Aer Lingus flight attendant accused of reducing passenger to tears by not allowing use of toilet

DCM Editorial Summary: This story has been independently rewritten and summarised for DCM readers to highlight key developments relevant to the region. Original reporting by Irish Times, click this post to read the original article.

A sacked Aer Lingus attendant has been accused of refusing to let a passenger on a delayed flight use the bathroom in a stand-off over alleged bad language from the man while boarding.

One of the complainant’s colleagues told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) on Tuesday the passenger – a man in his 30s – was reduced to tears by the time he got a chance to go.

By then, she confirmed to Aer Lingus’s legal team, the flight was already halfway back on its journey from Marseilles to Dublin.

The incident was set out in defence evidence presented by the airline in response to a complaint by the senior flight attendant, Alan O’Neill, under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977.

Lawyers instructed by O’Neill’s trade union, Fórsa, have called into question the recollections of other cabin crew about what happened and when on Flight EI-515 on April 9th, 2024.

O’Neill was the ranking member of cabin crew on the jet that day when a problem with its auxiliary power unit (APU) held up its outbound flight from Dublin, and delayed it further on the ground in France, the tribunal heard.

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Flight attendant Claire Durkan said passengers had been left to wait for the inbound jet in a part of the terminal with “apparently no bathrooms” available.

Upon boarding, one passenger asked to use the bathroom. O’Neill refused him on safety grounds as the plane was refuelling, she said.

Then she heard the passenger say “under his breath” the words “oh for f***’s sake”. She said he didn’t say it “directly” to O’Neill.

Durkan said there would have been an opportunity between the end of refuelling and pushback where the passenger could have been let go to the lavatory. O’Neill did not tell the man he could, she said.

After take-off, when the fasten-seat-belt sign was still on, the passenger got up again and tried to go to the forward bathroom, near where O’Neill and Durkan were sitting in jump seats, the tribunal heard. He was sent back by O’Neill, the tribunal heard.

Another member of the cabin crew, Joan O’Gorman, said it was “strange that [O’Neill] wasn’t letting [the passenger] go”. The light for the forward bathroom on the jet was “definitely green” when he got up, she said.

Durkan said O’Neill then went to the passenger and told him: “You can’t go to the toilet. I’ll tell you whenever you can go to the toilet.”

O’Neill’s written account of the incident stated the passenger initially “tried to push past me on boarding to use the toilet during fuelling”.

After “two verbal warnings”, O’Neill and the captain agreed the passenger should be served a “Dip 1 form” – a written warning to a disruptive passenger, the statement added.

Durkan said O’Neill wanted her to get the passenger’s boarding card to take his name for the Dip 1.

“[The passenger] said he wasn’t giving me [his] boarding pass unless he ‘can go to the toilet’,” Durkan said.

She returned to O’Neill and told him this. O’Neill told her: “He won’t be allowed to go to the toilet unless he gives the boarding pass,” she said.

The seat-belt light remained on during this time and the passenger had yet to use the bathroom when they started the trolley service, she said.

Asked how long had elapsed, Durkan said “about 45, 50 minutes”, but then said “that might sound a little bit too long”.

Jason Murray, for the complainant, said it might have been “as short as 10” minutes. “The witness doesn’t know,” he said.

O’Gorman’s further evidence was that it was “somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour” when the passenger came to the back of the plane and used another lavatory.

She agreed with counsel for the airline Tom Mallon that this was “halfway through the flight”.

“I could see him coming down the aisle. He was crying,” she said.

Mallon asked: “In your 10 years of flying have you ever observed – [this was] a man in his 30s, a youngish man, but a mature male – have you observed men of that age crying because of an interaction with cabin crew?”

“No. No,” O’Gorman said.

The case is continuing for two more days this week before adjudication officer Michael MacNamee. O’Neill is not expected to give evidence until later in the year.