United Airlines has been accused of sacking a long-serving 76-year-old aircraft technician after he took a bottle of water from an airplane because he was suffering heart palpitations and lightheadedness to the point at which he thought he was about to pass out unless he took a sip of water.
Frank Bucci is now suing United Airlines in a California district court for disability and age discrimination, as well as retaliation following his dismissal when he was reported for taking a bottle of water from the airplane.
According to Frank’s lawsuit, he had been working outdoors at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and was suffering the effects of dehydration after prolonged exposure in the warm April sunshine in 2025.
As part of his duties, Frank says he boarded a United aircraft to check that it had all the necessary safety equipment for a safe flight when he suddenly felt ill, suffering heart palpitations and lightheadedness – symptoms that he puts down to having been working outside in the sun.
Unable to work, Frank admits to grabbing a bottle of water from the onboard supplies meant for passengers and taking some sips to help relieve his symptoms and prevent him from passing out.
A short time later, however, his managers were informed that Frank had taken a bottle of water from the plane and started an investigation.
Frank didn’t deny the allegations but instead explained why he had done so. The explanation wasn’t enough, however, to stop United from opening a disciplinary investigation, and by June 2025, Frank had been dismissed.
The lengthy legal complaint filed against United likens the sudden disability that Frank suffered to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against drug store giant Walgreens in 2014 after it sacked a cashier who took a $1.39 bag of chips from the shelf during a hypoglycemic attack and ate it without first paying.
Walgreens ended up entering into a consent decree to settle the lawsuit and paid the former cashier $180,000 in damages.
The Walgreens case rested on the fact that the company was unable to allege any misconduct unrelated to the cashier’s disability. Frank claims the circumstances of his dismissal are broadly the same.
Frank also believes, however, that the way United treated him is part of a wider age discrimination issue at the airline, saying that his dismissal allowed the airline to make room for newer and “substantially younger” technicians to join.
The lawsuit also poses the question of whether Frank was terminated because he raised safety complaints with United, including an incident in July 2024 when a nearly thirty-year-old Boeing 757 airplane lost one of its tires as it took off from LAX Airport.
The incident occurred less than five months after a wheel fell off a United Airlines Boeing 777 as it was taking off from San Francisco International Airport. In that accident, the giant wheel fell in an employee parking lot, crushing several cars.
Frank says his supervisor “brushed off” his concerns, and inferred that on-time departures should be prioritized, the lawsuit alleges.
While Frank believes the sole reason for his dismissal was that he took a bottle off a plane, importantly, the lawsuit alleges that younger employees had been caught engaging in substantially worse actions without reprisal.
This could be a crucial factor in Frank’s lawsuit, as two veteran United flight attendants who were sacked in 2013 for breaking safety rules during a flight between Denver and San Francisco ended up winning a $2 million settlement for age discrimination.
After receiving an internal complaint about the two Denver-based crew members, United secretly got a supervisor to join them on a flight and watch for any safety breaches.
During this flight, the undercover supervisor witnessed one of the crew members vaping during the flight, both flight attendants sat on metal galley boxes in violation of safety rules, and they watched a video on an iPad together.
After being put under formal investigation, the two flight attendants decided to retire before United even had the chance to terminate them, but several months later, they sued the airline for age discrimination.
During the trial, the flight attendants didn’t try to hide the fact that they had broken the rules but claimed they were “commonplace” and “minor” and that similar transgressions from other flight attendants hadn’t warranted dismissal.
