The Spirit Airlines employee who went ballistic on passengers at a California airport in July has revealed what made her lose her cool alongside her supervisor after they were both canned over the incident.
“Every single day, I feel really bad that I did it,” former Spirit Airlines customer service representative Jane Barrow told Inside Edition Tuesday.
Barrow was the employee who went viral in July when she was caught on video yelling at passengers at Hollywood Burbank Airport to “shut up” and that she and her fellow Spirit workers were “frustrated as hell” during the heated exchange.
Her supervisor, Razia Singh, who Spirit also fired over the incident after she was seen getting agitated with the travelers, said they were trying to do their job the best they could under the circumstances.
“I was trying to pick up the pieces,” Singh told the outlet, saying she tried to “explain to the crowd, ‘I’m doing everything I can, give me a second.’”
Barrow shared that the high-intensity situation emerged due to technical issues the airline was suffering, which made checking in passengers impossible.
“The computers were down, we could not check in passengers, we could not take any baggage, we couldn’t assign seats,” Barrow said. “And we were oversold on top of that.”
The tension at the gate only worsened because about 300 passengers had their flights delayed — with some upset travelers already stuck in the airport terminal for eight hours — the former Spirit employees shared.
Barrow then tried to get ahold of the situation by addressing the anxious fliers as they crowded around the gate desk demanding answers, but the “pressure” made her lose her cool.
“I think it was just everything. It was just the pressure, nobody was listening,” Barrow told the outlet.
Barrow said she wishes she had handled the situation differently and feels bad about how she reacted, but she understood why Spirit fired her for her “over-the-top” shouting.
The former airline employee said she got a new job with a crowd management company but felt that Singh getting the boot from the company was unjustified.
Singh was never seen on video shouting at customers during the heated exchange in July.
She only appeared agitated with the situation and tried to project her voice when addressing the crowd.
“I get if you could let me go but to let [Singh] go? She wasn’t the one that was projecting very loudly,” Barrow said, sitting next to Singh, who began to wipe away tears over her being fired by Spirit.
“She was trying to make light of an already crazy situation that was going on.”
It’s unclear if Singh has landed a new gig since being fired.
Singh said she knows that Barrow’s handling of the situation was “wrong,” but that moment didn’t properly display the caring person she really is.
“She still wished me the best,” a teary-eyed Singh told the outlet.
“That’s the type of person she is, I can’t be upset at her.”