The Senior Vice President of Inflight Service at American Airlines has been accused of falsely accusing a group of flight attendants of failing to serve passengers on a recent flight from Dallas Fort Worth to Denver… an accusation that several crew members on the flight have denied.
Brady Byrnes allegedly sent a complaint to the airline shortly after the flight, resulting in the crew members receiving emails at 4 am asking them to explain the lack of service, according to accounts being shared on social media pages used by AA crew members.
One of the crew members explained how the roughly hour-and-a-half-long flight had started off with some turbulence, so the Captain initially asked the crew members to stay strapped into their jumpseats before releasing them around 15 minutes later.
Even after being released, however, the Captain reportedly warned them of the risk of light turbulence for the remainder of the flight, so the crew started the inflight service but weren’t able to offer any hot beverages for safety reasons.
Like all of the other passengers, the crew members say Brynes and his family were, in fact, served their choice of beverage, with Brynes getting a Coke Zero and his children having cranberry juice.
“From what I know and experienced, he lied about us and tried to get us in trouble when we served him and his family,” one of the crew members wrote in a social media post. “He was so nice to our faces and thanked us for our service”.
Last October, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents crew members at AA, delivered a letter of no confidence in Byrnes, a former flight attendant himself.
The union listed a slew of reasons for calling on him to resign, claiming he had “erased the personal relationship” that flight attendants have with management and that he takes “great pride” in circumventing a family leave program.
Of most concern to the union, however, was Byrnes’ refusal to temporarily move flight attendants out of a Philadelphia Airport hotel where a colleague had recently died in mysterious circumstances.
In September 2023, a veteran 66-year-old flight attendant was found dead in her room at the hotel during a short layover between flights. Her body wasn’t, however, discovered until several days later when hotel cleaners forced entry to her room.
It’s unclear whether anyone at AA had attempted to contact the flight attendant to discover if she was okay after she failed to turn up to work a flight.
As police were treating the death as suspicious, flight attendants asked to be moved to an alternative hotel because they did not feel comfortable staying at the same property where their colleague had died.
Brynes allegedly rejected the request.
“When flight attendants communicated genuine fears for their security to American management, Mr Bynes’ response was not one of assurance and action but indifference,” the letter of no confidence explained.
“The refusal to temporarily relocate crew members who felt unsafe and the further denial of a request for inflight management to assuage the fears of the crews laying over at the Philadelphia Marriott by simply meeting the few inbound crews staying at the property speaks volumes about his lack of leadership,” the letter continued.
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