MudhammedCJ

Uh. What?! What else would you call moving people into and throughout the country illegally? And your previous point about locations was the same as mine. Chill out, Captain.

Tankerhead

Every JA event is human trafficking. Forcing people to perform a task across state lines with threats of retribution if said work is not performed. Next time, dial 911!

WHACKMASTER

No one forces me to work when I don’t want to. Think about it.

🔥👇

e6bpilot

Amen!

As far as this case goes, I think maybe a little better training could be accomplished and maybe a higher level review needs to take place prior to anyone calling authorities in cases like this. That being said, you absolutely can't fault the FA for doing as they were trained and reporting it. The family was questioned and released. Would that mom feel the same way if her kid was being trafficked and it was stopped? At the same time, I feel for her too and understand the racial aspect of this when it comes to being questioned by law enforcement. I think there is a good chance that was the trigger that resulted in this case being started. Maybe if someone at a higher level in the company could have handled it (or even done some behind the scenes and investigated the facts surrounding the case prior to calling the cops) it could have been defused.

I guess what I am saying is that the process could probably be refined and the training a little better, especially for FAs who are the front line defenders.

As far as the political garbage above, give it a rest. It isn't helpful.

chihuahua

Here's the thing. Believe it or not, there's a concept in the USA called innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent. The FA had no evidence of human trafficking other than not liking how the combination of mother and daughter looked, and apparently because the mother wanted to be able to sit with her 10 year old. The FA was in the wrong. You don't accuse people you don't know, without evidence.

SWA is going to pay out on this one, and rightfully so. The FA would not be in trouble if it was a legitimate case she missed either. Airline employees aren't law enforcement and it's not their job to pretend to be. This FA decided to take on the role of law enforcement, made a bad guess based on personal prejudices, and now SWA is going to have to pay up.

Go to work, do your job, go home, and stop trying to be a hero. Full stop.

at6d

What evidence do our FAs look for in identifying possible human trafficking? What is their guidance/training? Obviously it got sent to the company by the crew prior to landing, so some sort of metric was met.

rickair7777

I disagree, airline employees are not in any way sworn or deputized as "anti-trafficking warriors". They have no obligation to do anything, other than the same moral obligation anyone would have... if you were walking down the street and saw a mixed race family sitting at a bus stop, would you approach and accuse them of trafficking?

If you're a landlord and observe a repeated pattern of suspicious activity, then you might have grounds to drop a dime. But parent/child skin mismatch alone is nothing.

This is corporate woke virtue signalling taken a bit too seriously by some employees.

I'm going to call it that mixed race families are at least 1000 times more prevalent on airliners than human traffickers.

JohnBurke

You really have no idea what trafficking is, and clearly you've never seen slavery in the modern era.

A government agency re-distributing those in custody is something completely different than trafficking, in which children and immigrants are transported for sale, in trade for sex and drugs, and numerous other criminal functions. In custody of a government agency for violation of the law is not at all the same thing as in custody of slave traffickers.

The SWA flight attendant who stirred up this hornet nest based her assumption on a white mother and a darker child, and the mistaken belief that the child had been told not to talk to flight crew. We're all familiar with if-you-see-something-say-something, and it's good that people are being observant. This incident is two years old.

Regarding "charged encounters with police," the article is non-specific, but it need not be read as suggesting the daughter has a criminal history. There are ample cases of unequal treatment of persons of color, vs. others that it's not at all unreasonable or implausible that the daughter has had experiences or encounters entirely unrelated to her doing.

It's a matter for the court.

chihuahua

The metric that was met was was that the FA decided that the daughter didn't belong to the mother because of a difference in skin color. How many captains are there out there that just take what the FA says at face value and don't ask questions before sending off the ACARS message, especially if the FA is being overly dramatic, as I'm sure this one was? The lawsuit also claims that the police told her that the reason they were called was based on how the mother and daughter looked. This is one of the few allegations of racial prejudice/profiling that actually has merit. Southwest is going to pay up on this one, as they should.

I remember there was a similar incident a little while back (maybe around the same time), at AA where an FA called the police on a Asian/Caucasian couple because they didn't look like they should be together. I can't find the article now, but I remember reading that AA's training on human trafficking mentioned racial differences in people travelling together as a sign of human trafficking. I'm sure all these corporations copy-paste the same BS training on this kind of non-sense, so this FA was probably taught the same thing.

It's really quite ironic. After donating to rioters that destroyed cities in 2020 in the name of 'social justice', the same corporations are now teaching their employees that people with different skin tones shouldn't be together. Just when you think we've reached peak clown world, corporate America manages to set a new standard.

Red Forman

Because only a couple of states should have to deal with it?