A man was handcuffed and paraded off a packed Breeze Airways airplane at Vero Beach Airport in Florida on Tuesday after flight attendants called the cops over an allegation that he had taken pilfered items from the snack cart during the two and a half hour flight from White Plains Airport in New York.
Breeze Airways flight MX-581 departed White Plains at around 8:30 pm on Tuesday, June 7, around an hour later than scheduled. On arrival in Vero Beach, however, the passengers on the Airbus A220 were then told they had to stay in their seats.
The pilot made a public address announcement informing the bewildered passengers of a potential security issue that had occurred during the flight. Then, cops boarded the plane and made a beeline for a middle-aged Caucasian man wearing a baseball cap and glasses.
The man was handcuffed with his hands behind his back and then escorted off the plane, where he was questioned over an allegation that he had taken an item from the snack cart after already being told that he was not allowed to do so.
At this point, however, the man offered to pay for the snack, and no charges were pressed. Initial reports that the man had caused a disturbance or caused a security breach were later denied by the airline.
How this incident got to the point that the man ended up being detained by police remains unclear, although it’s pretty clear that Breeze Airways flight attendants are very protective of the buy-on-board snack selection.
Flight attendants at the airline, created by the serial airline entrepreneur David Neeleman, voted overwhelmingly in favor of unionizing in May 2024, just five months after going public with their unionization campaign, which was backed by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA).
AFA said crew members at the Utah-based low-cost airline were driven to join a union because of “constantly-changing work rules, substandard pay for time on the job, inadequate hotel accommodations, insufficient work hours, and inconsistent and disrespectful treatment from management.”
More than two years later, however, negotiations are still ongoing to reach a tentative collective bargaining agreement that would guarantee flight attendants specific rights and benefits.
Shortly before the Breeze started flying, the airline made headlines for its controversial flight attendant recruitment model in which it planned to hire 18-year-old university students who would work part-time for Breeze Airways while completing online college studies at Utah Valley University.
The airline intended to pay flight attendants a fixed monthly rate of just $1,200, alongside an annual bursary of $6,000 and free shared company accommodation.
Flight attendants would then be expected to quit after they had finished their university program. Breeze quickly opened up flight attendant recruitment to non-students after a backlash from unions, including AFA.
The union says that Breeze Airways flight attendants earn significantly less than many other crew members at other airlines across the United States, including regional flight attendants, who have been described as earning second-tier pay compared to their mainline counterparts.
