Family Asked To Leave Southwest Flight After Tweet

CBS Minnesota ^ | 7/22/2014 | CBS Minnesota

[Dallas59]

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A Twin Cities man is upset about the way his family was treated on a Southwest Airlines flight because of a tweet.

Duff Watson says he was asked to de-board a flight from Denver to Minneapolis with his two kids on Sunday after an agent didn’t like a tweet he wrote about her service.

Watson and the agent had a disagreement before boarding initially.

“I was left, you know, very upset, very embarrassed, very humiliated,” Watson said.

He’s an “A-List” passenger, which means he gets priority boarding. But a gate agent wouldn’t let his 6-year-old and 9-year-old board with him — so they’d all have to wait to board later.

[RIghtwardHo]

Southwest is a joke. Stopped flying them years ago.

[blackdog]

Too bad he wasn't $Black!

Cha-Ching

[defconw]

If he had been black it would not have happened.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Can I ask a stupid question? How did SW Airlines people find his Twitter feed right then when he was still at the airport? Do their personnel really go to social media sites when they are at work??? I think there my be an untold story here.

[1rudeboy]

Sometimes a jackwagon meets a bigger jackwagon. It’s the way of the Tao.

[hinckley buzzard]

I still wonder why people insist on embarrassing themselves with tweets. What a stupid thing to do.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Yep I agree. I don’t do Facebook or Twitter, for the very reason that I don’t feel the need to broadcast everything I think about or everything I do.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

While I think the agent/SWA are stupid for tossing him off the plane and forcing him to delete the tweet......but as a rule, in life it isn’t smart to talk smack to someone who is assembling your food or can throw you off the plane.

[fatnotlazy]

I love Southwest. Much better than Useless Airways

[JayAr36]

I still wonder why people insist on embarrassing themselves with tweets. What a stupid thing to do.

I still wonder why people submit themselves to be treated like terrorists and herded like cattle and pay outrages prices for the privilege.

[mc5cents]

This is an isolated incident and SW apologized. End of story. I like SW Airlines and use them whenever I can. Flight attendants are usually very cordial and even funny at times.

[blackdog]

Sorry. That was kinda my point. I find this in the workplace as well. Certain demographics violate rules just to get written warnings, which they then take to an attorney as harassment. As a result, workplace rules only apply to whites. Such enforcement also serves to support the morale of said demographic. They enjoy their special status. Ever see a person operate a hoist with four tons directly overhead while thumbing thru cell phone messages?

I lock out every possible part of a production line just to change a fuse. Not required in most cases, but they like to push buttons when you are inside or around equipment.

[Buckeye McFrog]

I thought story was going to say the tweet was “By the Grace of Allah, I shall be humping those virgins soon”.

[Timber Rattler]

Something smells here. I fly Southwest almost exclusively during business trips, and this does not sound like the flight attendants and gate people I usually encounter. And normally, they don’t have time to do something silly like monitoring customers’ Twitter feeds during the boarding process.

[MamaB]

We fly SW and love it. Never had any trouble with it.

[morphing libertarian]

Thank more seats for me and my family

[discostu]

He “addressed” the tweet to the by putting @SWA in it. Not sure yanking him off the plane was the right move, but he did decide to turn it into a pissing contest, he shouldn’t be surprised he got a bit wet.

[Boogieman]

“She said, ‘You can’t board the plane unless you delete that tweet,’” Watson said.

---

Now, thanks to her forcing the guy to delete a random tweet that would have been lost in the sea of tweets, she is going to have multiple news stories written about her, and millions of more people will know who she is.

As the comedian John Oliver observed:

“...the Internet is like quicksand. The more aggressively you fight to remove yourself from it, the deeper you’re going to sink down into it. The case in point is the guy who started all of this.”

(he is speaking of the Spanish man who sued to have himself “forgotten” by google)

“The only thing I know about him, is the only thing he didn’t want me to know.”

[Redmen4ever]

>unless the children were also A-List, the A-List passenger can’t bring them on board during priority seating. The flight attendant was merely following the rule:

Please note when traveling this holiday season, reserved boarding privileges are only provided for A-List and A-List Preferred Members. If an A-List or A-List Preferred Member is traveling on a multiple-Passenger reservation, reserved boarding privileges will not be provided for non-A-List Members in the same reservation. This includes family and friends traveling on the same itinerary or traveling with the Tier status holder.