United Airlines Sued For Kicking Wrong Asian Woman Off Flight

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).

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?