A woman and her 16-month-old baby were ejected from boarding a United Airlines flight because she used the “wrong pronoun” while speaking with a flight attendant.
In a video shared online, the mother said the “flight attendant has denied access to us because he said I made a derogatory comment about one of the flight attendants because I didn’t use the right pronoun”.
The woman, Jenna Longoria, a health and hormone expert, said she accidentally’ used the wrong pronouns for a flight attendant while boarding the 9. am flight from San Francisco International Airport to Austin on Wednesday. Her misgendering resulted in her, her mom, and her baby, being ejected from the flight.
“When [the flight attendant], who identifies as a woman, gave me our boarding passes I said ‘thank you, sir.’ That is it. That is it,” Longoria recalled.
“She got upset. I walked to the plane to go down the aisle. Then she held my mother back and wouldn’t let her come with me [past the gate],” Longoria continued.
However, United Airlines, in a statement, denied her claims.
‘A party of three traveling out of San Francisco today was not allowed to board following a discussion about having too many carry-on items,’ the airline said. ‘The matter was resolved and the customers took a later United flight to finish their trip.’
But Longoria was steadfast in her claim. In a video on social media, she revealed that the Airline said she might be banned from ever flying with them.
‘They’re saying it’s a hate crime that I did and that I might not even be able to ever fly United again,’ she said.
‘I will tell you what happened now, I got one of the flight attendant’s pronouns wrong and the other flight attendant didn’t like it’.
‘I said, “I’m really sorry, I’m not very versed in pronouns,” I was holding my son, he was having a temper tantrum, I had the car seat on my back’, she explained. ‘I wasn’t really focusing on anything except getting my son’s car seat on the plane and getting him comfortable.’
In another video clip, a United Airlines staff identified as Gabriella was seen telling Longoria that it was the captain’s decision to eject her from the flight because of ‘what came out of your mouth’, and that there was more than she said aside misgendering the airline staff.
“I don’t wanna put words in their mouths because I still need statements”, Gabriella said, when Longoria pressed to get more information, “but some transgender comments were made, derogatory comments about being a bigot not being on the aircraft. This is what I heard,” the staff added, on which the hormonal coach expressed shock. “What”!
Longoria added she behaved calmly throughout the ordeal and was surprised by the possibility of being barred by the airline.
“There was no yelling, there was no pushing or shoving – that’s why I’m so very surprised,” she said. “It all happened very quietly and don’t think anyone else [passengers] knew what was going on.”
Longoria said she subsequently booked an American Airlines flight which departed three hours later and that she has not received any feedback nor refund for her tickets from United Airlines.
Watch the video below: