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Man Booted From Southwest Flight and Threatened With Arrest After Critical Tweet
CanHasDIY writes The old saying goes, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." A man learned the consequences Sunday, after Tweeting about his experience with a rude Southwest gate attendant: "A Minnesota man and his two sons were asked to leave a Southwest Airlines flight after the man sent a tweet complaining about being treated rudely by a gate agent. Duff Watson said he was flying from Denver to Minneapolis on Sunday and tried to board in a spot for frequent flyer privileges he held and take his sons, ages 6 and 9, with him, even though they had a later spot to board the plane. The agent told him that he would have to wait if he wanted to board with his children. Watson replied that he had boarded early with them before and then sent out a tweet that read 'RUDEST AGENT IN DENVER. KIMBERLY S. GATE C39. NOT HAPPY @SWA.' Watson told TV broadcaster KARE in Minneapolis on Wednesday that after he boarded, an announcement came over the plane asking his family to exit the aircraft. Once at the gate, the agent said that unless the tweet was deleted, police would be called and the family would not be allowed back onboard." He gave into the threat, deleted the Tweet, and was allowed to board a later flight. Southwest, as one could have predicted, offered a boilerplate "apology" and vouchers.
Kimberly sure sounds like a cunt.
Using publically visible information (nametag & gate sign) to state an opinion constitutes harassment?
God help the reviewers on Yelp or Angie'sList who give their opinions on different businesses.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
LOL, "American Freedom"!
So any online criticism of any company has to be a "happy" criticism? The "truth" is no longer welcome? What a screwed up world.
Pulling a family off a flight and threatening to summon the police seems pretty intense. They must have done something very bad. What? One of them tweeted about poor customer service before entering the aircraft? That's it?
Did the SWA agent seriously think that threatening the family with not being able to fly and reporting the man to the police (for what?) unless he deleted the tweet would be the end of it? Did the agent think the whole thing would be erased from everyone's memory and it would be as if nobody complained? That's not the way it works. Now everyone in her management chain knows who she is, and not in a good way. Creating a PR incident like this will not go without notice. It's a variant of the Streisand effect.
It's not important to the story, but at least one airline I've flown has figured out that it's good customer service to allow people who spend a lot of money travelling on their airline have their children treated to the same boarding privilege - especially as it costs the airline nothing to do so.
How did Southwest find out about this tweet?
Do they have a team of people sitting around watching a Twitter feed, so that if anyone mentions Southwest they can pounce?
If so, good job guys! You really saved the day here. SWA stock is going to go up tomorrow for sure! :^)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The passenger is to blame because the airline threatened legal action over something that wasn't illegal?
Passenger is an idiot, SWA was criminal.
Why do you assume her consent would be required?
The airport is a public place and there is little right to privacy or anonymity when in public... doubly so when you are wearing a name tag.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
harassment/hrasm()nt,harsm()nt/
noun
aggressive pressure or intimidation.
What kind of sycophant would label this tweet as harassment?
Also, what type of asshole employee would separate a man from his two young children?
Finally, it would be great to see the 180 degree flip in reaction if the airline attendant had been male and the passenger had been female with her two young children.
After all, he committed several unforgivable sins in a police state:
1. Being critical of authority
2. Having an opinion about authority, instead of accepting it as god-like
3. Communicating said opinion
I see sedition, inciting violence and refusing to let proper authority mishandle him. Of course, if he let them call the police, he would probably have been shot.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
SWA is negligent to their stockholders for not keeping up with the times. They should know all about twitter and the effects 1 annoyed passenger can have. It is a matter of training and putting procedures in place. The Gate attendant was in the right, and could have just made the point that she would be annoying the other priority passengers by giving him priority when he was not due it. SWA management completely mishandled it and blew it out of all proportion by stopping the flight and yanking the passengers thereby making a newsworthy story and giving themselves a very expensive case of bad publicity. It could have been handled by just a tweet explaining the policy and why putting him ahead of others would have been bad for other passengers. Then it would not have been a news story.
Not disagreeing, but clarifying
The way I read it, he had a 1st class ticket, but his kids were traveling economy. So he was trying to board them at the same time as first class, even though they were not.
On his other leg, the boarding agent allowed it. But on this portion the boarding agents disagreed.
So, rather than recognizing that the other agent had been extra nice granting him a privilege, he disparaged the one who followed the rules.
I'm sure there is more to the story, but the whole thing won't come out cause SW and the agent won't say anything else.
I also don't doubt that someone went a little excessive, but I suspect both sides overreacted.
my guess is that things were not as one sided as this story leads to believe.
just because a passenger is a customer that should be treated with respect does NOT mean that the passenger doesn't have to follow crewmember instructions. if the passenger was being particularly difficult because he had his two snowflakes in tow and did not want to abide by Southwest's procedures, he should not be allowed on the plane.
given what's happened recently in aviation, one would think safety is important. safety shouldn't be shrugged off merely because a passenger whines when he doesn't get out of the ordinary preferential treatment.
to tweet her rudeness after you land.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
This. As a father with kids, there is a serious double standard. Particularly with women. When my wife goes places with my daughter, she gets helped out, and treated like a parent. When I do the same, it only seems to be other fathers who give me a hand.
Men really need to start to stand up for equal rights.
ie. their boarding system is utter shit to begin with.
A matter of opinion. It works very well if you pre-print your boarding passes 24 hours before departure time. I have *NEVER* had anything but A or B.
Southwest (who still does not charge for 2 checked bags) has always treated my wife and I well. We have traveled with our grand children many times.
If you know and follow the well established and well know rules for obtaining your boarding pass and boarding the jet, it's a very smooth process.
But on the other hand, if you're an "entitled power flyer", your asshole attitude will get you nowhere.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The US government is quite evil. Otherwise, the TSA (as well as all the other constitutional and rights violations, like the NSA mass surveillance, stop-and-frisk, DUI checkpoints, protest permits, etc.) simply would not exist.
Don't lie.
You'll pick the most convenient time or cheapest price, regardless of the airline company.
Kimberly did not volunteer the information for internet signage. Harassment.
Nor do businesses and people reported to the better business bureau, angie's list, amazon.com, ebay and similar rating services. While the tweet seems harsh based on the given information, the father didn't do anything but report tweet her name that was visible on her publicly displayed name badge. Airlines, just like stores, have employees where such badges so the public knows who has done them wrong or right and can report to management the actions.
While the tweet seems harsh given the limited information presented and probably foolish, it isn't harassment. Likewise, over-reacting to an airline employee normally will get you removed from a plane and possibly arrested, so he should be happy that he was only delayed in his trip.
So someone at swa is monitoring @swa mentions in realtime actively looking for disparaging tweets and also with a passenger list AND their twitter handle and when said tweets come in has the authority to hotline a gate to hold a plane based on said tweet alone? i mean how else did this plane not already take off? I just dont get the whole timing - good to know i can ground some random plane in california from my couch in missouri
Doubtful. More plausible is that the guy bragged to the flight attendand that he sent the tweet.
Lol. You realize women get helped out because men want to get into their pants right? Even if it means just a 0.0001% chance, that's still more than 0% so men play the lottery.
Its just that women are biologically conditioned not to realize that - instead they think guys are being "sweet" and "kind."
If they did recognize it for what it was, they would be so creeped out that they would never talk to a guy again and that would be the end of the human race in one generation.
It isn't a privilege, it just looks like one to someone who can't see the big picture.
> the men are treated badly, and almost never anyone says a word.
When you have more money, more power, get served at restaurants faster, and are physically stronger, it's often petty to complain too much. Unless mommy forgets to open up the oreos when she brings you your mid Call of Duty snack before she goes to bed.....
Hint: most men who "get treated badly" are just looking for an excuse to whinge, and suffer *nothing* like the constant abuse and harassment the other side gets. No, feminism did not "win", they're still having the fight every day. And I speak as one of the privileged white boys who helps the women in the tech field around me get treated with equal respect.
Besides, the chicks like it when I do that. I love being casually manly, rather than casually rude, and taking them away from boys like you.
But are you actually proposing that a carrier of human cargo not be allowed to refuse service?
The idea isn't nearly as absurd as you make it sound. Regulated taxicabs in many cities are not allowed to refuse service - they must pick you up and take you where you want to go.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson