A flight attendant at the largest regional carrier in the United States, which flies on behalf of American Airlines, Delta, United, and Alaska Airlines, claims the carrier retaliated against her when she reported a senior coworker for “reeking of alcohol” during a flight.
The newly hired flight attendant had only just completed her training at the time of the incident in November 2024 and was under the supervision of the lead instructor, who was allegedly impaired in her ability to perform her job.
The revelations have come to light in a recently filed lawsuit in a California district court, which accuses SkyWest Airlines of whistleblower retaliation and disability discrimination.
According to the legal complaint obtained by PYOK, on November 18, 2024, the new hire flight attendant was working one of her first-ever flights with SkyWest as a United Express service between San Francisco and Sacramento.
She was working alongside another trainee and a lead instructor who was meant t be coaching her two junior coworkers.
Instead, the lawsuit alleges the instructor stumbled through basic safety procedures, slurred her words, mishandled door arming procedures, left overhead bins unsecured, and neglected a disabled passenger sitting in First Class.
During the flight, the new hire flight attendant detected a strong smell of alcohol around her instructor, whose eyes were bloodshot and speech slurred.
The flight attendant says she alerted the Captain, who also acknowledged that he could smell alcohol on the instructor. Despite this, though, the instructor was permitted to continue working the return flight to San Francisco.
The plaintiff says she filed two ‘irregular operation reports’ – one for the first leg and the second for the return flight. She also contacted SkyWest’s Inflight Support team on arrival at SFO in an attempt to get the instructor removed from any more flights that day.
In addition, the plaintiff reported what had occurred to the Federal Aviation Administration. She was so shaken up by what had happened that she began to suffer from “acute stress, anxiety, and related medical conditions.”
Her physician advised the flight attendant not to return to work until late December 2024, but the lawsuit alleges that SkyWest denied her protected leave and “threatened her job security” if she did not return sooner.
The lawsuit alleges that managers accused the flight attendant of “involving too many people” when she reported her instructor, and that her health issues resulting from this incident meant that she was “not being viewed as a reliable employee.”
“By the end of January 2025, Plaintiff had been stripped of pay and benefits and treated as though she had resigned, leaving her no real choice but to separate from her employment with Defendants,” the complaint explains.
The flight attendant is suing SkyWest for compensatory special damages for loss of past and future earnings, as well as punitive and exemplary damages.
According to the lawsuit, it is the flight attendant’s belief that the instructor whom she reported continues to work for SkyWest.
Late last month, it emerged that SkyWest was suing two of its own pilots over claims the men had hacked into an internal employee database to steal the personal data of their coworkers.
In court filings, one of the pilots has admitted accessing SkyWest’s corporate directory to obtain the personal cellphone numbers of other pilots because he was trying to organize a pilot’s union at SkyWest affiliated with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA).
The pilot also admitted to using this information to send an unsolicited SMS message to the cellphones of his coworkers to gauge their opinion of forming a union.
In his defense, the pilot argues that the district court does not have the authority to hear the case brought by SkyWest because his union organizing activities make this a ‘labor dispute.’
