I don’t know about you, but I’m personally sick airlines overbooking flights and then not arming their employees with the interpersonal skills to handle adverse situations where they end up with less than happy customers.
Well, American Airlines you picked the wrong woman to mess with this time.
Meet Tamika Mallory, the co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington, and a force to be reckoned with. Mallory says that she was kicked off an American Airlines flight on her way back home to New York from Miami after a pilot got involved in a seat dispute that she had taken up with a gate agent.
First of all, what in the h-e-double-l hockey sticks is a pilot doing getting involved in a seat discrepancy in the first place?
According to Mallory, the pilot took it upon himself to insert himself into a conversation she was having with an agent at the gate (a little aggressive are we?).
The incident purportedly began when she checked-in her flight leaving from the Miami International Airport, during check-in she used the kiosk to change her seat from a middle to an aisle seat. However, upon reaching the gate, she says, she was given a new ticket that put her back in the middle seat.
In an interview with NY Daily News Mallory said when inquired with the agent about why her seat changed, she says the employee’s response was “nasty” and “disrespectful.” Despite being treated the way we’ve all been treated by airlines before-like we’re a burden to their very existence, Mallory was ready to let it go.
Just as she was trying to move along with her day and her plans, the pilot who apparently overheard the conversation decided to stop her, which I can only interpret as an attempt to instigate and pull rank. Am I the only person wondering why the heck this pilot isn’t more concerned about preparing for the flight, something that does concern him?
According to Mallory the pilot “blasted” her, claiming the gate agent had “nothing to do” with the seat discrepancy and that Mallory herself was the one that had been disrespectful. “Then he said to me, ‘Can you get on this flight? Are you going to be a problem on this flight?’ in which she then replied, ‘No, I’m not. Actually, I’m fine. But I will write my complaint down. He looked at me and said, ‘You’re going to get yourself a one-way ticket off this plane,’” explained Mallory.
Are serious? Who does this guy think he is? “You’re going to get yourself a one-way ticket off this plane,” only someone that feels like they’re above others would sound or act in a way that is so demeaning, this, of course, is just my opinion.
Mallory goes on to say that she boarded the flight without incident and sat down in her assigned middle seat, and moments later an announcement called her back up to the front of the plane, where the pilot then had her removed.
Mallory says the pilot pointed at her before saying, “Her, off.”
“I began to express my outrage,” Mallory said. “Then I asked why I was being removed. I asked why was this happening to me. I told him I felt completely disrespected. I began to weep.”
The activist says that not only was she not told why she was being removed, but then the cops arrived. I mean are you kidding me, the cops, they called the cops? As if to make matters worse, the individual she was traveling with who sat quietly and had nothing to do with the incident was also removed from the flight.
Mallory told the New York Daily News “it definitely was white male aggression. I was singled out, I was disrespected, and he was trying to intimidate me. I was discriminated against,” she explained.
All of these issues boil down to lack of leadership, accountability, and training. You can tell a lot about a company, by the way, their staff interacts with customers at every level.
Mallory, an activist in movements for civil rights and gun control, was in Miami attending the Revolt Music Conference, a mega music conference featuring the biggest names in the music industry. She was on her way back and had planned to attend the wedding of Rev. Al Sharpton’s daughter Sunday afternoon, which she ended up missing.