But Continues To Slam Service On American Airlines

Actor Alec Baldwin has apologized to fellow passengers delayed by an hour when his refusal to obey the instructions of flight attendants to turn off a mobile device got him kicked off an American Airlines flight Tuesday afternoon. But he's still mad at the airline itself.

As widely reported, Baldwin admits he continued playing "Words with Friends," an interactive mobile phone game, after the cabin door was closed and his flight was waiting to push back from the gate. In Tweets to his followers, he has slammed the airline, and likened the flight attendants with whom he interacted to "retired Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950's."

Baldwin appears to have taken a break from Twitter for the time being, but he did air his side of the story on the Huffington Post. To the other passengers he posts, "It was never my intention to inconvenience anyone with my 'issue' with a certain flight attendant. I suppose a part of my frustration lay with the fact that I had flown American for over 20 years and was brand loyal, in the extreme. The ticketing agents and Admiral’s Club staff have always been nothing but abundantly helpful to me, as I have flown hundreds of thousands of miles with the one carrier."

Baldwin also writes of declining airline service, saying some flight attendants have made flying "a Greyhound bus experience."

For its part, the airline has called Baldwin "extremely rude," and now Greyhound CEO David Leach is fighting back against Baldwin's implications about bus service. CNN reports Leach has responded with an open letter to Baldwin in which he notes his buses feature superior legroom, leather seats, power outlets and free wifi, and observes, "We don't require our customers to turn off their electronic devices ... ever. You could therefore play 'Words With Friends' during your entire trip and nobody would give you any grief over it.

"I invite you to meet with me in New York and we'll take a trip to Boston so you can see first-hand what a great ride Greyhound can be."

The actor should at least take comfort in knowing there's one person in the world who thinks spending four-and-a-half hours riding on a bus with Alec Baldwin qualifies as a "great ride."

Find Baldwin's original apology to passengers using the FMI link below.

FMI: www.huffingtonpost.com/alec-baldwin/american-airlines_b_1135201.html