Either there was much more to the exchange between the family and crew than we are being told about, or the crew are such terrible bigots that they were willing to single out these people for no other reason than to discriminate against them, and were willing to be filmed doing it. The last one of theses that comes to mind is the family that was kept off of a flight to Disney World. That one turned out to have several levels of strangeness.
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Yes, British civil servants were complaining about âwhining Jewsâ in the late 1930s, just because a few German officials got a bit over-officious.
Yes, and thus they werenât given the occasion to complain about their treatment and get thrown off the plane.
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Yes, what is it with drug couriers? For two years before 9/11 I was getting drug tested every time I visited the US - about 16 times in 2 years because I was looking after our US sales office and there were a number of problems which really had to be dealt with on the spot. White, late 40s, suit, Powerbook and hand luggage only. I concluded they thought I must be up to something but couldnât work out what.
Now I can admit it; I was indeed plotting to overthrow the government of the United States, every time the goons with the immobile faces took their idiot samples, put them in the machine and refused to tell me why.
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Excellent question.
Since the main basis of your comments seems to be the lack of a link to the video in question, hereâs what I found:
Your apparent attempts to remain unbiased and non-reactionary are admirable, but they have to be beholden to basic logic.
There are times when playing the devils advocate serves no purpose other than to deflect from the issue at hand.
Just sayinâ.
AnyhooâŚ
If the issue was the car seat, then why didnât anyone in TSA say anything to the family prior to boarding the plane?
Furthermore, why didnât the flight attendant or the pilot say that the reason was related to the car seat when asked?
âItâs a safety issue.â
âItâs my decision.â
Those answers seem extremely vague; and IMO they only escalated the confrontation.
Now, perhaps the family in question should have just put their heads down, not gotten defensive, and just obeyed the directives to de-board the plane without protest; after all thatâs âthe path of least resistance.â
But their initial REACTION is not really the point, especially if the âsafety concernsâ were so inexplicably vague that the pilot couldnât or wouldnât express them in a coherent manner.
Personally Iâm not willing to jump to the conclusion that this is automatically a case of discrimination⌠but I will say that the circumstances seem awfully suspicious.
If you canât even acknowledge the possibility that the reason could have been personal bias on the part of the pilot, then perhaps youâre willfully only seeing what you want to see.
Just a thought.
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I donât know if the crew is particularly bigoted, they may just be
averagely bigoted. But the moral license to "err on the side of safety"
makes it particularly easy for them to do this, because his âconcernsâ will
indemnify him from criticism from a lot of people.
There apparently is video the family took, but its gone off facebook (I
smell lawsuit!)
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Well, there is mention that CAIR is involved, and they like lawsuits. I guess we will have to wait and see.
Speaking as someone in a customer facing job âSafety concernâ with no further explanation is just someone using jargon to close off a conversation they are not comfortable with carrying on and do not have the skill, training, inclination or empathy to deal with the situation.
At best itâs a poor level of professionalism from all the flight crew, at worst itâs straight up prejudice. Either way, after going through the rigorous security checks & protocol commercial flight in the 21st century has evolved you donât expect to be faced with a âbecause I told you soâ attitude when youâve finally boarded the plane.
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Yeah, Iâm struggling to comprehend how I or any honest human could know what the âsafety concernâ is, have that âsafety concernâ be their car seat, and not be able to say so during this conversation.
Unless that pilot is having a stroke, I think we can reasonably assume that any statements that the car seat was the safety concern are blatant liesâŚI really wish that wasnât okay. It makes this all messy.
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All I can say for sure is that based solely upon the limited info given, this story is full of holes.
Well, hereâs the Airlineâs statementâŚthis is what Iâm concerned about.
âWe reached out to the family following their flight on March 20 to discuss their concerns. They were originally scheduled to fly on SkyWest 5811, operating as United Express from Chicago OâHare to Washington, D.C., but we rebooked them on a later flight because of concerns about their childâs safety seat, which did not comply with federal safety regulations. Both United and SkyWest hold our employees to the highest standards of professionalism and have zero tolerance for discrimination.â
This strongly indicates there wasnât any other reason, as it would be included here, true?
That leaves us with three scenariosâŚ
- It was not the car seat, the car seat is a lie.
- It was the car seat, but the pilot was unable to say so because of a regulation that Iâm sure will be explained to us soon, or
- It was the car seat, and the pilot was suffering from an attack that made him unable to communicate properly while actively telling people to leave the plane.
If itâs 2 then ⌠we really need that, because thatâs kind of insane.
If itâs 3 then ⌠holy shit, that guy shouldnât fly!
Which leaves 1, the seat is a lie. We still donât have the real reasoning and it could be something else, but itâs definitely not the seat. Itâs very disconcerting that no other reasoning is given. The Airline should be able to say that the pilot is under investigation or the incident is unclear, theyâre choosing to make a specific untrue statement.
This is in line with the âlots of us fly a lot and nobody cares about car seats, nor has anybody seen them handled this wayâ experience that many of us have had, so Iâm not sure we need any more info other than âwhat was it really aboutâ unless this is a super-weird scenario.
Edit: Thereâs also a chance the video was selectively edited, however that doesnât explain why the pilot wasnât saying âI already told you dorks it was about the car seat! Sheesh!â So again, seizure, weird freaky reg telling him to be evasive that somebody should explain (I would if I was him!), or lie about seat.
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One thing that might help would be a system of steep compensation in all cases where the airline canât actually prove specific reasons for their concerns.
Then we would see how often the airlines would let jumped-up pilots pull the âcaptain on my shipâ card.
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Damn that needs to be a meme, stat.
*lolz
But seriously though, this comment:
âŚis the main reason Iâm keeping my usually high level of cynicism in check.
Itâs possible that there was some sort of official regulation prohibiting the crew from adequately explaining their decision at the time, but it just doesnât seem very probable.
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meh, while we didnât get to see the initial encounter, I donât mind reporting Iâve seen whiter people use tones with crews about x2 or x3 that which was heard in the video we could see, over matters of similar importance, and they werenât de-planed.
Looks institutional racism wearing the veil of authoritarian bullying. The Captain is a straight up asswipe and any crew that couldnât resolve that situation need their walking papers even if the family were x3 in the initial encounter.
If white people arenât required to be meek and timid, cowering before the might of the allpowerfullofshit flight crew, then neither should the brown people.
edit - and, as other people have pointed out, these people could not have been ejected for the manner in which they engaged the flight crew, because if they had that would be the reason given. Excepting if they were thrown off for not grovelling, or looking the flight crew in the eye, etc etc.
Looks like a case of a broken taillight warranting arrest and incarceration.
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Iâm going to dip my big toe in here long enough to say this. Iâve flown while brown before. In fact, I do it every time I fly.
Want me to tell you Iâve never had flight crew member act like I was some kind of trouble with me saying nothing and doing less?
I would be lying.
Want me to tell you that going through security at the airports is exactly the same for me as it is for my white pals?
I would be lying.
Want me to say that Iâve never seen airport staff directly insult a Muslim travelling companion of mine?
I would be lying.
Want me to claim that Iâve never played âsit down and shut upâ at various points while flying because I wanted to make my destination, even when what was going on would infuriate any reasonable human being?
I would be lying.
So on the balance, Iâm seeing a situation where it was relatively easy to reach the compromise solution of putting the seat in checked luggage, a courtesy that is extended to all sorts of outsize and inconvenient items that people manage to inadvertently smuggle onto a plane. The flight crew chose to fail to reach that compromise. Iâve worked customer service. I still work customer service. Unless US airlines have well and truly transitioned to RyanAir-type philosophies, I cannot see a way that this situation wasnât handled extremely poorly. I will say that on the balance, people whoâve encountered systemic prejudice before, know it when they see it.
Is it possible this is all just a misunderstanding? Sure. Do I live in a world which makes me doubt it was? Yep.
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I think kicking them off was a red herring. CLEARLY the pilot is a MOLE!!
I will reserve judgement for when I see the video, otherwise. ETA _ saw a video. Didnât really show anything.
Terrorists donât typically take their family along for the ride. I know I have flown with a very young child before, but I canât recall if we had a car seat⌠I think we used a stroller and checked it at the door. Though a baby, baby might want a car seat.
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There are a whole lot of regulations which could have prohibited the crew from giving a lengthy explanation. First of all, this happened at OâHare, a very busy hub â with very tight takeoff and landing windows. Second, crew are only permitted to work X number of hours before they must be given a break and a new crew brought on. Iâm not in the airline industry, but I know those two and they are both a huge deal â crossing a threshold on either gets captains in trouble with their airline.
I havenât watched the video, but I do know in general a flight crew doesnât owe you a freaking dissertation if they tell you to do something on their plane.
Does that mean the family were treated fairly? Not at all. Just that âthey deserved a full explanation on the spotâ is not a good argument.
HmmmâŚ
Didnât say or even imply that.
I do believe the exact words that I used were:
âcoherent and adequately.â</big?
And I donât think a simple statement explaining that it was the car seat equates to some kind of
as you so emphatically stated above.
But hey, maybe we have completely different ideas about what each of those words mean; who knows?
Anyhoos, my sole point in all of this is that it doesnât make a lot of sense to me to for an authoritarian figure be so evasive when asked a reasonable question in such a confrontational situation.
If thereâs some kind of rule prohibiting him from saying that it was the car seat, then why didnt the airline back him up with that reason when they released their official statement later?
Again, it all just seems kind of suspect to me.
*lolz
Btw, watching the short vid might help inform you further.
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Iâve seen flight crew offer (and passengers ask for) more full explanations once the plane is in flight â so long as the passenger complies with the crewâs instruction and stops holding up the plane. Would that work for you?
Also, authority != authoritarian. The whole point of being designated an authority is you donât have to explain every instruction you give.
âBecause I say soâ works so well with kids, why shouldnât it work just as well with adults?
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