It’s been a rough couple of weeks for airline-customer relations. First a video of a customer being dragged off a United Airlines video was seen by millions of people around the world and now this…
American Airlines suspended a male flight attendant after a video surfaced on social media late Friday night, showing an intense confrontation between the aggressive flight attendant and passengers on board one of its planes.
Many people who watched the video were praising the anonymous man who stood up to defend the woman holding two babies. As it turns out, this isn’t just any guy, he’s a deacon for his church and performs missionary work with his wife who accompanied him that day on the flight. It’s probably not a great public relations move for American Airlines to have a flight attendant threatening to “fight” with a deacon defending the honor of a woman on their airline that he allegedly assaulted.
The man who stood up for a weeping mother-of-two after an American Airlines employee hit her in the head with a metal stroller while yanking it out of her hands has been identified.
Insurance agency president and Texas church deacon Tony Fierro, 42, was filmed stepping in to defend the woman in the Friday incident, demanding the flight attendant’s name and nearly getting into a fight.
‘A baby almost got hurt. That’s what just fired me up, so that was it,’ he told by WFAA on Saturday. ‘I don’t want to make a big deal about it.’
Fierro, a university of North Texas alumni who spent two years in the finance industry, is president of K&S Insurance Agency, which he joined in 1999.
Despite his fierce image in the video, Fierro – who lives in Dallas – is the founder of the Crosspoint Community Church in Rockwall, Texas, for which he is also a deacon.
He is also a board member of the The Last Well, a charity project that aims to provide clean water to the entire nation of Liberia.
He and his wife Breann also sponsor a scholarship for finance, insurance or radio/TV/film courses at the University of North Texas.
They also support the El Paso Symphony Orchestra’s Tocando Music Project, which provides musical education to elementary school kids.
Fierro was one of several passengers aboard AA Flight 591 from San Francisco to Dallas-Fort Worth who were horrified when the woman was struck in the head by the metal stroller.
Footage, filmed before the plane departed and uploaded by passenger Surain Adyanthaya, shows the immediate aftermath of the confrontation – followed by Fierro’s interjection
In the footage the distraught woman, who was flying from Argentina according to Q13 Fox, is seen standing at the front of the plane holding a child and weeping.
She asks staff members to get her metal stroller back while passengers are heard expressing their disgust at the situation.
Fierro ‘not going to sit here and watch this…’ and then gets up and walks to the front of the plane to confront flight attendants.
Watch American Airlines incident here:
After viewing the video, AA announced that the offending employee had been suspended pending an investigation.
For entire story: Daily Mail
