In August, four female colleagues were flying from Las Vegas back home to Washington, D.C., after attending a real estate convention. It had already been a difficult travel day. First, their plane had been diverted because of weather to another airport, where they spent five hours stuck on the tarmac. During that delay, a colleague of theirs started experiencing chest pain.
The day ended with all four women being escorted out of Baltimore Airport by armed police officers. They later filed a lawsuit against United Airlines alleging that the airline racially discriminated against its passengers.
According to legal documents filed this month in federal court in Maryland, one of the plaintiffs, Jacquelyn Chiao, questioned a flight attendant who she said minimized the concerns about her colleague’s health and said he was “just having a panic attack.” Afterward, all passengers disembarked the plane. When they began re-boarding later, Ms. Chiao’s colleague and fellow traveler, Christine Kim, was barred from boarding. The captain told Ms. Chiao’s colleagues that a flight attendant had reported she had been physically assaulted by a female Asian passenger, the complaint reads. Both Ms. Chiao and Ms. Kim are Asian American women of differing ethnicities.
Ms. Kim said in a statement to The New York Times that she hadn’t had any interactions with the flight crew before being denied boarding. She had been reading a book on the flight, seated several rows back from Ms. Chiao. The experience left her feeling “hopeless and disgusted,” she added.
In the end, Ms. Chiao, Ms. Kim and two other colleagues who questioned Ms. Kim’s removal were all denied boarding. In their joint lawsuit against United Airlines, the plaintiffs called the airline’s conduct “extreme and dangerous,” and said that they were falsely accused of “causing a disturbance” and that Ms. Kim was barred from the plane solely because of her race.
Jim Brauchle, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said that Ms. Kim and Ms. Chiao “couldn’t be more different in appearance other than the fact that they’re Asian.”
“They just picked out an Asian woman and said, ‘Yes, she’s off the plane,’” Mr. Brauchle said. “This is a classic case of pure racial discrimination.”
A spokesman for United said that the airline “does not tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind,” and that the company was “continuing to look into these allegations.” The airline filed Thursday for an extension until July 10 of the deadline for its response to the plaintiffs’ complaints.
The plaintiffs, who are seeking damages and compensation for pain and suffering, said their experience was part of a “pattern and practice of discrimination against passengers of color.” Similar claims have been lodged against the airline in recent years.
In 2018, a Nigerian woman named Queen Obioma sued the airline, alleging that she and her two children were removed from a United plane in Houston after another passenger complained that they had a “pungent” odor. A year earlier, United reached a settlement with David Dao, an Asian man who was forcibly dragged off an oversold flight before departing from Chicago O’Hare International Airport. A passenger on the plane said that Dr. Dao complained that he had been singled out because he was Chinese. The incident prompted the airline to announce it would no longer bump passengers who had already boarded. Last year, Terrell Davis, a Pro Football Hall of Fame member who is Black, said he was unjustly detained by law enforcement after tapping a flight attendant on the arm and requesting a cup of ice during a flight to California.
The airline this year settled a lawsuit filed by an Asian American employee working at its Denver catering facility who alleged he was called racial slurs by a manager, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This month, a former United ramp agent based in Denver sued the airline, alleging he’d experienced years of racial harassment.
United isn’t an outlier in facing accusations of discrimination. Last year, travelers lodged more than 120 discrimination complaints with the Transportation Department; of these, nearly half were race-related. American Airlines was the most frequent offender, followed by Frontier Airlines and United Airlines.
Last year, American Airlines settled a lawsuit filed by three Black men who said they and several others were wrongly temporarily removed from a flight after a white flight attendant complained about an unidentified passenger’s body odor.
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Christine Chung is a Times reporter covering airlines and consumer travel.
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