Unthinkable Blunder? American Airlines Bans Lesbian Passenger, Claims She Had Drunken Sex With a Man On Flight
An American Airlines passenger was supposed to fly from Albuquerque to New Orleans in June, but wasn’t permitted to travel. They say they’d been added to the airline’s banned customer list for past behavior.
According to the passenger,
- American Airlines told them they had had drunken sex with a man on a previous flight
- But that seems highly unlikely because she’s a lesbian
@erin_wright_ Thanks for being the worst @American Airlines #storytime #funnystory #funnyvideos #airlinetiktok #airplanestory #funny #fyp ♬ original sound – Erin Wright
She says that she couldn’t check in for her flight to join her sister’s bachelorette party. She was told she would have to take it up with customer relations by email – so the issue wouldn’t be resolved prior to check-in. She bought a walkup ticket on another airline for $1,000, and was out the original $400 from her American ticket.
Eventually, she says, American’s corporate security team revealed the reason for the ban. It was lifted after 12 days, and the $400 ticket refunded. She was out the $1,000 walkup ticket, but things worked out because her TikTok about the incident generated that much revenue after 2.5 million views.
@erin_wright_ Update!!! @American Airlines #storytime #airlinetiktok #airportlife #funnystory #funny ♬ original sound – Erin Wright
American isn’t likely to speak to their side of the story here. Perhaps the passenger was banned for other reasons, but they say the ban was lifted and since their travel was refused the ticket was refunded. What the issue illustrates for me is something broader. American has its standards for investigating passenger behavior and making decisions over inviting someone not to fly with them in the future. This should be clearly communicated to the customer when it happens, and the airline certainly isn’t infallible. I don’t have a problem with this.
During the pandemic, passenger incidents shot up dramatically even though fewer people were traveling. Masks were required, and some people rebelled against those. Airlines weren’t serving alcohol in coach, so passengers pre-gamed – or brought their own. Once those two conditions abated, things largely returned to normal, except that the passenger mix skewed more leisure and less business so there have still been more incidents per capita than there used to be.
Airlines were banning customers who behaved badly, but Delta’s CEO wanted to take things a step further. He wanted a ban on one airline to mean a ban from travel on any airline. No judicial review. Each airline had its own standards for adding someone to a ban list. Customers would have their right to travel limited even when an airline made a mistake.
That was clearly a bad idea, and a misdiagnosis of the problem of elevated passenger incidents as well as recent history has shown. Consider,
In each case the damage was limited – and sometimes reversed. But what if the Delta plan had gone forward? That would have made things so much unfairly worse.
(HT: Paul H)