A lawsuit against United Airlines claims a woman of Asian descent was denied boarding simply for resembling another passenger of Asian descent who got into an argument with a flight attendant.
Lawsuit Claims Wrong Asian-American Thrown Off United Airlines Flight, Just Because She Was Asian
Several relators were in Las Vegas for a conference and returning to the Washington, DC area. The incident occurred on August 29, 2024 on United flight UA1627, a flight from Las Vegas (LAS) to Washington Dulles (IAD). Storms in the area forced this flight (and several others) to divert to Baltimore (BWI).
In BWI, there was so much diversion traffic that a gate was not available and passengers were trapped onboard for five hours. One of the realtors began to feel unwell. He reported symptoms including chest pain and profuse sweating. But a flight attendant allegedly was dismissive of his condition, dismissing it as a panic attack. The realtor’s female colleague confronted the flight attendant over her rude behavior. The exact exchange is not recorded, but the lawsuit claims she was met with a “snarky” response. Both the sick passenger and her colleague were Asian-American.
The plane eventually pulled up to a gate and passengers stepped off. Around midnight, passengers were allowed to board again so the flight could finish its journey to Washington Dulles. However, another Asian-American female realtor was denied boarding. AS it was explained to her, the pilot had requested this because she pushed a flight attendant.
But this passenger claims she had no interaction with the flight attendants (and wasn’t even seated nearby). Her colleague, the one who did confront the flight attendant, was allowed onboard and expalined ot the pilot what happened and that her female colleague had nothing to do with the incident.
Both were ultimately denied boarding, as were two others in the gate area who came to the defense of their colleagues.
The passengers are now suing for racial discrimination, negligence, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress. Several witnesses have been identified, including an off-duty United employee who witnessed what took place.
You can read the complaint here.
My Thoughts
I’m trying to figure out this mistake happened. If this incident occurred onboard during the tarmac delay, wouldn’t the flight attendant have been able to clearly see where the passenger who allegedly pushed her was seated and made a report? How can it be that a woman sitting several rows back, who was never part of the discussion onboard, got booted? Did the flight attendant just scan the gate area for passengers who looked to be of Asian descent and just ID the wrong person?
There are a lot of unanswered questions here and denying the wrong person based on ethnicity brings to mind the American Airlines incident where all black passengers were removed onboard because one of them allegedly smelled bad. I could see this being an innocent mistake because the other Asian-American woman was allowed onboard (i.e., only one passenger was targeted..it’s not like United was throwing off all female passengers who looked East Asian). But even if that were the case, this matter was handled very sloppily.
The bigger issue to me is how easy it is to get thrown of a flight in the United States. I don’t think flight attendants should be able to deny boarding to anyone in all but the most egregious of circumstances. While I understand the fear that you do not want an unruly passenger in the air, flight attendants enjoy far too much power to claim someone was rude or hostile and have them removed. It happened to me and I’ve written about so many similar incidents here over the years.
There’s a big difference between removing an intoxicated passenger and removing one who annoyed a flight attendant. Flight attendants should learn to de-escalate matters, not exacerbate them. That starts by taking people seriously when they say they are sick.
CONCLUSION
United Airlines faces a lawsuit for racial discrimination by a group of female realtors who were denied boarding on a delayed flight to Washington Dulles. The details here are alarming: denying the wrong passenger simply because she is of the same ethnicity is wrong on so many levels.
Hat Tip: PYOK
This entire contretemps would have never happened if anyone had the slightest sense of humour .
Flight attendants are not trained to diagnose an illness. First mistake. If an altercation did occur, minimally the flight attendant should note the seat number of the offender. I can understand after a long gate delay nerves were frayed but this action was unnecessary.
Airlines should not be so resistant to unloading passengers by stairs.
And into a bus .
While there is no excuse for assaulting airline crew or staff, crew should be obligated to seek deescalation and a very high bar, including verified positive ID, should be set for any denial of boarding.
Hopefully United will learn from this, better and faster than they did from the Dr Dao incident. What would be great is if making a false accusation against a passenger became grounds for an employee’s automatic termination.
Two Wongs don’t make it right.