American carrier, United Airlines is in the eye of the storm again obviously for the wrong reason. The question is, is United Airline gradually being associated with racial tendencies with the recent incident involving a Nigerian passenger.
According to thecable.ng, the passenger, Queen Obioma, a Nigerian mother of two, has sued the airline claiming she and her two children were booted from its plane because a passenger complained she smelled ‘pungent’.
Obioma said she was travelling from Lagos, Nigeria, to Ontario, Canada, on March 4, 2016, when an airline employee escorted her from the plane before takeoff.
The Nigerian said the employee of the airline then went back on the plane and escorted her two children off.
Obioma filed a civil rights lawsuit against United Airlines, saying the airline discriminated against her because she is black, Nigerian and African.
She claimed in her suit that she was told that she was not allowed back on the flight because a passenger had complained about her smell.
Obioma said the drama started when she and her family boarded a United Airlines flight at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
She said when she got to her assigned seat in business class, a white man was already sitting there.
The man reportedly refused to move, the lawsuit states.
According to her, flight personnel got involved but the man still refused to get out of the seat so she agreed to sit in the man’s assigned seat nearby.
Before takeoff, Obioma said she went to the bathroom and when she tried to return to her seat, the passenger, who had earlier taken her seat, blocked her path.
She said in the suit that a United Airlines employee then ordered her off the plane.
Obioma said she was met by another employee who informed her that she was not allowed back on the plane because the pilot received a complaint from the man sitting near her that she smelled ‘pungent’.
The man reportedly told the pilot that he was not comfortable flying with her.
Obioma said she was distraught and informed personnel that her two children were still on the flight.
She said a United Airlines worker then removed her children from the plane.
According to the suit, the family was on the second leg of a three-flight journey from Nigeria to Canada, where her children attend school.
Obioma, a frequent flier member on the United’s Star Alliances, said they were travelling from Houston to San Francisco where they were going to take a connecting flight to Canada.
According to a report by chicagotribune.com, the airline last year April forcefully de-boarded a Chinese passenger when he refused to give up his seat to make room for the airline’s employees.
It reported that On April 9, 2017, four United Express crew members who needed to make it to Louisville for work were moved to a later flight due to a maintenance issue.
Passengers had already been called to board the fully booked plane, and when no one volunteered to give up their seat for an $800 travel voucher, the airline picked four people to bump — including Dr. David Dao, of Elizabethtown, Ky., and his wife.
The other two selected passengers left, but Dao refused to budge. That’s when the airline called in Chicago Department of Aviation officers, who ultimately forced Dao from his seat and dragged him off the plane.
The backlash mounted when United initially was slow to apologize and appeared defensive.
According to atqnews.com, survey carried out by the Which Magazine, the airlines was rated badly in passenger satisfaction.
It said United was the lowest-rated long-haul airline, in the survey to score no more than two stars out of five in any category.
