Just when you thought the whole story about the Korean Air executive who went nuts over some nuts couldn’t get more ridiculous, the head of the cabin crew said he was forced to kneel to apologize about how a flight attendant served some macadamia nuts. Just in case you haven’t been following the case, Heather Cho, the daughter of the airline’s chairman and the executive in charge of in-flight service, forced a plane to return back to the gate at New York’s JFK airport last week after a flight attendant dared to bring her macadamia nuts in a bag and not a dish. Cho forced the head of the cabin crew to get off the plane.
Friday night, cabin crew chief Park Chang-jin spoke to state-run TV network KBS and said that Cho insulted him and forced him to kneel to apologize for the transgression, before Cho yelled for the crew to “call right now and stop the plane,” according to the BBC. “I will stop this plane from leaving,” she allegedly yelled.
“In a situation where she said ‘Make contacts right now to stop the plane. I won’t let the plane go,’ I dared not object to her, the owner’s daughter,” the cabin crew chief said in the interview Friday, according to Reuters. “People who haven’t experienced [this type of abuse] will not understand that feeling of being insulted and shamed.” The interview ended days of silence in which the case became big news in South Korea, sparking outrage and ridicule. It’s likely to add more fuel to the fire, considering Park said he was visited numerous times by airline officials who tried to convince him to lie about what really happened.
Cho has been fired from the airline and faces an investigation into whether she violated aviation laws. She publicly apologized on Friday.
