[imagesource: YouTube / Asia Travels]

Granted, there will always be complaints coming from the first-class wing of a flight.

But none are quite as nuts as this Korean Airlines debacle that hit international news in December 2014.

Quite literally nuts, as Luxury Launches is keen to point out because it involves actual macadamia nuts, which “diverted a Korean Air flight, gripped an entire nation, inspired a Wikipedia page, and even got the Airline’s VP arrested”.

Alongside 250 passengers on Korean Airlines flight 086, set to fly from JFK International Airport in New York to Incheon International Airport in South Korea, was the airline’s vice-president, Heather Cho.

She was in first-class, of course, and was dotingly served some macadamia nuts before take-off.

Somehow, that turned into a whole debacle fit for a Netflix Korean drama:

Cho observed that the nuts were served in a packet instead of being served on a plate. She rebuked flight attendant, Kim Do-hee and even escalated the issue to cabin-crew chief Park Chang-jin [below].

One report states that she ordered Chang-jin to get on his knees and ask for her forgiveness for this trivial mistake.

Image: Park Chang-jin

She even physically attacked him with a few whacks on his knuckles with a digital tablet. The altercation kept getting more severe till she fired him on the spot.

That’s when Cho ordered that the plane return to the gate of departure (which means that it was clearly taxying or awaiting take-off).

Besides delaying the flight by 20 minutes and messing with passengers’ schedules, Cho also managed to piss off air-traffic control at JFK.

Park Chang-jin for some time let the matter slide until Cho took it too far and alleged that he had an affair with his flight crew.

Image: Korean Air / Luxury Launches

As a result, he publicly called out the unfair policies of Korean Airlines, which is when all hell broke loose:

The aggrieved flight attendant was pressured to state that they had quit voluntarily. They even went on record to state that the Transport Ministry’s attempt to investigate the incident would be unreliable and that they would be in cahoots with the airlines.

However, the investigation went on to prove that Ms. Cho had a nasty track record when on her inspection flights. She had attacked a flight attendant only a year before this incident for being served improperly cooked ramen noodles.

In that instance, the company managed to sweep everything under the carpet, but wasn’t so lucky with the ‘Nutgate’ incident.

Also, it was found that nuts are traditionally served in a bag according to the airline’s policies, so Cho (below) really had no leg to stand on.

Image: China Daily

At the end of the day, she was forced to resign as vice president and had criminal charges brought against her.

That forced her and her father, the Chairman of Korean Air, to publically apologise to the crew and their families.

Interestingly, according to some reports, in the wake of the incident, Korean Air domestic flight prices dropped by over 6% and the price of macadamia nuts soared.

At least there was some kind of winner…

[source:luxurylaunches]