The daughter of Korean Air’s CEO visited the home of a cabin crew chief Sunday to apologise for kicking him off a plane over the way a snack was served, amid claims she made him kneel and ask forgiveness.Cho Hyun-Ah, formerly a top executive at Korean Air, resigned Tuesday from all her posts at the family-run flag carrier in the face of an intense public backlash and investigations by state authorities.
The 40-year-old forced a New York-Seoul flight to return to the terminal and eject the cabin crew chief on December 5 after she took exception to the arrival of some macadamia nuts she had not asked for, and to the fact they were served in a packet rather than a bowl.
Cho, sitting in first class, forced cabin manager Park Chang-Jin and a female attendant to kneel in front of her, calling Park names, pushing him into the cockpit door and jabbing him with a service manual, according to his account of the incident.
Cho visited the homes of both staff members on Sunday morning to offer a personal apology. But neither was home so she left notes at their doors saying sorry, a company spokeswoman told AFP.
Cho has denied she forced the pair to kneel. “I’ve never heard such thing. I don’t know anything about it,” she said when reporters asked her to confirm claims by Park in an interview with Seoul’s KBS television.
But another passenger in first class confirmed most of Park’s account and said she saw the two attendants on their knees.
“I felt so sorry for the flight attendants, who looked totally terrified of her,” the passenger told KBS after meeting Seoul prosecutors Saturday to give testimony over the incident. Cho’s voice was so loud that even people in the economy class turned to look,” the passenger said, describing the atmosphere during the 14-hour flight as “very menacing and distressing.”
Park said in his interview with KBS that the incident had been deeply humiliating.
“You can’t imagine the humiliation I felt unless you experience it yourself,” he said.
Park has also claimed that Korean Air officials had for the past week pressed him to take the blame for the incident. The airline declined to comment on the allegation.
Cho’s behaviour sparked fierce criticism in South Korea, where she has been accused of being petty and arrogant. The transport ministry and Seoul prosecutors have launched investigations into whether she breached aviation safety laws and caused disruption to business. Korean Air CEO Cho Yang-Ho gave a televised press conference Friday to apologise for his daughter’s “foolish act”.
“I failed to raise the child properly. It’s my fault,” he said. The incident, branded “nutgate” on social media, renewed resentment at the elite families who run the South’s powerful business conglomerates known as chaebol. The founding families of the business giants are credited with leading the country’s growth for decades. But they have often made headlines with incidents in which they were accused of abusing power.
In 2007 the chairman of the chemical giant Hanwha group was convicted for hiring thugs and assaulting with metal pipes several men who had beaten his young son in a drunken brawl. He was given a suspended prison term.
A member of the founding family of SK Group received a suspended jail term for beating in 2010 a former labour union activist with a baseball bat and throwing him the equivalent of $18,000 as compensation for the attack.
“The (airline) incident laid bare again the dark side of our corporate culture, in which no one can protest against wrong behaviour by members of owner families,” the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial on Saturday.
“These owners need to…educate their offspring properly and curb their sense of entitlement.”
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