Not in Europe. If you've ever traveled with Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, British airways etc... you'll know that most of the stewardess are women who are past their 30's. Also in the case of Air France that I've used extensively while growing up, they assign positions according to seniority. The most experience stewardess (usually a woman in her 40's) in in charge of 1st class while the rookies work at the back.
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American Airlines denies 1st class seat to black passenger
- Thread starter RBH
- Start date
Not in Europe. If you've ever traveled with Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, British airways etc... you'll know that most of the stewardess are women who are past their 30's. Also in the case of Air France that I've used extensively while growing up, they assign positions according to seniority. The most experience stewardess (usually a woman in her 40's) in in charge of 1st class while the rookies work at the back.
I would assume the initial reassignment was automated, but everything else from start to finish sounds like it's full of racial bias. No initial explanation, moved to back of plane, white friend's complaints and comfort being deemed more important.
Sunster
Member
cyberheater
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What a horrible way to treat one of your customers.
Aside from a plane change, this is the most likely excuse for an unannounced bump from First, esp since airlines cannot confirm an air marshal's status.
If you're in First, in an aisle, and get bumped for no reason by a guy in a crew cut, that's why.
A bump from First to Econ will always generate a refund. Gate agents won't always know what to do, but the billing system will handle it.
RedAssedApe
Banned
making american airlines great again /s
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Thebeardofknowledge
Banned
Damn airlines are really tying hard to out do United
Exploratory
Banned
Just flew Virgin this weekend. Was pretty dope would recommend.
Yeah....pretty much my chain of thought entering the thread
You should read the whole story
The seat change wasn't the bad part
European airlines can be racist as fuck too. We were almost denied boarding on a flight from Spain to England (Btitish Airways) because the ticket lady thought we were trying to illegally immigrate there. Didn't matter that we had our visa, United States residency papers, etc. We were Latinos who spoke English with a strong accent so we were automatically "illegals".
Apocryphon
Member
Visa for where, the US? Irrelevant and of no use when travelling from Spain to the UK. You haven't really explained what was racist about this incident. Is it because you were specifically targeted for being Latino? You have to imagine that there is a lot of profiling going on at airports and by airline staff. It's probably safe to assume that someone somewhere identified that there is an illegal immigration problem in the UK and that they put together some profiles of the types of people immigrating illegally into the country and asked immigration and airline staff to flag individuals that matched them. Unfortunately profiling does need to be employed in a wide variety of places and unfortunately innocent people end up having to jump through hoops to prove their innocence. Happens all the time, and yeah, sometimes the people charged with carrying out the profiling are racist and use it as an excuse to harass people, but just because you were stopped doesn't mean it was racism.
Zantetsuken
Member
Nothing surprises me. Is there an U.S. airline that hasn't fucked up yet? Southwest?
Man, you sure are twisting and turning to insist that institutional racism totally isn't racist.
Not if they change planes due to mechanical issues and the new plane has less first class seats.
QuantumDerp
Member
It can be if you are a minority.
It doesn't matter, her treatment at the hands of the staff afterwards was incredibly blatantly racist.
A visa for traveling to the UK obviously. Thanks for assuming I'm an idiot though.
The lady also made fun of my parents' English, said things about how "you people always try this" and said our proof of residency in the United States was probably faked. When we spoke to a manager, they told us all our papers were in order and that what she was doing was not protocol.
This was about a decade ago. I know we needed to get a separate visa for the UK because it wasn't covered by the Schengen one.
secretanchitman
Member
I haven't had any major issues with Southwest, apart from the computer systems going down last summer and delaying us by a few hours. They gave me (and everyone else who was affected) 2 round-trip tickets to use any time on any flight which was nice.
I've been using Southwest Airlines because their staff is friendly and the rates have always been the lowest when I've had to fly domestically.
But going back to this issue, why can't the airlines just fucking treat their customers with respect and be goddamn happy? I hate seeing this kind of crap happen.
Apocryphon
Member
Yeah, I asked because it sounded odd. Unlike in the US, most people are free to travel to the U.K. without a visa. We opted out of the Schengen Area, but the requirement to have a visa to travel to the U.K. from most places has been abolished since the mid 60's.
So you weren't subject to racist policies of an airline, just an individual who worked for an airline who was doing her own thing? Ok.
Apocryphon
Member
Why would they? There's virtually nothing you can do to combat it. You fall in line or you don't fly. Every time there's a major power differential like this it breeds cuntish behaviour.
EDIT: Not sure how credible the site is, but View From the Wing offers a different reading on the story in the OP.
LINK
If that's true, they didn't pay for first class at all and it sounds like a poor communication issue.