A federal complaint has been filed against United Airlines by 13 flight attendants who were fired last year for refusing to fly on a plane since it had a potentially threatening message written on it, their attorneys said Wednesday.
Grace Lam and 12 other flight attendants, all of whom had been on the job for at least 17 years, refused to fly on United Airlines Flight 869 from San Francisco to Hong Kong in July after learning that oil-slick graffiti had been painted on the plane, reading "BYE BYE" along with a pair of faces scrawled across the plane's tail cone, New York Daily News reported.
On Wednesday, the whistleblower lawsuit was filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, with the flight attendants stating the drawings to have included images that could be construed as "menacing" or "devilish."
"We were showed the picture of the graffiti together with two faces that was taken on a phone. That's the first time I saw the graffiti," Lam said. "I was scared. I was frightened. I have flown as a flight attendant for total of 24 years, and I have never seen anything like this."
After seeing the graffiti, the flight attendants had requested to have the plane emptied of its more than 300 passengers and screened again by security. Declining their request, United Airlines had instead asked a ground crew to inspect only the auxiliary power unit near the graffiti, which was then deemed to be a "joke."
When the crew still refused to fly without a full security sweep, the trip had to be canceled since the flight did not have any crew, according to CBS News.
In October, the company fired them for "exactly what the flying public would expect from a group of highly experienced airline professionals," the 26-page complaint states.
"I believe it's a moral mandate to do what they did, and that's to say, 'We're not going to fly on this flight,'" said David Marshall, the flight attendants' attorney. "In the face of this kind of threat, an airline is required to actually deplane the passengers, get 'em off the plane and do a security sweep of the plane ... They didn't do that."
However the pilot, mechanics and security had "deemed the aircraft entirely safe to fly" after an initial check, United spokeswoman Christen David told the Chicago Tribune, adding that the Chicago-based company would "vigorously" defend its decision.
"Our flight operations, safety and maintenance teams appropriately investigated and determined there was no credible security threat. All of FAA's and United's own safety procedures were followed, including a comprehensive safety sweep prior to boarding," David said in a written statement.
Now, the flight attendants want to be reinstated with back pay and are seeking unspecified compensatory damages, Fox News reported.
"I have no regrets at all," Lam said. "If this happens again today, all over again, I would have done the same thing. Any flight attendant would have done -- this is our job."
Since the incident came four months after the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370, the crew perceived the message as a serious threat, Lam said.
"Given the gravity of the risk involved - the lives of passengers and crew alike - we were not willing to bow to United's pressure to ignore an unresolved security threat even though the company made clear that we risked losing our jobs," flight attendant Grace Lam said in a statement.
