United Airlines is facing a discrimination lawsuit, as an Asian woman claims she was kicked off a United flight simply because she was mistaken for another Asian passenger seated several rows away from her (thanks to PYOK for flagging this).
In this post:
Did United mix up two female Asian realtors?
This incident happened on August 29, 2024, on United flight UA1627, scheduled to operate from Las Vegas (LAS) to Washington Dulles (IAD). The flight departed at 9AM local time, and was supposed to make the 2,065-mile journey to Dulles Airport.
There were several realtors onboard, who were returning from a conference in Las Vegas. At least two of those realtors were Asian women, who knew one another and worked together. However, they weren’t seated together (they were seven rows apart), so for all practical purposes, they were separate parties on this flight. This will be an important detail in a bit.
Due to bad weather, the flight had to divert to Baltimore (BWI). This was a super unpleasant situation, as passengers ended up being stuck on the aircraft on the ground in Baltimore for roughly five hours, due to the lack of available gates. Typically the tarmac rule requires airlines to give passengers the option of deplaning within three hours, but the number of diversions meant that simply wasn’t possible.
As you’d expect, passengers became restless. One of the female Asian realtor’s colleagues started feeling unwell, and was sweating profusely and suffering pain in his chest. The passengers claim that the flight attendant was quite dismissive about his medical condition, and wrote off the symptoms as a panic attack.
So one of the Asian realtors confronted the flight attendant over her rudeness, and received a “snarky” response. Eventually, passengers were able to deplane, before once again being allowed to board the aircraft again, around midnight. As the second Asian realtor attempted to board (who had nothing to do with the above situation), she was told that she wouldn’t be allowed to fly, due to accusations made by a flight attendant.
Putting two and two together, she concluded that she was being denied boarding over the earlier interaction between the first Asian realtor and the flight attendant. So the belief is that she was incorrectly identified based on her ethnicity, despite sitting far away, and reportedly spending the entire delay reading her Kindle.
Eventually her coworkers stood up in support of her at the gate, causing all four of them to ultimately be denied boarding, before being escorted out of the airport by police. The flight attendant reportedly claimed that one of the passengers had physically pushed her, an accusation that all passengers deny.
The two realtors have provided witnesses, including an off-duty United employee, who reportedly saw everything that happened.
You’d hope these incidents wouldn’t happen, but…
There are different versions of events as to whether a passenger pushed the flight attendant during a confrontation. Regardless, it sounds like any of those accusations would involve the first Asian realtor, and not the second one, given that one was reportedly just reading her Kindle throughout the delay.
Obviously we don’t know for sure what really happened here, though I think we’d all hope that an airline wouldn’t simply kick off a passenger simply based on having a similar gender and ethnicity to another passenger. Unfortunately this would hardly be the first time that something like this happened.
After all, we’ve seen American kick a group of Black men off a flight over body odor issues. The only problem is that the body odor issues reportedly involved one person, but the group of men who didn’t know one another were all kicked off. We’ve also seen American kick two Orthodox Jewish men off a flight due to the behavior of one of them, even though they didn’t know one another.
It goes without saying that all of this should never happen. However, all too often it does, when there aren’t enough layers in place for ensuring policies are followed.
Bottom line
In a lawsuit, United is being accused of kicking an Asian woman off a flight, due to the alleged actions of another Asian woman. Now, the accusations against that other passenger are disputed as well, but if the details are as explained, this is problematic. I’m curious to see what comes of this, or if it’s settled out of court…
What do you make of this lawsuit against United?
Fire the FA... Fire a lot of FAs... There are a lot of bad ones that make the good ones look bad.
And pay the lady!
I wouldn't necessarily call this discrimination though but lawsuit yes. It's more incompetence than discrimination. It's a country wide issue. People do not double check anything. Cell phones have taught us react within 30 seconds of any situation. "an asian b*tch me out. Ok I'm gonna kick the 1st one off".
Dr. David Dao knows a few good lawyers. And they still have United on speed-dial.
"One of the female Asian realtor’s colleagues started feeling unwell, and was sweating profusely and suffering pain in his chest. The passengers claim that the flight attention...wrote off the symptoms as a panic attack." Some smart ass FA. You better 1000% sure that person doesn't has a heart attack before open your mouth and said is just a panic attack.
The FA is pathetic, and has lied about being physically assaulted. That lie should be a firing offence.
This is never a good situation. And sometimes deplaning is not possible particularly if thunderstorms are rolling in and out. Airport workers are not going out during thunderstorms to bring a flight in.
What helps is regular communication and flight attendants up and about offering at least water. But too often no information and flight attendants sitting on their asses thinking "not my problem."
If I were on the jury I would be pushing to award a high amount in this lawsuit. Not because I think the individual had any level of extreme suffering, but because airlines really need to be penalised for being so happy to deny boarding to passengers. Even if this was the individual who allegedly got into an argument, once things cooled down, they presumably caused no further issues, so what's the point other than...
If I were on the jury I would be pushing to award a high amount in this lawsuit. Not because I think the individual had any level of extreme suffering, but because airlines really need to be penalised for being so happy to deny boarding to passengers. Even if this was the individual who allegedly got into an argument, once things cooled down, they presumably caused no further issues, so what's the point other than a power play? Airlines should be held responsible for their employees.
Just another worthless flight attendant on a power trip. there for your safety, nothing else...
I'm a little confused as to why the passengers were reboarded to fly BWI to IAD after a 5 hour delay? Both airports are in the DC area
FAs power trip is totally out of control. Only in the US you hear this level of passenger ejection volume. Sounds like the passengers being upset is t Legitimate and yet still getting kicked off. Out of control.
Have you been to the US and seen how passengers behave?
Forget passengers. 50% of us are just nuts. Whatever thought that comes to mind becomes fact just by repeating it 3x and then they tell people there's lots of data out there go look it up. They don't know data if a data center fell on their heads.
You say that these incidents happen all too often. I think that is a perception not based on reality. What percentage of passengers are subjected to this? What are the percentages when you break it down by gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation? Let’s give some numbers, if they exist, and then accuse the airlines that this kind of thing happen all too often.
Discrimination is very hard to quantify, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. From my personal experience I have to say it does happen quite often in places where the awareness is low.
imo it's a two-way street. if flight attendants had proper service training, passengers (as a whole) would be better behaved
There are many many countries in the world. Most have airlines. But if you didn't name the airline or the location of this incident and then I had to guess the country...
Irrespective of race, why do so many of these incidents escalate to the point where people are denied boarding? I imagine it was a long day and tempers were flaring, but maybe if the FAs were a bit more professional and able to de-escalate conflict properly, it would never have risen to this level.
This is mistaken identity - NOT racism, plain and simple. If it was racism they wouldn’t have let the other Asian lady on the plane first, would they? Yawn.
Calling it racism draws more attention to it and gets the hearts bleeding out of control. There's a strong desire in modern society to make every incident an extreme one.
Why do we assume they are women? Even if they wear traditionally female clothing, they may self identify as men or neither man or woman.
We are all bigots because we often refer to male or female but did not ascertain whether the individual self identifies as male, female, X, or Klingon.
I know you think you’re being clever or snarky or funny but you’re really just showing the world how big of a moron you are.
The plaintiffs identified themselves as women in their filed lawsuit, which is free to the public to read, but you’d need reading comprehension skills for that.
OMG. Get a life
As your name is Derek, should we not assume you’re a male? So I guess you’re a female? You are ludicrous.
Oh FFS Derek, give it a rest.
Even if the person suing is 100% right, how big could the damages in the suit actually be? Unless she missed some major business deal the next day the actual damages are negligible and not worth the time to sue.
The suit is not for denial of boarding which may be de minimis with respect to damages. The suit is for discrimination. The punitive damages are enormous because discrimination is just so ugly and pervasive we need to impose huge monetary penalties to corporations to give them an incentive to stamp out discrimination.
Anti-Asian racism is often swept under the rug. Kudos to you Ben for reporting on this. Hope the Asian passengers receive $100M payouts each just like Zuckerberg’s giving to AI researchers who aren’t even geniuses, they just have a very basic command of linear algebra. Which is sadly way out of grasp of the kind of rude and trashy flight attendants who would falsely report battery by Asians and further take action based on their own bias that Asians look alike.
Thanks for sharing and giving attention to this incident and not burying it. Racism from Airline Employees is real. Just this week someone reported they were flying AA domestic First Class, the only non white person in First, and the FA told them there were no meals left. This post garnered a lot of comments including from AA FA’s who said there was no such thing as having no meals left in First is there...
Thanks for sharing and giving attention to this incident and not burying it. Racism from Airline Employees is real. Just this week someone reported they were flying AA domestic First Class, the only non white person in First, and the FA told them there were no meals left. This post garnered a lot of comments including from AA FA’s who said there was no such thing as having no meals left in First is there always extras. Many other people of color commented that it had happened to them too. Unfortunately, there are rotten apples in the airline industry.