A United Airlines pilot was caught on a hot mic cursing out the flight attendants towards the end of a 15-hour flight from Cape Town to Washington Dulles – perhaps he was feeling a little tired and emotional towards the end of such a long flight.
The incident reportedly happened on United flight UA-2023, with passengers left in stunned silence as the pilot delivered his profanity-laden assault against the flight attendants.
“After 1.5 million miles of flying, you think you’ve seen it all, but today was a first for my family and I traveling CPT to IAD,” one frequent flyer who was a passenger on the plane shared on Reddit.
According to the passenger, the incident occurred shortly after one of the pilots delivered their normal pre-arrival public address announcement to the cabin, with the “usual spiel about how we’ll be landing soon, giving us the temperature and conditions, etc.”
The announcement finished as normal, but 30 seconds later, the pilot’s voice came back over the public address announcement. It soon became very obvious, though, that the pilot didn’t mean to be speaking to the cabin.
Captain/FO curses out cabin crew over PA on open mic on UA 2023
by u/GoRamblers-94 in unitedairlines
The frequent flyer who shared the story soon realised that the pilot was trying to get in contact with the flight attendants via the plane’s intercom system.
“Hello? ….. Hello?” The pilot said. When there was no response, the pilot’s words became somewhat more colourful.
“What a bunch of f**king morons! They won’t pick up the phone,” the pilot blasted. Passengers sat in silence as the pilot dropped several more ‘F bombs.’
The purser desperately tried to call the cockpit to tell the flight crew of the hot mic situation, but their efforts were in vain.
“This went on for at least seven minutes, maybe a little more, before they went silent. Very awkward!” The passenger added.
“Whatever had happened with the PA mic actually never seemed to get fully resolved because for the remainder of the flight, the message ‘PA announcement in progress’ remained displayed on the TV screens.”
This very much sounds like a screwup on the part of the flight crew rather than the flight attendants.
What may have happened is that the pilot used the cockpit interphone to make their public address announcement but failed to stow it properly in order to break the connection.
They then attempted to call the purser’s station using their headset, but couldn’t get through because a line was already open in the form of a public address announcement.
These kinds of mistakes happen from time to time, although it’s a lot rarer to hear pilots cursing out their flight attendants.
It certainly doesn’t sound like there was great CRM (‘Crew Resource Management’) between the pilots and the flight attendants on this flight.
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