Melb, given the further witnesses, are you happy to now retract that?
It was correct at the time I suggested it. Subsequently, I've seen IIRC one person claim it wasn't as the musician claimed. If there have been more, fair enough, but unlike the independent witnesses on the flight - at least two - who tweeted immediately, the 'defenders' were slower to emerge. I hope QF PR department hasn't contacted passengers and offered them an incentive such as FF points to claim it wasn't as the Black Eyed Peas gent suggested. Don't put it past them!
I don't know if others can read this article: I was able to, but you may come up against a paywall. In it, a Flight Attendants Association spokeswoman defends the QFd staff, but she doesn't address the allegation that the staff member concerned - a female CSM - was aggressive towards the gent who had his headphones on and who was working on his laptop:
www.theaustralian.com.au
The headline is 'Qantas crew turns its attack on rapper will.i.am' if one needs to search for it.
Safety protocols are important, but the staff member's alleged aggressiveness typifies the impression that many online reviews of Qantas give that some - note, not all - QF staff lack an understanding as to how to pleasantly defuse a situation. There's no allegation that the musician gent was mentally ill or intoxicated/on illegal drugs. He appears to have subsequently been allowed to travel on another QFd flight, so cannot have been deemed a 'security risk', even by QFd's odd, draconian standards that as at least one other AFFer noted apparently include if one asks for a surname of a staff member at check in.
While I jest, maybe the answer is to send QFd staff who act in this way to be trained by Asian airline crew, as the latter across many airlines are always pleasant and never argue or act aggressively with passengers.
One can see why some suggest it's unfair to give out the staff member's name, but many others would say she ought be accountable and/or has brought this upon herself by her alleged extreme rudeness towards the passenger, confirmed by some independent witnesses who are most unlikely to be Afro-Americans.
As samh004 remarked, while only the flight crew can call the police, it's not a good look (for QF) if police are called in too quickly. Hardly a way of de-escalating a situation.
The whole incident is an international PR disaster for QF, an arrogant and declining airline. I'd never heard of the chap but if he's got 12 million plus social media followers, he's a bit more than a 'dime a dozen' celebrity as one post above claimed.
Above all else, this incident typifies a problem that USA airlines and QF have of not appropriately dealing with such situations. It's extremely rare to read about such occurrences in many other areas of the world, yet musicians must travel such routes. The heavy handed approach to passenger relations that we've all seen or heard of in the USA has arrived in Oz courtesy of some QF staff. Not good.