A black woman is wondering if she was skipped over for her first class meal on American Airlines due to racism or just incompetence.
Black Woman Says She Was The Only Passenger Skipped Over For Meal In American Airlines First Class
A black woman was traveling on AA from Boston (BOS) to Miami (MIA) on May 3, 2025 and “treated herself” to first class. But when meal service began after takeoff, she was skipped over. She claims flight attendants did not offer her food or even an explanation of why she was not offered food. She was awake during meal orders and had not eaten since she “looked forward to this” (a small plug here for the Chase Sapphire Lounge in Boston, where she could have enjoyed a much better meal than anything onboard AA).
Posting about this on TikTok, she said:
When u the only black person in first class and the food apparently ran out…. Well thank you American Airlines
Why didn’t she report it? She claims her “brain couldn’t comprehend that this happened,” and she was baffled.
Her story has now gone viral.
What Happened Here?
I’m going to assume, for purposes of our discussion, that she actually was denied a meal…while it’s not uncommon for TikTok influencers to stretch the truth, this would be a terrible story to fabricate.
I wasn’t there and so, like One Mile At A Time, I’m certainly not going to simply dismiss that there might have been racism or at least discrimination at play…it is a possibility, especially after the incident in which American Airlines removed all (unrelated) black male passnegers onboard because one of them smelled bad.
> Read More: Lawsuit Claims Eight Unrelated Black Men Were Thrown Off American Airlines Flight After White Flight Attendant Complained About Body Odor
> Read More: American Airlines CEO Apologizes For Treatment Of Black Passengers, Vows To Change Culture
But while there may certainly be American Airlines flight attendants who are racist, I’d like to think this was more likely an apathetic or lazy flight attendant…something that (tragically) is not all that uncommon nor directed at a particular race or gender.
The black woman was seated in the last row of first class and AA takes meal orders from front to back, prioritizing pre-orders first. If she did not pre-order a meal and there was a catering snafu in which not enough meals were loaded, I can see why she ended up without one.
But what I cannot understand is why this would not be communicated. Could the flight attendant have thought she declined her meal? On United Airlines, one of the pre-order options is to decline the meal; but this is not an option on American Airlines. I’ve seen many instances where a flight attendant will not confirm pre-orders; they just serve them. But this was not a possibility here.
Could it just be that the flight attendant was forgetful? Sure.
But a competent flight attendant would have apologized for the catering snafu and offered her compensation on the spot. Whether or not there was racism may be difficult to determine from her account, but the lack of professionalism was clear.
CONCLUSION
A black woman is blaming racism as the reason she was skipped over for a meal in American Airlines first class. While that is a pssoiblity, the more likely explanation is poor customer service and communication from an American Airlines flight attendant. Either way, this story reflects very poorly on AA.
What do you think happened onboard?
Story is missing if she was in Seat F which would be the last seat to get a meal based on the AA front to back, A to F system.
However the lack of communication is unacceptable IF this is the way it happened. Hopefully if it did occur this way I would hope AA privately reaches out to her with some compensation.
As you stated this is another unnecessary unforced error by AA.
Well , perhaps her meal was scarfed by an FA .
Refund her entire ticket if that happened .
First thank you for not posting the lingerie photos on LALF. Sometimes things just go sideways in travel and that’s the simple truth. I also cannot believe you would be so bewildered, you could not speak up in the moment. But I am not Black, and I won’t speculate on her reaction.
Somehow I missed the X post, so please ignore my comment about the photos.
I embedded that post because it had the video in it and I don’t like embedding TikTok videos. Not meaning to offend at all or comment on her line of work.
I saw her original post. She’s in the aisle and the person next to her in the window seat had meal service. No way she wasn’t asked. They may not have had the item she wanted, but not to be offered any food at all isn’t the reality.
I’ve asked AA if she is lying and am happy to shame her if she is. I hope she is telling the truth, though.
Why would you hope that? I generally hope the world is minimally racist and hope, therefore, that racism accusations are bogus.
Because I think people who lie like that are the worst of the deplorables.
However the person next to her in Seat F could have preordered so she was the last to be served and they were short. Hopefully Matt gets a response from AA.
What was on the menu? No sense complaining if the meal wasn’t fit for a pet.
Black Fatigue is real. Blacks always want to use their race to complain or bring it up somehow but when it comes to committing the highest levels of violent crime, having high obesity rates, having the lowest IQ of any race in the world, not having a written language until Europeans gave it to them, and looking ugly unless they have some White blood, they are silent. They can keep their rap. We don’t need or benefit from them in the U.S. or anywhere in the world.
MAGA chodes like you are the biggest bitch ass whiny complainers on the planet. The nerve you must have to say anyone else complains. A damn picture on a bathroom sign causes you losers to come unglued. Also very laughable that you are bashing anyone’s IQ when being the product of incest, as you clearly are, severely limits IQ scores. Also people like you have worse dental hygiene than anyone since 1960s Britain.
Arnett, When you act like a cracker could you at least serve us cheese?
Your argument lost all credibility once you started using subjective features such as “ugliness”. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For instance, I think Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller are among the ugliest people in America nowadays, and both are sycophants of the current administration.
As for your claim that “we have never needed them”, I beg to disagree. The Deep South developed due to the slave labor in the 18th and 19th centuries, and without their role in agriculture, the South would have remained a backwards morass.
The midterms are coming. That’s all.
I can believe they may have run out due to a catering or dropped meal reason. I have near zero confidence she was selected to be the unlucky one because of her race. I also have near zero confidence they did not apologize for the lack of food if that happened. Does AA have an option to turn down a meal on pre-order? I’d sooner believe an influencer did that to have a juicy, they’re-racist story than the one she tells.
MAGA chodes like you are the biggest bitch ass whiny complainers on the planet. The nerve you must have to say anyone else complains. A damn picture on a bathroom sign causes you losers to come unglued. Also very laughable that you are bashing anyone’s IQ when being the product of incest, as you clearly are, severely limits IQ scores. Also people like you have worse dental hygiene than anyone since 1960s Britain.
Sorry, that was for David Arnett
You’re response confused me; nobody who knows me thinks MAGA. Thanks for your clarification. BTW, almost all Davids are good. We just need a president Dave. (BTW, Ike was David Dwight, who changed it. Sorry, to the Dwights, but who does this?).
Matthew as a Black man with a Bachelor’s of Science in Civil Engineering & who has traveled the world extensively (in first class), I’m glad that the poster above me (David Arnett) proved a point I had to explain recently to a Danish man on a trip to Copenhagen: RACISM is not a MYTH! We’re not playing the race card just because we mention RACE. That word scares so many White people, but it NEVER scares us. Know why? We have a 10,000 foot perspective. So I encourage all White people to pray for the understanding to realize that just because you may never have experienced something, doesn’t mean it is a MYTH. God bless you all!
Agreed, David McCray—and the whole world can see it.
David, I have also suffered various forms of racism my entire life including discriminated against (legally) via affirmative action, ethnic discrimination by Asians (directed against non-Asians, including whites), public ethnic slurs against my Polish ancestry, and concerns about my physical safety walking through non-white neighborhoods.
Even though there’s very little public sympathy for me either from the American left (which merely reverses racism rather than deplore it altogether) or the right (which is often concerned with tax cuts or noble causes such as abortion or foreign policy), I sympathize and empathize with those who are legitimate victims of racism. It’s wrong, simple as that.
Another commenter observed that there’s no obvious explanation of what happened when the OP simply asked the flight attendant about the meal. Did the alleged victim in this case simply assume it was racism and not an oversight and, as an “influencer”, take advantage of the attention from the situation?
If that’s the case, then her behavior undermines sympathy that would be shown towards actual victims of racism.
She claims she wasn’t served a meal. But what’s missing her is why she didn’t ask/speak up/pull the weave off the FA. Like seriously she is just going to sit there and not say anything?
Granted its BOSMIA so I wouldn’t expect it would be a nonrev in F, but is it possible that is the case here? Remember the guys who claimed it was racist because they were the only people told to change clothes because they were black only to find out they were nonrevs?
stop giving these people attention
Wow, so I posted the following comment earlier but it was “mysteriously” deleted by the mods (Hmm…) but here’s what I posted: as a Black man with a Bachelors of Science in Civil Engineering, I have traveled the world extensively (in first class). I don’t know if this young lady was discriminated against. But I’m happy that David Arnett posted what he said. It proves a point I had to explain to a White Danish man who never experienced discrimination: racism is not a MYTH. Commenters like Arnett prove that although I have never been arrested or charged with any crime, there is a stigma that comes with being Black and it is not only in our imagination. God bless you all and have a wonderful day.
@David McCray: nothing was deleted. We don’t delete comments.
When she was skipped (if true), she saw it as an opportunity to pull the race card and publicly shame AA. She would would rather go hungry and report her injustice, than speak up and ask about a meal.
She should get a food voucher at a fancy restaurant at her destination..
The last guy to report this idiotic story on the dozens of airplane internet blogs.
Late to the party and wanting hits. Thank you and let us tell Explora what you’re all about.
Since such openly, proudly Racist, trump has been elected two times, this kind of racism based incident happened often and is going on, on. Whoever experienced such a nasty happening should report it publicly.
don’t assume. she’s entitled to say anything. only fools rush to believe it.
Every POC in structurally racist white privileged America read the headline of this post (“Huh?!?”) and immediately thought “yeah something like this definitely could have happened, and white people are confused and/or completely oblivious to the idea that something like this could happen.”
AA’s incompetence and customer unfriendliness are secondary here.
Black, Brown, Asian and other marginalized communities in American life routinely face instances of discrimination that white people play off as (1) not possible, (2) didn’t happen, (3) innocent explanation, or all kinds of aggravating excuses. The woman in this incident was discriminated against, plain and simple.
Dollars to donuts had this been a White man in the seat, AA flight attendants–who are generally nowhere near as bad as frontline AA staff on the ground–would have apologized profusely and said a catering mixup meant there isn’t any meal, but would you like more mixed nuts? Another drink? Anything else I can do to make your flight more comfortable? Please accept our sincere apologies and 10,000 AA points are on your way into your account.
Black women, like other POCs, get the silent treatment and that’s discrimination and I will not hear it any other way.
Oh look, the fake lawyer showed up.
Does AA allow you to pre-order no meal? If so, I wouldn’t put it past an influencer to do so to have a (fake) story.
86 75309
It appears to me that anytime certain people don’t “get what I want”, they will pull the race card. “I wasn’t served a meal because I am of Eskimo/Inuit descent.” Or, I wasn’t served a meal because I am of (add your race here) decent.” While some airlines have well documented poor service, most of this type of complaint is plain BS.
This happened to me on AA. They gave me a scoop of granola because they ran out of food for the FA cabin. Add it to the long list of reasons I no longer fly them.
Shilo Hendrix said it the best.
How does the old saying go? “Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.” Here are the possible explanations:
1. They had enough meals for everyone, but they didn’t serve her because a flight attendant is racist.
2. They honestly ran out of meals, and a flight attendant decided that she was the passenger who would be left out because the flight attendant is racist.
3. They honestly ran out of meals, and she didn’t get a meal because she was sitting in the aisle seat on the last row. In my experience, flight attendants serve from window to aisle so they aren’t reaching over someone who already has a meal in front of them.
4. They ran out of meals and prioritized people who had preordered their meal choice, and she had neglected to do so.
5. They were serving meals while she was in the lavatory and ran out.
6. They ran out of meals and she wasn’t the only person who wasn’t served but she distorted the facts to make the claim she was the only one not served because of her race to generate outrage-induced traffic to her TikTok.
7. They didn’t have/ran out of the choice of meal she wanted and she declined the only available choice but distorted the facts to make the claim she was the only one not served because of her race to geerate outrage-induced traffic on TikTok.
8. She was in the lavatory while they were serving meals and could have asked for her meal once she returned to her seat but instead distorted the facts to make the claim that she wasn’t served because of her race to generate outrage-induced traffic on TikTok.
Scenarios 3-8 are all far more likely than scenarios 1 and 2. I find it highly unlikely that an AA flight attendant would withhold an available meal from a black passenger out of racism. Flight attendants are well trained and used to serving people of all persuasions in all cabin classes, and are certainly aware of the potential ramifications for the airline and their job if they did something this overtly racist, especially in this era of social media. For the same reasons, it’s also unlikely a flight attendant would use race in decided who was left out if they actually ran out of meals. However, social media is filled with examples of people coming to the wrong conclusions based on their perceptions, as well as people selectively editing and distorting facts to create ragebait to drive engagement.
Hysterical.