Alaska Flight Attendant Fired For Viral Twerking TikTok Video

TikTok videos of flight attendants twerking aren’t usually my beat, but I find this to be an interesting story, given the repercussions the flight attendant faced. I’m not sure whether to feel slightly bad for the punishment she received, or just amazed at her poor judgment. Thanks to A Fly Guy’s Cabin Crew Lounge for flagging this.

Former Alaska flight attendant starts GoFundMe over firing

In late November 2024, a (former) Alaska Airlines flight attendant and San Francisco native named Nelle Diala posted a video on her TikTok account that went viral overnight. It showed her twerking in the back of an Alaska Boeing 737 cabin in uniform. The video had the caption “ghetto till I die, don’t let the uniform fool you.” You can watch the 15-second clip for yourself below.

Not surprisingly, the company didn’t approve of this. What’s perhaps a bit more surprising (or maybe not, I don’t know) is that she ended up being terminated over the incident. She kept the video up after being terminated, and then changed the caption to the following (the hashtag is particularly interesting, as she’s suggesting she was discriminated against):

Cant even be yourself anymore, without the world being so sensitive. Whats wrong with a little twerk before work, people act like they never did that before. #fyp #flightattendantlife 4evaa #discrimnationisreal

She has now started a GoFundMe to “provide support for a wrongfully terminated flight attendant.” While she has the goal of raising $12,000, in the nearly two weeks that the campaign has been up, she has only raised $70.

In the GoFundMe, Diala explains that she “never thought a single moment would cost [her] everything.” At the time of the incident, she had worked at the airline for just over six months, and was “celebrating the end of probation and making it out of a hard upbringing in San Francisco.”

She also explains that in her first six months at the airline, both of her English bulldogs died unexpectedly, and her “relationship was rocky” because of the time she spent away. Nonetheless, she says she really enjoyed her job, including “meeting new people, seeing the world, and creating a safe, welcoming environment for passengers.”

While being a flight attendant was her dream job, she was using the income from this to fund her “blossoming lingerie and dessert business.”

She states the above video was filmed one day during a layover. It was a “harmless clip” recorded at 6AM, while waiting two hours for pilots. The video went viral overnight, but “instead of love and support, it brought unexpected scrutiny.”

She acknowledges that posting the video “was a poor decision,” but she didn’t think it would cost her this job. Alaska reportedly accused her of violating the company’s social media policy. Despite her explaining that it wasn’t intended to harm anyone or the company, they decided to terminate her.

The GoFundMe is intended to make ends meet until she’s able to find another flight attendant position elsewhere. She states that she has learned from her mistakes, and those mistakes don’t define her.

My take on this Alaska flight attendant firing incident

I mean, where do we even begin here? I suppose there’s the broad question of whether posting this kind of content while in uniform is wrong, and then there’s the more specific question of whether this violated the company’s social media policy, and should lead to termination.

On the first topic, I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I really don’t understand how desperate so many people are for attention online, and what posses someone to want to act this way. Admittedly that’s probably in part because I’m an introvert, and I’m a little too old to be part of that generation. For that matter, I guess the reality is that she’s probably trying to get attention to promote her lingerie and dessert businesses, and build her “brand.”

On the other hand, I’m also not in the slightest bit offended by this, and I’m not clutching my pearls, or anything. I don’t understand why she wants to do this, but I also don’t really care. Like, there’s nothing terribly graphic here. Is this professional? No. But honestly, it offends me less than a flight attendant who provides bad service inflight.

The issue with many airline social media policies is that they’re quite open-ended. Typically these policies say things like “avoid posting anything that could negatively impact the company’s image,” and that will mean different things to different people. After all, this flight attendant thinks she was just being herself.

If she were a veteran flight attendant who had been at the airline for decades, I would probably feel bad for her. But if this was her way of celebrating having just gotten off her six-month probation, well… I feel a little less bad.

This ultimately just shows poor judgment. She’s also not taking full accountability here, and is attributing this to “discrimination.” There’s absolutely a ton of discrimination in this world, but I just don’t see how the argument can be made that this is what caused her to lose her job. I think the outcome would’ve been the same whether it would be a guy or a girl, or regardless of the nationality or ethnicity of the person involved.

Lastly, why would any Alaska flight attendant try to do a viral dance, when we all know that it’s impossible to outshine the Alaska Safety Dance!