The captain of a Delta Connection flight to Detroit in the US asked on the evening of Tuesday 13 October, during the approach, for supervisors to meet the aircraft at the gate because the two flight attendants on board were in conflict with each other. That is according to the aviation site AirLive1. Delta Air Lines and Endeavor Air, the subsidiary that operated the flight, have not publicly confirmed the incident. The flight profile is established: open ADS-B data from adsb.lol shows a normal flight and a normal landing, with no emergency squawk2.

What the flight data shows

The flight was DL5090 from Greenville-Spartanburg in South Carolina to Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Michigan, operated by the CRJ-900 registered N132EV. The crew flew under the callsign EDV5090, Endeavor Air's ICAO code21. The aircraft took off at around 23:02 UTC (19:02 local time) and climbed to 33,000 ft, heading almost due north over West Virginia and Ohio2.

The descent started at around 23:50 UTC. The aircraft crossed Lake Erie into the Detroit area from the south and landed at 00:22 UTC (20:22 local time), about one hour and twenty minutes after takeoff2. The transponder showed a normal code throughout; no emergency code such as 7700 appears in the data2. According to AirLive, the aircraft landed on runway 21L and then taxied to gate C211.

What AirLive reports

According to AirLive, the flight crew contacted operations on the ground during the approach and asked for inflight management and supervisors to meet the aircraft directly at the gate1. AirLive quotes the captain: "We are experiencing conflict issues among the flight attendants and will likely need to separate them to prevent further escalation or an incident." On arrival, AirLive says, inflight management was waiting at the gate1.

What the conflict involved and how it started is not known. AirLive itself says it is unclear what triggered it1. Whether it stayed verbal has not been reported. Nothing is known about injuries or any effect on passengers. Delta and Endeavor have not responded publicly to the reports, and no FAA investigation is known.

Why two flight attendants are the whole cabin crew

Endeavor Air flies 126 CRJ-900s for Delta, configured with 12 First Class and 64 Main Cabin seats; some aircraft have 70 seats3. Under US rules, an aircraft with more than 50 and fewer than 101 passenger seats must carry at least two flight attendants4. On a 76-seat CRJ-900 that is the entire cabin crew. If one of them drops out, the legal minimum is no longer met.

Each of the two has fixed duties. An airline must assign, for each aircraft type, what every crewmember does in an emergency and an evacuation, and must show that those functions are realistic and can be carried out, including if a crewmember is incapacitated5. In a small cabin with two doors at the front and overwing exits, an evacuation relies on two people who know each other's duties and can count on each other.

The captain's authority

Under US rules the pilot in command is the final authority for the operation of the aircraft6. In airline operations the captain is, during flight time, in command of the aircraft and crew, with full control and authority over the other crewmembers and their duties7. A conflict in the cabin is therefore also a flight deck responsibility, even though the pilots sit behind a closed door and the approach demands their full attention. Reporting a problem to the ground in advance means someone can be waiting on arrival and it does not have to be solved in the air.

Flight attendants are taught the authority of the pilot in command in their initial training, along with approved crew resource management (CRM) training8. In its advisory circular on CRM, the FAA says CRM-trained crews operate more effectively as teams and cope better with non-routine situations. It singles out communication between flight deck and cabin crew as needing extra attention, and lists conflict resolution as part of the training9. According to the same guidance, the captain's briefing should cover the functions of flight crew and flight attendants during an evacuation9.

Recently we covered a passenger who was duct-taped to a seat on an American Airlines flight, and a passenger stuck in an American Airlines lavatory.