A dismissed Aer Lingus flight attendant accused of refusing to let a passenger go to the bathroom on a delayed flight told his bosses he was under strain in his personal life and that the man "triggered" him by swearing, a tribunal has heard.
The passenger - a man in his thirties - was reduced to tears by the time he had a chance to use the bathroom, when the aircraft was halfway back to Dublin from the south of France, according to the testimony of another flight attendant.
Other cabin crew said they were "afraid" that trying to de-escalate the situation would make their senior colleague "angry", a senior manager said.
The airline decided the actions of Alan O'Neill, a senior cabin crew member, amounted to gross misconduct and terminated him with notice after 12 years’ service with an otherwise clean disciplinary record, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has been told.
The tribunal heard a stand-off developed between Mr O’Neill and a passenger after the senior flight attendant told him he could not use the bathroom while the plane was being refuelled on the tarmac in Marseille on 9 April 2024 for a flight to Dublin.
Another flight attendant said passengers had been left to wait for the inbound jet in a part of the terminal with "apparently no bathrooms" available.
When Mr O’Neill refused the passenger use of the toilet on safety grounds, she said she heard the passenger saying "under his breath" the words "oh for f***’s sake". She said he did not say it "directly" to Mr O’Neill.
Mr O’Neill had another interaction with the man when he got up and tried to use the bathroom while the "fasten seatbelt" light was still lit.
The passenger was subject to a temporary flight ban after Mr O’Neill wrote him up under the airline’s "disruptive passenger" procedure and read him a formal warning - a ban which was later "rescinded", the airline’s legal team said.
The airline launched an investigation into what happened on the flight when a different customer wrote a complaint to the airline about what happened during the flight, the tribunal heard. Members of the cabin crew were called in for interview, around five or six weeks later, the tribunal heard.
Mary McHugh, a senior Aer Lingus manager overseeing cabin crew operations, confirmed in evidence that other cabin crew and the second customer had described Mr O’Neill as being "aggressive", "angry" and "extremely unprofessional", engaged in "threatening behaviour", and had "snapped" or "flipped out" at the passenger.
When these points were put to Mr O’Neill in a disciplinary meeting, he replied that he had been "fearful and felt triggered by the customer", she said.
Mr O’Neill maintains the passenger told him: "F**k you, I need to use the toilet."
Another flight attendant, Claire Durkan, said in evidence that when the passenger later refused to hand over his boarding pass when Mr O’Neill was preparing to issue the formal warning, her senior colleague said: "He won’t be allowed to go to the toilet unless he gives the boarding pass," she said.
Ms McHugh said: "Okay, (the passenger) didn’t provide his boarding pass; but apart from that, he became upset, and was just complying and embarrassed."
"Alan was getting angrier throughout the flight, which was creating an unsafe environment. Nobody was happy on that flight," she said.
Comparing commercial aviation now to her time working as a flight attendant in the '90s and ‘00s, Ms McHugh said: "Our world has evolved, and we do end up carrying passengers who do become unsafe."
She said that part of her consideration in the disciplinary process was that as a senior flight attendant, Mr O’Neill’s duties in relation to conflict resolution and crew resource management (CRM) were safety-critical.
That included recognising and accounting for times when a member of crew was "not having a great day, like what happened here when Mr O’Neill was ‘triggered’," she said.
"It might have been the better choice to go to his captain and say he couldn’t operate on the flight," she said. It might have been "the safest thing to do", she said.
"What is your reaction to the most junior member of staff expressing fear of approaching the senior in these circumstances," asked counsel for the airline, Tom Mallon BL.
"It just saddened me that there was such a breakdown in CRM," Ms McHugh said. "Junior crew would see Mr O’Neill as a role model and were trying to de-escalate in their own ways," she said.
"But they’ve all stated, in different ways, that they were afraid; they were afraid it would make Mr O’Neill angry on the flight.
"Look, we’re all human beings, Mr O’Neill was very open and honest about personal stuff he shared with us; we can all get triggered. She said she was concerned that "these young crew were highlighting this to the senior" and Mr O’Neill "didn’t stop in his tracks".
Ms McHugh decided Mr O’Neill reacted in a "disproportionate and unprofessional" way towards the passenger, who was "clearly in desperate need to use the toilet".
The tribunal has heard the incident culminated outside Dublin Airport’s Terminal 2 when Mr O’Neill, in the company of colleague Joan O’Gorman, encountered the banned passenger near the taxi rank.
Ms O’Gorman’s evidence earlier this week was that her colleague shouted across the road at the passenger: "You think you’re mister big man now, do you big fella?"
Mr O’Neill said the customer "called me a name" when they passed. He said he replied: "Real mature, bud".
Addressing Mr O’Neill’s version of events, Ms McHugh the "real mature" remark "wouldn’t be viewed as professional when in uniform".
The hearing was told Mr O’Neill immediately proceeded to phone a crew management office about his further encounter with the customer, and later went to a garda station.
He told the disciplinary meeting that when he was next due to report back to work, he "just sat on the bed for three hours looking at the uniform".
"It was still affecting me, and I knew I had to do something about it," he told the disciplinary hearing, before going on to reference a personal matter in mitigation.
The case before adjudication officer Michael MacNamee BL has been adjourned to the first week of May, when Ms McHugh is set to be cross-examined by Jason Murray BL, instructed by Daniel Spring & Co on behalf of trade union Fórsa.
Mr O’Neill has yet to give his evidence.
