The Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) are outraged by a video that has surfaced of off-duty American Airlines flight attendants performing in a skit that is demeaning to women.
On Saturday night, a video of a skit was uploaded on Twitter that featured four women dressed as American Airlines flight attendants singing “Big Spender” to a man who is portrayed as an Executive Platinum customer.
airlines-flight-attendants-burlesque-video-prompts-an-outcry/#157ca1fc6741″ target=”_self” rel=”nofollow”>According to Forbes, the four women in the skit, who perform a “burlesque-type” number, are Dallas-based flight attendants and were performing at a “customer-organized concert held at a private residence,” in the Greater Dallas area.
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APFA asked Doug Parker, chief executive of the DFW airline to look into the video, claiming it promotes “sex appeal as an attraction to AA’s most prominent and lucrative passengers.”
Amid the outcry, the video was deleted off Twitter.
“What was portrayed in the skit was not sanctioned by the airline and is not representative of the 27,000 professional flight attendants who take great care of millions of customers each year,” American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein said in a written statement.
Jamie Larounis, blog owner of The Forward Cabin, filmed the video and tweeted it on Saturday night. In an email to airlines/2019/02/17/american-airlines-flight-attendants-union-wants-investigation-sexist-skit-video” target=”_self” rel=”nofollow”>Dallas News, he said, “This was just a group of friends who happen to share a love of aviation and routinely fly American Airlines, having a good time, nothing more.”
Following the scandal, Larounis was contacted by American corporate communications staff and took down the tweet “to protect the parties depicted in the video.”
Larounis also said it “was not an American Airlines sanctioned event and was held on private property,” but “the people in the skit were on the payroll of AA. They have an out of work group called Salute that performs at shows.”
The airline also reached out to the group of customers who hosted the event and expressed their displeasure with the skit.
“To be clear, we are as upset as many of you are with the video,” American said in its statement. “We have been in touch with APFA and several flight attendants since early this morning and we all share the same concerns.”
“This cannot be happening in today’s environment,” Lori Bassani, APFA’s national president, said in a written statement. “We will not tolerate our profession being objectified in a sexist manner.”
Bassani and the union want to know whether the airline knew about the skit in advance and if they sanctioned it, but according to American Airlines, they had no prior knowledge of the event or the skit.
“Additionally, we were particularly upset to see our logo on the screen as the skit was performed,” the airline said in its statement to its staff.
Fox News reported that the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) also spoke out alongside the APFA, releasing a statement of their own asking American Airlines to “denounce a culture of harassment and objectification of flight attendants.”
“We join with our sisters and brothers at APFA in calling on American Airlines to answer questions about how this AA passenger event could have happened and set a new course free of harassment,” the AFA wrote.
“Sexual harassment isn’t about sex, it’s about power. The timing of this sketch could not be more out of sync with flight attendants’ role and importance in our country. In recent weeks, flight attendants played a key role in defending the safety and security of the passengers in our care,” they said.
