A pilot and a flight attendant have been suspended from a Chinese airline after getting into a fistfight over the use of a first-class bathroom.
Donghai Airlines announced on Sunday that two unidentified male employees had been suspended following the Feb. 20 incident.
The pilot was apparently using the bathroom when a first-class passenger also needed to use it.
The pilot asked the passenger to wait at his or her seat but was ignored, the South China Morning Post reported. When he left the lavatory, the pilot noticed the passenger still waiting by the door and allegedly made a comment to the flight attendant for “not doing his job properly and affecting flying safety.”
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That’s when chaos broke out on the flight from Nantong to Xi’an, passengers said. The verbal jab over the toilet turned physical and ended with the pilot losing a tooth and the flight attendant breaking an arm.
“The company attached high importance to the argument among the crew members during flight and conducted a strict internal verification. Those staff members involved have been suspended their job to ensure flight safety, ” the airline said in a statement.
The statement added that the airline is conducting “an overall safety rectification” following the incident.
The February incident isn’t a one-off for the Shenzhen-based airline.
In August 2018, a pilot drove a plane directly into the airfield for a flight from Shenzhen to Wuxi before preparation work was completed.
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A month earlier, a separate pilot was reprimanded for allowing his wife to ride in the cockpit during two domestic flights.
