Anger and confusion boiled over at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Monday night as nine Spirit Airlines flights were canceled, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded.
Video from the airport showed crowds clustered around Spirit Airlines ticket counters, with people pushing, screaming and cursing.
At one point, a Broward County sheriff's deputy was shoved to the ground. Sheriff's deputies detained several passengers and charged them with disorderly conduct, Fox News affiliate WSVN reported.
"All of a sudden, one particular flight got canceled, and a mob ensued up here at the front counter, in front of everyone else who had been waiting in line," passenger Paul Smith told the station.
Another passenger told the station that Spirit employees "couldn't handle what was going on, so they called in for the police."
The flight cancellations were the result of a legal dispute between the budget airline and the Air Line Pilots Association International.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Spirit Airlines blamed its pilots for the cancellations and the resulting chaos.
About 300 Spirit Airlines flights have been canceled in the past week, according to CNN.
"We are shocked and saddened to see the videos of what took place at Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport," Spirit spokesman Paul Berry said in a statement. "This is a result of unlawful labor activity by some Spirit pilots designed to disrupt Spirit operations for our customers, by canceling multiple flights across our network. These pilots have put their quest for a new contract ahead of getting customers to their destinations and the safety of their fellow Spirit Team Members."
Berry said the airline had filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the pilots union and others for "purposely and unlawfully disrupting the airline's operations, leading to hundreds of canceled flights, which has negatively impacted thousands of Spirit customers' travel plans."
"So we reluctantly filed this suit to protect our customers' and our operations," Berry said. "This is clearly unlawful activity under the Railway Labor Act, which governs labor relations in the airline industry. ALPA [the pilots union] and those individuals responsible should be held accountable."
The union is disputing the airline's accusations, saying it is "not engaged in a job action" against the airline.
"Rather, ALPA and the Spirit pilots are continuing to do everything possible to help restore the company's operations, which have experienced significant problems over the past several days," a union representative told The Post in a statement. "While we will continue these efforts, we will actively defend the association, its officers and its member pilots against the unwarranted and counterproductive legal action brought [Monday] by Spirit Airlines."
U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas issued a temporary restraining order against the union Tuesday, ordering its member pilots to not engage in any boycotts or slowdowns, saying that would violate federal law.
Tygear Kelly was one of the hundreds of Spirit passengers stranded at the airport Monday night, according to WFOR, a CBS affiliate in Miami.
"It was chaotic; it was packed, this whole area was full of people," Kelly told the station Tuesday morning. "I had to rebook my flight and everything. I missed my flight, I had to go back to the hotel where I was staying and I'm back here now to go back to New York."
Spirit, a low-cost carrier based in Miramar, Fla., often advertises fares as low as $20 or $30 each way.
But it had the highest rate of consumer complaints in 2015, the first year the Transportation Department included the airline in its consumer complaints report, according to CNBC.
The department showed that 11.73 out of every 100,000 customers who flew Spirit in 2015 filed a complaint against the airline, most related to "flight problems."
The industry's overall complaint rate that year was 1.9 per 100,000 fliers, CNBC reported.
The disturbance in Fort Lauderdale was the latest in a string of high-profile, airline-related incidents captured on video.
Perhaps the most notorious incident occurred in April, when viral videos captured a passenger being forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight. The incident caused a public-relations crisis for United, which initially defended itself by stating that the passenger, Dr. David Dao, had "refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily."
Dao and United eventually reached an "amicable" settlement for an undisclosed amount, the airline said.
Business on 05/10/2017