Groups Of Passengers Brawl At Philadelphia Baggage Claim, While Employees Stand By Filming - View from the Wing

As if to disprove my recent claim that the worst passenger behavior happens on Spirit Airlines, two groups of passengers began egging each other on after American Airlines flight AA2333 from Miami to Philadelphia early in the week, culminating in a brawl at baggage claim.

here's the beginning !! pic.twitter.com/csBQiiW65e

- 100% BLACK (@gregadonn) July 16, 2020

this why them flight prices need to go back up. this shit is getting a little too hectic pic.twitter.com/TV7jYZ2pX4

- 100% BLACK (@gregadonn) July 16, 2020

Contrary to much discussion these are employees, but not security employees, filming the incident.

Is the airport security actually filming this? What are they not trying to stop it? pic.twitter.com/MNNA5xzCIB

- Neil Dorrington 🏌️‍♂️🚴🏼‍♂️ 🎾 (@NeilDorrington) July 17, 2020

There's been a great deal of discussion online about which group of passengers is at fault, and many shared videos have been cropped to point fingers at one group or another (perhaps for racially-motivated reasons, and I'm not interested in that discussion in the comments). Incidents like this don't usually happen spontaneously without the full participation of everyone involved. Maybe it's just that it was a flight originating in Florida.

What I'm most interested in here is that this sort of thing usually does happen on Spirit Airlines or British package holiday carriers like Jet2. When American Airlines President Robert Isom said his competitive sights were set on low cost carriers and he'd never let Spirit or Frontier have the advantage it never occurred to me he might be talking about mirroring their passengers..!