Originally Posted by
wwongo
Alaska’s response on twitter surprises me. I would have assumed that it was not official policy to give couples preferential treatment and that was just the flight attendant’s decision but they state in the twitter statement that it is official policy to keep “families together”. That makes total sense when we are talking about people traveling with a child or a person with a handicap but adult couples? Why?As part of a gay couple (women), I do know how tiresome being assumed to not be a couple can be and I find how quick some people are to assume that there could not be any discrimination just as tiresome, frankly. I also know that some well off gay people can act just as entitled as their straight counterparts. I don’t know any details about this case beyond the official statement by Alaska, So I am not going to pass judgment on the passenger’s behavior as justified or not without more details. It does appear from the statement that AS is not denying that they were asked to move to accommodate a straight couple. At least no other reason is given. I think AS set themselves up for this by not having a clear transparent system for dealing with an error in seat booking which will obviously make people angry. I can’t see any justification for a system where staff are in the position of deciding who is “family” enough to bump someone else. If any two people booked a flight together and reserved seats together they wanted to sit together. My partner does not actually fly but I do fly with other family members sometimes (adult kids, mother). I’d be interested to know what the family ranking is for priority and what proof of family relationship they require for this “families together” priority. Most of the time though, I fly alone and I reserve the seat I want and I would not want to be told I had to move to accommodate a couple. I might do it if asked nicely, but I would be angry if it was insisted that I give up a seat I was already in. They really need to work on that policy.
I took the "keeping families together" statement as a reference to the couple that ultimately decided to deplane - that they were sorry they weren't able keep them together in this instance. I don't think their official policy is to ask passengers with seat assignments to move in order to allow a couple or a family to sit together (except maybe in the case of a passenger with a disability or younger children traveling with guardians). If they are making a policy statement that they'll seat everyone together, what good are seat assignments? The official statement they put out, in my opinion, feels as if they're still trying to figure out exactly what happened, just like we all are, but even as a gay man, I'm still not seeing proof that this was a case of discrimination or even preferential treatment toward a heterosexual couple; it truly seems like some fairly entitled folks had something go wrong (as can happen with air travel from time to time), decided not to fly because of it, and then are shouting "Alaska is anti-LGBT!" from the rooftops to get some attention.