United Airlines is facing a discrimination lawsuit after an Asian woman claimed she was kicked off a flight because she was mistaken for another Asian passenger sat several rows away from her. Whoops!
The incident occurred on United flight UA1627, scheduled to fly from Las Vegas to Washington. There were several realtors on board this flight returning from a conference in Vegas, at least two of whom were Asian women. They knew each other and worked together, but were seated 7 rows apart.
Due to some dodgy weather, the plane was diverted to Baltimore and passengers ended up stuck on the tarmac there for five hours, which is obviously not fun.
Naturally, the passengers began getting restless and p1ssed off, and one of the Asian women’s colleagues started feeling unwell; getting sweaty and experiencing chest pains. When a flight attendant was notified of this, they were apparently ‘rude’ and ‘dismissive’ and suggested the colleague was just having a panic attack.
The Asian woman confronted the crew member about their attitude, and received a ‘snarky’ response.
Eventually, passengers were about to deplane, but when they were set to board again hours later, the other Asian woman (who had nothing to do with the prior situation and had been on her Kindle the whole time) was denied entry. She was told that she wouldn’t be allowed to fly due to accusations made by a flight attendant.
The Asian woman concluded that she was being denied boarding over the earlier confrontation between the other Asian passenger and the flight attendant, which means she was incorrectly identified because of her ethnicity. Despite sitting 7 rows away!
A bunch of the lady’s co-workers stood up for her, and in the end, four of them ended up being barred from the flight and escorted out of the airport by police. The flight attendant claimed that one of the passengers had physically pushed her, which is an accusation all the passengers deny.
And so, the whole thing has now ended up in a lawsuit. The two Asian passengers have joined forces to sue United Airlines, and have provided witnesses, including an off-duty United employee, who apparently saw everything that happened.
Welp, if this is a jury case, you can pretty much guarantee that United Airlines are taking the L on this one. It does seem like a pretty clear case of racial profiling, on top of the awful service and leaving the passengers stuck on a plane for 5 hours before allowing them to deboard. Pretty sure most of the passengers on that flight will not be flying with United Airlines again following that experience.
This is a major airline we’re talking about though, so it’s likely they will settle out of court with an NDA in order to avoid this dragging on and to mitigate the reputational damage they will receive. Unless, of course, they genuinely have an argument for why there was no racial profiling involved, which would be interesting to hear.
This isn’t the first United Airlines drama involving an Asian passenger, of course. Remember that viral video of them dragging an old man off the plane and busting his face open? Shocking stuff.
