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Passengers fume as pilot WALKS OFF delayed Alaska Airlines plane after fight with co-pilot

While passengers called the behaviour 'unprofessional', Alaska Airlines said the pilots did the right thing in the 'interest of safety'

On July 18, 2022, an Alaska Airlines flight was delayed for about two hours after waiting for the weather to settle down a bit and another peculiar reason. The two pilots onboard had professional differences and could not get along together. They decided to return to the gate where one pilot walked off, and the airlines were quick to find a suitable replacement from another delayed flight.

Flight AS1080 was flying from Washington to San Francisco on an Airbus A320. The pilots informed the passengers forthright that they "could not get along", and one of them left the plane "in the interest of safety" of the passengers.

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The flight, which was scheduled to land at 7:05 PM, landed at 9:31 PM after the airline sent a pilot who was on a Los Angeles-bound flight to replace the one that had walked off. The other flight, however, had to face a delay of over two and a half hours by landing at 10:38 pm instead of 8:05 pm. Passengers were naturally agitated, and many took to Twitter to report their sob stories. One of them even recorded the pilot leaving the aircraft, while another had a recording of the 'apology' the pilots rendered to all of them.

"@AlaskaAir there goes your pro pilot, off into the sunset," wrote one of the users about the pilot who left. Some passengers reported the entire detailed timeline of events in real-time, "hey @AlaskaAir after being on a plane waiting out a storm for 2 hrs (AS1080) your pilots just pulled back to the gate and got off the plane because of a “failure to get along.” incredibly unprofessional. flight attendants are doing their best and have no idea what’s going on."

"The end of his "apology"", tweeted one of the passengers with a video recording of the pilots' announcement. Many experts and pilots, however, supported the decision of the two pilots on the flight, saying that communication is imperative and the safety of the passengers would have been sabotaged had they not decided to change flights. 

One of these users wrote, "Hi guys! Although very annoying & inconvenient, as a pilot myself, I think the way things ended up was MUCH better for all you passengers! B/c I sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted to be on that flight knowing the guys up on the flight deck were quarrelling! A recipe for DISASTER!!" It is still unclear how grave the disagreement was.

Alaska Airlines also spoke with Fox Business, supporting their pilots for the exact same reason. "While this situation was unfortunate, in the interest of safety, the pilots did the right thing. Both the captain and the first officer were evaluated by management, and it was determined they remained fit to fly. We swapped crews and the flight continued to San Francisco. We apologized to our guests for the inconvenience this caused." 

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The airline also reportedly compensated its passengers with $175, as a passenger informed, "I still cannot believe how inappropriate that announcement was. I waited 90 minutes for
@AlaskaAir to call me back about my experience, then waited another 60 minutes on the phone talking and being on hold with representatives. They only offered me 175$ for this travesty."