Gay couple forced to move plane seats to make way for straight couple to sit together
 

"Alaska Airlines says it is investigating a mistake in which a gay couple were told they had to switch seats to make way for a heterosexual couple who wished to sit together.

David Cooley is a well-known gay businessman. He’s the founder and CEO of West Hollywood gay hotspot, The Abbey.

Yesterday, he was flying from New York to Los Angeles. However, what should have been a smooth journey was seriously disrupted when his partner was instructed that he had to move from his Premium seat to the main cabin. It was either that or leave the plane."


To me, this sounds like a simple duplicate seat issue, but the way it was handled onboard is where I think AS is getting itself into hot water...

Link to article which includes statement from Alaska Airlines:

https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/...ey/#gs.JP931jc

dupe seat or they were on guest passes.

Articles like this have me burying my head in the sand as a gay man. This makes us look like whiney victims.

"We will never be flying <fill in the blank> airline again"..... All businesses make mistakes or employees which do things incorrectly.
To me, it depends on how the business responds to my complaint that makes a difference.

That says, there is some missing information. The article indicated AS told it 2 couples were assigned the same seats.
How exactly would this happen unless someone manually overrode the computer. And, if the gay couple had valid boarding passes for the seats, and were able to board using them, why would they be kicked out of their seats?

The Alaska statement confirms dupe seats, and as the CEO of the Abbey, I'd find guest passes to be doubtful. Maybe it came down to an upgrade processor glitch and the other pax had a higher status or fare, although I doubt we'll ever know. I do agree that it comes off as "whiney victims", but it does seem like 2 or 3 minutes of a GA/FA working with solo travelers to do a seat swap with either couple would've avoided this whole mess instead of going the deplane the aircraft route. (which is actually what the couple ended up doing in the end)

I'm still waiting for an evidence that this would not have happened to a heterosexual couple under the same circumstances.

From a closed group:

And, where did they get the info, since BOTH of them were being told to move for the other couple

As the Alaska/Virgin team members shed light on this, I am wanting to start a boycott against this guy's club.

#bipolarmedsforall
#everyseatmatters
#seatpoacher

Just paint one of the planes like a rainbow and all will be forgiven.

Are AS F/As allowed to offer compensation for someone to go from Premium to non-Premium Coach? As a solo traveler I would have happily moved for 20k miles, grudgingly for 10k. Avoiding the delay with someone's baggage being offloaded, etc. would have gotten me to move for free if there were a pair of empty seats in the back, though.

Offopic and probably OMNI but I must say that many businessman and/or rich people are not like the Kardashians and can be extremely frugal. So any thing is possible.

Who knows what really happened. I think most GAs/FAs are far from homophopic, and what happened was most likely, IMO, a result of something else, not the GA/FA's biases or prejudices (if any).
These things happen not infrequently and to heterosexual couples as well.

Do you have a link to the AS statement?

That's not what Cooley's tweet said. Copying it here...
The thing that's somewhat confusing to me is that Alaska Airlines has been a big supporter of LGBT causes and this flight is a legacy Virgin America flight operated on old Virgin America metal. Virgin America, with its hub and operations at SFO, might have been America's gayest airline in terms of staff and passengers.

Could it be that Cooley's partner was bounced from his seat by a Federal Air Marshal? Seems more than possible at this point. There are only eight seats up front, and if Cooley's partner had an aisle seat, that would be my bet.