A Black woman accused Southwest Airlines of discrimination after being forced to move to the back of the plane after getting into an armrest showdown with her white seat mate. The woman, known as CancerianHealer on TikTok, filmed a disturbing interaction that happened on June 20 with a white male passenger who was clearly an armrest hog.
Almost everyone who has flown on a commercial airplane has dealt with a passive-aggressive elbow battle at some point.
However, in this instance, the man’s actions were extreme. To add insult to injury, the woman was on her way to Austin, Texas, for her 30th birthday celebration with friends, having flown from California and grabbed this connecting flight at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.
In two TikTok videos posted in July, CancerianHealer is getting increasingly irritated as her personal space is invaded. “Get your hands off of me … and you’re looking crazy.”
The man, who was sitting in an aisle seat pretending to read, commandeered the middle armrest, shoving the woman’s arm to the side, and laying his arm completely on top of hers.
At one point, he dug his elbow into her arm, and then pinned her arm back with his shoulder. “Move your f**king arm. Get your arm off me, bro,” the woman told the man, but he remained combative and refused to cede the armrest.
@cancerianhealer On June 20th I experienced something I never have before! A passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight thought it was okay to get in a shoving match with me over my armrest. As you can hear in one of the clips the employee advised him that I was in the right to have the middle armrest but he didn’t care. He proceeded to continue shoving and bullying me. Southwest Airlines employees then thought it would be a great idea to make ME move all the way to the back of the plane (or get off the plane) even though it had already been acknowledged that the other passenger was in the wrong. Mind you, this was as I was otw to celebrate my birthday weekend. I reached out to @Southwest Airlines ♬ Jet2 Advert – A7-BBH | MAN
“A passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight thought it was ok to get into a shoving match with me over my armrest… the employee advised him that I was right to have the middle armrest, but he didn’t care. He proceeded to continue shoving me and bullying me,” she wrote in the caption to her first video.
“The person that sits in the middle gets the arm rest. You have to move your arms, that’s her spot,” said a flight attendant off camera. The man merely looked up from his glasses and mumbled “I’m sorry?” and continued to terrorize his seat mate.
The scuffle happened during boarding, before the flight even took off, giving Southwest attendants time to rearrange seats. But instead of asking the man to move, another airline employee told CancerianHealer to pack her belongings and either “move all the way to the back of the plane (or get off the plane) even though it had already been acknowledged that the other passenger was in the wrong,” she wrote, adding “I think that’s discrimination.”
@cancerianhealer Part 2 of the horrible in flight experience I had with @Southwest Airlines ♬ Jet2 Advert – A7-BBH | MAN
In a follow-up video, the woman stated that after the flight attendants talked amongst themselves and consulted with the captain, one of them approached her and said, “Hey, you’re causing a disturbance.”
Shocked, the woman spoke up, saying she “felt like Rosa Parks,” and told the employee (who was also Black), “I’m so disappointed in you.” But her protests fell on deaf ears, and she had to walk to the back of the plane, past all the seated passengers who were waiting for takeoff.
The woman claimed the man began shoving almost “instantly” after sitting down, and has filed a complaint with Southwest, who apologized for her experience, but stood by the actions of their crew.
Great Job Grace Jidoun & the Team @ Atlanta Black Star Source link for sharing this story.
