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Alitalia attendant loses cool amid airport chaos

Patrick Browne
Patrick Browne - [email protected]
Alitalia attendant loses cool amid airport chaos
Photo: screengrab Youreporter.it

A video showing an Alitalia flight attendant shoving a passenger at Rome's Fiumicino airport has gone viral.

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Flight delays are enough to take their toll on anyone, passengers as well as the airline staff who have to deal with frayed tempers.
 
But the situation at Rome's Fiumicino took a turn for the worse this week - firstly, a fire in a nearby pine grove on Wednesday led to severe delays and flight cancellations, while there was more chaos on Thursday after a 20-minute power cut.
 
In the early hours of Thursday morning, an Alitalia flight attendant found herself surrounded by a group of angry passengers, whose flight to Barcelona, which had been delayed for hours, was finally cancelled.
 
The video below, published on YouReporter.it, captures the scene.
 
A male passenger runs up to the Alitalia attendant, shouting, “Shut up, shut up!”.  She responds by calmly administering a firm shove to his chest.
 
The 30-year-old, from Rome, defended herself, saying "I thought he was going to hit me."
 

“He was really threatening. Both my boss and I were encircled by angry passengers,” she told Il Messaggero.
 
She later apologized but maintained she had acted in self-defence.

“The passengers were right to be angry,” she said. “But it was three in the morning and we had been working all day. [The problems were] because of the nearby fire, so we really weren't to blame.”

The video is just one of many showing passengers' frustration as their travel plans were plunged into disarray over the past couple of days.

Read more: Disruption continues at Rome's crisis-hit airport

Fortunately, normal service finally resumed on Friday morning, with flights landing and taking off as scheduled. No doubt much to the relief of stressed airport staff. 

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