Nut rage incident

The nut rage incident, colloquially referred to as "nutgate", (땅콩 회항) was an air rage incident that occurred on December 5, 2014, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City onboard Korean Air Flight 086. Heather Cho (Korean name: Cho Hyun-ah; later changed to Cho Seung-yeon), the vice president of Korean Air and daughter of CEO Cho Yang-ho, was dissatisfied with the way a flight attendant served macadamia nuts on the plane, and ordered the aircraft to return to the airport gate before takeoff.

The incident began when all first class passengers, including Cho, were given nut snacks bagged in their original packaging, in keeping with the airline's procedures. However, Cho had expected them to be served on a plate in first class, so she verbally abused the serving flight attendant and questioned the cabin crew chief about the standard procedure of serving the nuts. After a heated confrontation, where Cho publicly humiliated both the cabin crew chief and the flight attendant by ordering them to kneel in front of everyone, she physically assaulted the two crew members and then ordered the chief to be expelled off the plane, forcing the captain to request the already taxiing aircraft be allowed to return to the gate, thus delaying the flight for about 20 minutes.

When the incident became public, Cho and Korean Air were heavily criticized, and in the aftermath, Cho resigned from one of her several executive positions at Korean Air. She was subsequently found guilty in a South Korean court of obstructing aviation safety and given a twelve-month prison sentence, of which she served five months. The flight attendant and cabin crew chief had returned to their positions by April 2016.