All Joao Correa wanted to do was go to the lavatory. Instead, he was charged with felony assault and landed in jail for two days.
The last meal the Philips Healthcare marketing manager ate in Honduras didn’t agree with him, but, unfortunately, as Correa looked down the single-aisle Boeing 737, a beverage cart was blocking his way.
He asked the Delta flight attendant whether he could use the lavatory in business class. The flight attendant said no, so he returned to his seat, hoping that the beverage cart would move. In a few minutes, “desperation came over him.”
What happened next on the March 28 flight depends on who is talking.
In a telephone interview, Correa “ran straight to the business class bathroom,” telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he had no choice.
According to Correa, flight attendant Stephanie Scott “put up her arm and blocked his entry into business class, according to an FBI affidavit. Correa then grabbed her arm to keep his balance.”
Scott, however, said Correa stormed up the aisle and insisted to use the bathroom. She said she lightly placed her arm on his shoulder and asked him to move back. Correa then grabbed her right arm, pulled it downward and twisted it, she told an FBI agent.
When Correa refused to return to his seat, Scott called the pilot who talked to Correa. The pilot let Correa use the bathroom in business class. Correa did and returned to his seat, where he stayed for the rest of the three-hour flight.
However, Scott’s statement and corroboration from a witness who was a pilot for another airline gave the FBI probable cause to charge Correa with assault.
When Delta flight 406 landed in Atlanta, Correa was told that could not make his connection to his home in Concord, Ohio. He was arrested that Saturday and jailed for two nights. The following Monday, he appeared before a U.S. magistrate in federal court in Atlanta and was granted bond.
Correa said that his job often requires him to travel. He was in Central America to conduct sales training in Panama and to visit customers in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras. Before March 28, he said, he had never had any trouble on a flight.
Delta spokeswoman Susan Elliott said “flight crews do all they can to ensure the safety and security of passengers.”
So the question becomes who was telling the truth?
If flight attendant Scott was telling the truth, then Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) 91.11, which covers General Operating and Flight Rules, and FAR 125.328, come into play. Both state that “No person may assault, threaten, intimidate, or interfere with a crewmember in the performance of the crewmember’s duties aboard an aircraft being operated.”
Basically, if your actions can be construed as a danger to the aircraft, its passengers and crew, you are in violation of the above FARs.
Techwing, a top contributor to Yahoo! Answers, puts it best:
This does not mean that passengers must obey crew unconditionally, but it does mean that crew members have broad latitude to tell passengers what to do, as long as they can show that their instructions are related to safety or the performance of their legitimate duties. Telling a passenger to put on more lipstick, or telling a passenger to get to the back of the plane because of his skin color, would be obviously over the line and indefensible. Telling a passenger to stop using an electronic device or to return to his seat and fasten his seat belt are normally legitimate instructions.
You can also ask why Correa didn’t tell the flight attendant his plight and ask that the beverage cart be moved.
For now, Delta is cooperating with authorities in the investigation of the incident. They “strictly follows Federal Aviation Administration policy, which calls for passengers on international flights to use the lavatory in their seating class.”
A preliminary hearing, in which federal prosecutors must lay out their case against Correa, has been scheduled for April 17.
