Would you rather have airplanes flown by committee?
I’d rather have them not flown by bigots.
The airline says the pilot was merely concerned about the family’s use of a car-seat for one of their babies.
Shebley’s videos tell a very different story.
Uh, just in case I’m missing something, how do the videos tell a different story?
I can’t see the video. it’s down. Does the pilot say bigoted things?
I ask because ANY distraction to any member of the flight crew will cause the pilot to not take off and also throw paying customers off the plane until the crew is not distracted, and the passengers deemed safe. That’s as it should be.
I’ll keep an open mind as to if this was bigotry or not. People are always at their most reasonable during transit, and while at work, after all.
id feel safer if planes weren’t being flown by people stupid enough to do shit like this over and over again
What if what’s distracting them is their own bigotry?
I will too. Hoping he’s not a bigot, but won’t be surprised if it’s shown that he is.
like in what world are they allowed all the way on the plane with the carseat and then when it’s suddenly a problem they are thrown off instead of it being stowed in the hold like when there’s too many bags for the overhead cupboards or whatever. The thing is racists like this know they dont even need to tell good lies just say anything to create the tiniest amount of plausible deniability for a bunch of pricks to jump to their defence under a thin veneer of objective neutrality.
America gives ISIS a run for its money when it comes to breeding extremists.
I sure fucking hope people are at their most reasonable while at work. I sure as hell am. Your employer is paying for a professional, which, in the large majority of cases, implies being reasonable.
I’m not saying the pilot shouldn’t have the authority to make that decision, in that moment, but they should absolutely fire him for it, and decline to hire him again in that industry. What they definitely should not do is lie about what happened to cover his ass, while trying to avoid completely justified bad press.
What if it isn’t?
Hoping you can link to the video where you watched it?, or show me what you have (in this incident, rather than the world at large) seen that I haven’t that led you to conclude definitely bigotry.
I imagine a pilot being an authoritarian ass. Throwing people off is not entitled behavior when your title is captain on your plane.
Blame the union.
Crying bigotry (or whatever, when at the recieving end of a very real power imbalance, as you face evertyime you get on a plane) sometimes is. More often is. entitled behavior. Authority brings it out in some folks. Everyone. I literally can’t say this time which way it is. Can you for sure?
I’d like to see the video.
I think we should wait until we have a full understanding of the whole issue. I have noticed that the people who feel that they have been discriminated against are pretty quick to release their side of the story, which most outlets immediately publish uncritically. Later, all the facts come in, and sometimes the discrimination story is confirmed, but not always. And the full story rarely gets the press that the initial indignant claims did.
Oh please. I know you’re better than that.
Where did I indicate that I’ve already definitely concluded that? I just wrote:
Have you not yet had your caffeine injection this morning?
Whining in the face of authority you voluntarily sumbitted to. People do it.
Crying when pulled over,
Haggling with the metermaid
limping to get a better bus seat
Complimenting the luxurious coat on Luck Dragons
that sort of thing. You do know I’m better, be generous.
First cup. 
Yes, actually. A pilot is not a dictator. He (or perhaps she) has a boss, and they have a boss, and there are corporate attorneys, and people who train the pilots, and every one of these people is positioned to speak out credibly against racist behavior.
Arguing over the video is utterly disingenuous. This hasn’t happened once - it’s happened eleventy-seven times, and keeps on happening. At some point even the most ardent armchair fighter against terrorism is forced to concede that most Muslims are not terrorists, just like most Christians aren’t, and the Arabs and Indians and Sikhs and Jews who get treated as the enemy simply because they look foreign are victims of racism, plain and simple.
Is this one incident a perfect example? It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. Even if this family were playing volleyball with the damn car seat, that doesn’t change the reality of the other thousand cases. It’s possible to quibble the details of each and every case. And what do you get as a prize? The right to say there’s no such thing as racism? Go ahead, knock yourself out.
Since you were there, tell us more.
Umm what?, I did that twice with the kid because oh hey it was recommended by the FAA to use it. but then I am white male, etc, etc oh and it was pre 9/11 so there was that too. Fuck you United Airlines.
Nonsense. If any of those folks are on the plane, they can argue with the pilot and fire him afterwards. Captain is a title for a reason. I haven’t seen any evidence of unprofessionalism (the video is down, and nobody is linking it) eta: or racist behavior
Racist rhetoric, fast and loose in this thread, but behavior by the crew, not seen that yet. Please provide a link to evidence of such. Please do.
Fun fact! When people or groups are victims of systemic discrimination, it very rarely appears as discrimination under direct scrutiny.
A black family may not be shown houses in certain markets because the realtor may not feel that the neighborhood matches their lifestyle (and not, as one may speculate, because they are black).
Black men may be searched because they are wearing gang colors, or there is reason to suspect they have a weapon (and not, as one may speculate, because they are black).
Women may get passed up for a position because another applicant with better skills applied (and not because the interviewer was afraid that they would just go and get pregnant within a year).
The list goes on and on. With the introduction of protected grounds for discrimination, bigots (and people who may not even be aware that they harbor bigoted tendencies) have had dig a little deeper for better excuses.
Fortunately, sometimes the best line they can come up with is so demonstrably false that the true intentions are laid bare.
Like “safety” concerns over a car seat.
Blarg.
In the video the family is told that they are being removed because of a “flight safety issue.” A child safety seat that is not FAA approved is not a flight safety issue. The FAA does not mandate the use of child safety seats. If, the safety seat is not up to snuff, then stow it and buckle the kid in with the normal mechanism or if it is an infant, put it on a parent’s lap. At worst the child is less safe, but not the flight because children fly like that all the time.
