A passenger is preparing to take legal action against Delta Air Lines after he alleges a flight attendant slapped him.
Mohammad Shibli was flying with his wife and two young kids from Atlanta to Fresno for his sister-in-law's wedding back in July when the incident occurred. His lawyer, Ali Awad, held a press conference to discuss the case this week.
The confrontation allegedly began when the flight attendant denied Shibli and his wife a simple request for their two-year-old, who was crying for water. The couple was told no because the beverage cart wasn't at their row yet, Shibli said.
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Tensions are said to have risen when the same Delta flight attendant reached Shibli's row with the cart and asked if he wanted anything. Since he'd already gotten water from a different attendant, the Georgia man declined. But the flight attendant persisted with her offers.
“I asked her to leave me alone,” the father explained. “She then asked if I wanted the police to meet me at the gate, insinuating that she was going to have me arrested.”
When Shibli questioned her response, the flight attendant ‘ignored him and continued her service’.
Things apparently reached breaking point when she later bumped into Shibli hard enough that the stranger in his row asked: “What’s her deal?”
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At the time, the flight attendant “leaned closer to my ear and whispered a very vulgar word,” Shibli claimed. He then says he stood up and 'responded with a few bad words’.
He recalled: “It was at that time, the Delta attendant took a few steps toward me and struck me with an open palm as hard as she could.”
The slap was reportedly so loud that a passenger sitting directly in front of Shibli heard it through their noise-cancelling headphones.
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“I hear [flight attendant] talking to someone, but cannot distinguish what they are saying at all. That is when I heard a very loud ‘smack’ sound and I immediately took my right earbud out and looked behind me to see the flight attendant and a man behind me yelling at each other,” a passenger described.
Shibli said the remaining four hours of the flight left him feeling 'trapped' and 'helpless' in front of his son.
“No one should ever experience physical abuse like this, especially on a plane mid-air with nowhere to go for four hours,” he said.
Shibli says he saw law enforcement officers questioning the Delta employee after they landed. Later in the conference, his lawyer claimed the incident was triggered by Shibli’s wife’s shirt, which had the word 'Palestine' on it.