Ex-Spirit Airlines employees talk about what led them to yell at Hollywood-Burbank Airport travelers
By Jeff Nguyen
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California (KCAL/KCBS) — Two former Spirit Airlines gate agents shared the story behind the video that showed them their jobs at Hollywood-Burbank Airport.
The video showed employees Sara Jane Barrow and Razia Singh yelling at travelers to “shut up” after a flight had been delayed for several hours, escalating everyone’s frustration.
“I do deeply regret what happened that day,” Barrow said.
The viral video recorded the outburst on July 13, when the airline faced a system outage. Singh, a supervisor, said she couldn’t get on the loudspeaker connected to the whole terminal.
“Nobody was listening to me when I was using my indoor voice,” she said. “It was around 300 people or more at that small gate area. Everybody was screaming and yelling.”
The pair said what was captured on camera and eventually shared on social media was just a portion of last month’s chaos. They tried to be cordial with people at first, but everything escalated.
“It was two men screaming at her, cussing her out and being vicious,” Singh said.
Spirit Airlines stated it fired the pair after an internal investigation.
“The two agents involved are no longer working with Spirit following the completion of our vendor’s internal investigation into the matter,” the company said. “We apologize to our Guests.”
The pair said the computers crashed, the ticket printer broke and only three employees were at the counter.
“The fact that we had no help from upper management, I feel like, it was like we were left to fend for ourselves pretty much,” Barrow said.
The former employees said they haven’t been able to land another job.
“I don’t want to let this TikTok moment define who I am,” Barrow said. “I want to be able to show you I can work just as hard. I can be a valuable asset to everybody.
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