving badly" that has also been spreading on social media. There have been videos of travelers doing cartwheels, engaging in drunken brawls and cussing out flight attendants before being led off the plane.
Over the last two years, multiple flight attendants have been speaking out about travelers who take out their frustration over what they see as a declining level of service post-pandemic on them even as most of the issues fall entirely outside of their control.
"The flights are fuller but the attitudes are also fuller," JetBlue Airways (JBLU) Tyesha Best told TheStreet in a December 2023 interview. "[...] We are looking to see how we can better combat the situation and I'm using the word combat in an interesting way because when you have customers physically assault our airline employees it does become a fight or flight situation that is crucial to address."
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