Getting a flight, especially at such a busy time as
New Year's Eve, is a pretty stressful affair as it is. So once you've been through security and are safely on board, you'd hope that the worst you'd have to put up with is the lack of leg room. However, this couple found themselves the subject of verbal abuse from a stranger, without any staff to help them.
Cat Franke, 23, and her partner Julz Evans, 26, were flying from Melbourne to Perth to visit family on January 31st. They were still in the air when it hit midnight, so they leaned in for a kiss - and that's when things started to kick off. The couple said that their chairs were repeatedly punched, while an "intoxicated arrogant man" called them "faggots" and "dykes".
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"It hit midnight in Melbourne, so I leaned over to share a New Year's kiss with my partner," Cat told The Age, "He put his face up to the gap in the chair and started mumbling about how he wanted to watch lesbians kiss." After they ignored him, he got worse by throwing homophobic slurs at them. And when they asked him to stop, he became even more aggressive, pummelling their chair and yelling to the crew for more drinks:
"When I spoke up to ask him to stop, he only got more aggressive and louder with his homophobic hate speech and began boxing the back of my partner's chair. The punching continued for hours and my partner could not lean back against their seat. They had to lean forward against the seat in front, even upon landing."
"My partner and I had not done anything to deserve to have such verbal abuse and hate spat at us. We sat there in silence unable to communicate or even hold hands over the New Year’s Eve flight out of fear of being physically harmed as well"
"A passenger across from us in 2D was also receiving abuse from this man in regards to her weight, she was clearly made to feel uncomfortable by his comments and once again the staff did absolutely nothing to help her"
Regardless of this horrendous behavior, the
flight crew did nothing to stop him, and even laughed at his actions. So the couple took to social media to air their complaints, to which they won plenty of support, but not much of an apology from the airline.
"Our crew are trained to identify whether passengers are intoxicated and in this instance, our crew do not believe this passenger was," a Jetstar spokesperson said.
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The case will be submitted to the airline's behavior review panel for assessment. If he were to commit repeat offenses, with them being submitted to the review panel, it could result in a ban or blacklisting of him from further flights.
While the spokesperson said that they had only been made aware of the behavior at the end of the flight, the couple claim that the staff knew and weren't doing anything about it. "They giggled at him like he was a joke, and he continued his rampage," Cat said.
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The couple were given a $50 Jetstar voucher as a "gesture of goodwill" while the investigation takes place, but they feel like the offender should be blacklisted from the airline's flights in the future. "I don't want him to make anyone else feel like that," Ms Franke said.
When you're stuck on a
plane with strangers, you would at least hope that the crew working would have your best interests at heart. However, it seems this airline really dropped the ball in allowing this man's terrible behavior to go unchecked and unpunished.
