Earlier this month, Business Insider's Benjamin Zhang detailed some of the most frequently used airline terms that pilots use and what they actually mean. Zhang covers such terms as deadhead, equipment, EFC time and full, upright and locked position.
Then United Airlines burst onto the scene with the mother of all new airline terms: "re-accommodate," which United used to mean passengers that needed to vacate their seats to make room for a higher-priority passenger, in this case, deadhead crew on assignment.
Of course, to most of the world, re-accommodate has now come to be synonymous with being violently and forcibly dragged off a plane.
Now Delta Air Lines is the latest to add a little irony to its corporate speak after a pilot, who was caught on video appearing to strike a passenger, was found to have "de-escalated an altercation" between two passengers.
Earlier today the world's loudest megaphone for citizen journalist, TMZ released a video of a pilot trying to separate two women who came to fisticuffs at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. About midway through the video, it appears as if the pilot grabs one woman, hit her and then walks away.
Later in the day, TMZ posted a response from Delta, who said they became aware of the incident last week, and "immediately removed the pilot from duty while we completed a thorough investigation. Local law enforcement was called to respond at the time of the incident. The pilot has since been returned to work as our investigation found that his actions deescalated an altercation between passengers on the jetway floor during deplaning."
[READMORE]READ MORE: Delta Could Be in Hot Water After Airplane Bathroom Incident[/READMORE]
The video is very tightly focused and it is clearly hard to tell what exactly is happening between the two women and the pilot. It is quite likely this is a non-issue as Delta claims. But hasn't the airline learned by now that using obfuscating corporate speak such as "de-escalate" only serves to re-escalate the public's mistrust in anything the airlines tell us?
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