There’s a story getting quite a bit of media attention about a lady that was kicked off a JetBlue flight between Philadelphia and Boston on Tuesday night.
Apparently someone joked about the aircraft’s alcohol supply, which made the pilot think they were accusing him of being drunk. Via CNN:
An hour after JetBlue Flight 760 was scheduled to depart Philadelphia for Boston, a fellow passenger joked about the aircraft’s alcohol supply.
Another passenger joked about wishing for a fully stocked bar on the flight, Carter-Knight told CNN affiliate WPVI. The pilot misunderstood the joke and took it to be an accusation that he had been drinking.
“The pilot ran out and said, ‘That’s it; everyone back up at the gate; I’ve been accused of being intoxicated,’ ” Carter-Knight said.
Well that’s really odd to begin with, though that’s not even what caused the problem here. From there, the passenger in question Tweeted about the situation, and claims she was kicked off the flight because of her social media coverage of the event.
Here’s what a JetBlue spokesperson had to say:
“The customer was not kicked off because of her tweets,” JetBlue spokeswoman Tamara Young wrote in an email. “There were other customers that also tweeted and boarded the plane. As we shared, it is not our practice to remove a customer for expressing criticism of their experience in any medium. This customer however was denied boarding due to unruly behavior and creating a disturbance by the gate area.”
Her Twitter handle is @drinkwaterevent, so take a look at the 30+ Tweets she made about the flight. I think it paints a clearer picture of what actually may have happened.
She starts by (more or less) Tweeting the same thing a handful of times:
From there she Tweets a handful of media outlets pictures of the boarding area:
And then she claims she was denied boarding, and tells the media where to contact her:
Ultimately we have no clue what happened, though I certainly wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that JetBlue kicked her off for her Tweets. I think a much more likely scenario is that she was telling the ground crew about her Tweets, and at some point they interpreted it as threatening or abusive. After all, how else would they have known that she was Tweeting?
More than anything I’m curious about how the pilot situation happened. Either someone else needed to be kicked off the plane, or a mental health check is in order for someone…
What do you make of the JetBlue Tweet situation?
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